Set to go...

Good news! We have our Visa's in hand and our flights booked. We are set to head out the morning of February 15^th. The flight will be tiring with flying all day and all night for the most part. We have almost a 6 hour lay over in Toronto so perhaps we might be able to meet up with some relatives in the Toronto area then.

This past week has been a new experience for Laurie and myself. She is now a full time housewife and enjoying the freedom that comes with that. I have one, directed study class that I am working on now that is challenging my discipline of time management. So far the battle is going well. I came across a clever Ukrainian joke this week that I thought I would share...

A Ukrainian man wants a job, but the foreman won't hire him. Until he passes a little math test.

"Here's your first question," the foreman said. "Without Using numbers, represent the number 9."

"Without numbers?" the Ukrainian says, "Dat is easy." And he proceeds to draw three trees.

"What's this?" the boss asks. "Ave you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine," says the Ukrainian.

"Fair enough," says the boss. "Here's your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99."

The Ukrainian stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree.

"Ere you go." The boss scratches his head and says, "How on earth do you get that to represent 99?"

"Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it's dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99."

The boss is getting worried that he's going to actually have to hire this Ukrainian, so he says, "All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100."

The Ukrainian stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, "Ere you go. One hundred."

The boss looks at the attempt. "You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!"

The Ukrainian leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and says, "A little dog came along and pooped by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, dat make one hundred...so, when do I start?"

If all Ukrainians are this clever I might be in for an interesting time...

Oceanside Christmas

Laurie and I just enjoyed two and a half weeks on Vancouver Island with family and friends and lots of snow. We encountered more snow there than Calgary and surprisingly the harshest road conditions we came across was traveling to Campbell River from Courtenay. We enjoyed the snow there very much. We built snowmen with my niece and nephew, went on some hikes, had a few good snowball fights and I had my first snowshoeing experience on Mt. Washington.

We had many quiet evenings with family and friends playing games and watching movies. But some of our favorite times were when we got out and enjoyed the beauty of the island. New years day was one of those times. We went out for breakfast with my family and then headed up Mt. Washington to enjoy the scenery there. Then we
took some fire wood to Goose Spit Beach and had a camp fire dinner. It was fun to watch the thousands of sea gulls fly overhead to the ocean to socialize. We also went on a couple of good hikes with our friend Sarah. She always seems to know where the most beautiful spots on the island are, even when they aren't the easiest places to get to :)

Our Journey back to Calgary was not as smooth as the trip to Vancouver Island. On the way out, the weather and roads were in good condition so we made the trip in one day but our return took three days. We had to stop in Hope our first night due to road closures from heavy rains and fog. I was okay with that stop once we discovered that the first Rambo movie was filmed there. The second day started out well until we heard that an avalanche by Revelstoke closed Hwy 1 so again our trip was halted in Salmon Arm. We were determined to make it home on the 3^rd day and we did, but it didn't look too promising when we were stopped again for an avalanche. We ended up only having to wait a half hour for that one to get cleaned up. And we did get to see two military canons that were being used to trigger controlled avalanches.

Our preparations for going to Donetsk are coming along nicely. Our Visas were processed very quickly and funds have been generously donated so our next step is getting our tickets and figuring out what to pack for the Ukraine and what to pack in our storage unit.

Here are some pics of our trip...the last pic is a sea creature we found on the beach. Anyone know what it is?