My beautiful sister

I have no words myself, so I will pass on what my father posted:

Leetra Joy Robertson - Obituary

Leetra Robertson, age 36, passed from this life on January 17, 2019. Born in Winter Park on June 25, 1982, she was a lifelong Florida resident who also traveled widely. Graduating with high honors from Seminole Community College with an AS in Multimedia Technology in 2007, Leetra changed her focus to become a licensed massage therapist in 2015.

Vibrant and artistic, she impressed those around her with her noteworthy intelligence, excellent communication skills and outstanding compassion. While she enjoyed her work as a therapist, her greatest delight was her daughters. With a love of beauty that enabled many forms of imaginative expression, Leetra took joy in building happy memories for her two girls.

Leetra is survived by her maternal grandmother, Carol Burton; her parents Phil and Kathy Robertson; her daughters, Isla Palmateer and Aliana Palmateer, her sister Phyllis Hunsucker (Will), her nieces and nephews, Jaan, Raia, Asya and Bogdan Hunsucker, and the father of her children, Scott Palmateer.

Family and friends are invited to attend a memorial service at Circle Community Church on February 2, 2019 at 11 am. The church is located at 2200 Pembrook Drive, Orlando 32810. Lunch will be served following the service.

Since Leetra was passionate about both the importance of clean water and the sanctity of life, in lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to World Vision’s Clean Water Fund or Choices Women’s Clinic, 1851 West Colonial Drive, Orlando 32804.

I'll be in Florida for a few days, to attend the service and be with my relatives and friends. Please pray for all of us during this very sad time.

Asya at the theatre

This was January 6. They had a wonderful time!

(All these photos are from our friends.)

Random bits

The church Christmas play and different holidays deserve their own separate posts. Other than those events, what should I write about now?


Asya got to go to "the real theatre" with her friend during the holiday break. Photos from that coming soon.... 

Our dear friends from Canada moved away. We're grieving that, and nothing replaces them.

Our last time all together before they left

They left us their very sweet little rabbit, and we're enjoying her so much. We have tons of photos of her already; here are just a few.

We started back to school at home and at art school. Music school starts again tomorrow (although both girls had extra music practices and such during their break).

Jaan went on a long trip by himself. This is the first time we've just sent him off like this: 18 hours on a train! He's spent a few days in Kharkov with the ministry he went to summer camp with, and he'll be home from that tomorrow. Pray for his long trip back.

Merry Christmas again

If you look up pictures of Christmas Eve in Ukraine, you'll probably see lots of tables covered with food: twelve different dishes special for Christmas and the usual Ukrainian volume of food. Our Hunsucker-Ukrainian-American table made me laugh last night. Sunday night tradition in our family is popcorn for dinner, and to that we added kutia, plus the cookies we were making for neighbours were out. It was quite a strange, international mix.

Today we've cooked and baked a lot. We're having a nice dinner soon, and then we've already heard that some neighbours are waiting for us to come carolling....

He ran out into the snow, then wrapped himself in our tablecloth.