11.11.22

It's not overstating to say that November 11 may have been the happiest day of my life. We know that the war goes on, and life is physically difficult now, but after 8+ months of enemy occupation now we are FREE and so, so happy about it! 

And, yes, we haven't had running water or electricity for two weeks now. We're stinky; in the evenings we sit around in the dark and cold (but tonight won't be so cold: Will and Jaan got our heat working!), during days we scurry around searching for internet and working on what needs to be done, and but still we're smiling inside or visibly. 

Will and many others start their daily updates with a count of how many days of war we've lived through. (If you haven't been following Will's posts on Facebook, you might want to. He has made his account public again, now that it's safe to do that. See especially the recent posts that he wrote while offline: about Day 261, Day 262, Day 263, Day 264, and so on.) Now it almost feels like we should also have a count of how many days of freedom we've enjoyed. As in, this is the Xth day of Kherson's freedom.

In case someone hasn't seen this yet, Reuter's did an article from an interview with Will. They called him William and got the wrong age for me, plus mixing up a few other details, but overall it's good: The U.S. family who lay low during Russian occupation.

I can't make any promises about regular updates here. Our connection is still very tentative. But I did want to be sure that people who aren't on Facebook read this. Thank you so much for your love, prayers, and support!