Ukrainians!

I’ll start today’s entry by stating the obvious: teens are an interesting bunch. No matter how much you plan, how much forewarning is given, sometimes the results are the same. We’re not dealing with adults here, so it’s always taken with a wink and a nod, but… grrrr! The night before, everyone was informed and knew that church was on the schedule and we’d be leaving at about 9:15am. Marine went up to wake the girls a few times to no avail. Finally, Hailey came lumbering out of her slumber and got ready quickly. At about 9:07am, Natasha was finally routed from the floor (where the girls decided to sleep for the night for some unknown reason), grumpily put on too much makeup and sauntered downstairs. We ended up making it to church on time, but it was another mini-battle.

We got home and got to our Sunday cleaning. Natasha sat on the couch and thought she was good there, but was quickly corrected. She chose to improve her attitude and did do a great job dusting.  While Marine went to meet some real estate clients, grandpa and grandma came over. Natasha completely turned her attitude around and she and Hailey spent the afternoon getting clothes ready for our evening activities.

Our first stop was Weston’s hockey game where we met up with some past real estate clients, one of whom also was Ukrainian! Natasha and Anastasia spoke the entire time and Natasha must have been in sugar heaven because Anastasia brought some old country sweets with her. It was a great time had by all, with Weston flopping all over the ice rink, Marine skating around “coaching” the four and five year olds (he calls it herding cats), little Ky asleep on mommy’s back, and Hailey… um, I’m not sure what she was doing.

After the game was over, we said our goodbyes and visited yet another former client who had prepared a traditional Ukrainian dinner for us. Thank you so much Sam and Olga! The moment Natasha walked in, she and Olga hit it off and we don’t think they actually stopped talking the entire time. Great food, great conversation, and oh yeah, Olga and Sam have a 15 month old daughter that our dear Ky thought was absolutely fascinating. Something about babies causes mesmerization for our dear little one.

We definitely wish we had better understanding of Russian, because we just found out via Olga a few tidbits about Natasha we didn’t know about. Apparently, choreography is a future career she is extremely interested in? Never knew. And, of course, because we’re dealing with teens, we had to correct a few bits of information that Natasha said to Olga. Remember folks, there’s always more to a story than what a teen tells you. Always.

But we said our goodbyes, Marine learned a new recipe called “golubtsi” that he’s going to try making and we raced home to put the kiddos to bed. All in all, despite some of the bumps, it was a good day.