St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church

This is a lovely picture I got of off a Google search.  It shows the really pretty color of the church.  When we first got there we just sat for about twenty minutes and relaxed.  This is the stop that made me realize how hard it is to travel in non-English speaking foreign lands.  Most of the time I have traveled (in Europe, Middle East, Africa) there have always been lots of English signs, English speakers, tour guides, etc.  This was the first time I went to a foreign country and had none of those to help me.  Jeff was with me so he was able to navigate us around quite a bit, but he speaks and reads Russian, not Ukrainian.  With the liberation of the Ukraine from Russia, there has been a bit of National Pride which has replaced a lot of the former Russian name plates, descriptions, menu's etc with Ukrainian.  

To enter the compound you have to go through the bell tower.  We finished our visit by climbing up the tower.  I knew it did not bode well when we started our trek up the tower through a hole in the wall.  It was not much larger than we are.  It caused me to wonder how people who were larger than Jeff and I would be able to make it into such places, however, now that I reflect on it I only recalled seeing two people who were overweight (by appearances) and at that nothing compared to what we see in the United States.  This may have to do with the amount of walking one must do in the Ukraine or it could do with the amount of support we give in the United States to make all places accessible to all people.

Now to the part I would prefer to avoid, but will share anyway.  First of all I have a slight claustrophobia which for the most part I dealt with just fine.  The bell tower brought out my acrophobia.  I was OK as long as I kept my self looking forward or at my feet.  If I looked over the side from the stairs, oh, it was not good.  I found at the second level up I was able to go up to fine.  It had a solid complete floor.  Then we had to go up about 3 more flights of stairs to the third level to which I basically clung to the walls (go ahead and start laughing now).  Jeff wanted to go to the top level, I told him to go for it, I wasn't going up anymore stairs.  I should have taken a picture of the stairs for you.  They looked like they were glued up, no iron beams, no walls, etc.  The were "caged in" so that you could not drop something off the side of the stairs.

These last two pictures are ours.  It really is a beautiful place to visit.  

The Golden Gates

I have heard about these before...the Golden Gates.  This was the entrance to Kiev when it had a city wall build entirely around it.  Legend has that it had Golden Gates, but now it has none at all.  Usually you can walk through it, but this day they were having some type of film festival and they had blocked the entrance so that they could watch movies inside.

This shows what it originally looked like.  Obviously the dirt and timbers extended out to the left and right of the gate, but it is "earth thrown up with a workmanship of timbers above" that.  I had heard of how cities defended themselves this way, but had never seen an actual representation of it.  As soon as I saw this, it clicked with the description in my head.

This is the side where they had a monument to someone (we were not always able to decipher statues, etc.  For some crazy reason they rarely had anything listed in English.  Sometimes they did not even have it in Russian preferring to have it in Ukrainian only.).  I don't have a picture of the monument but let me tell you that when they do monuments, they are serious about it.  They are almost always huge.

This is on the 3rd or 4th floor?  I lost count.  Lots of climbing in this fort.  You can see over my shoulder our next stop, St. Sophia's.

Dayover in Switzerland

We had the opportunity to spend the day in Switzerland on a trip out to the Ukraine.  Zwitzerland is a beautiful country.  We visited in Zurich with one of my best friends from high school Cathy.  She has lived there for a year or two, but has always been a big world traveler.  She took the day off from work and walked us around to see the beautiful architecture, teach us about the culture there, catch up on old times, and also took us to lunch.

This is us having cheese fondue at a side walk cafe.  That car that is approaching us is probably about the only one that came down that way during our lunch.

This is Cathy looking smashing, and me goofy.  Yeah, that was probably par for high school too.  Cathy is a wonderful friend and a beautiful lady.  I am so glad that we had the chance to catch up after twenty years, and here is my secret confession - I only joined FB so I could catch up with good friends like her!

Wow, I am not sure if it is normally this sunny, but we managed to get great weather here (and for most of our trip).

Our trip begins!

This is Jeff and I three hours before our flight leaves on Tuesday morning.  We are the only ones at the gate.  We flew through security (which if I remember correctly Jeff got his first of several extra screenings on this trip) and breezed through to the gate to sit and wait for 2 and a half hours.  We were a little tired (we got up at 4:30 am) and just enjoyed the opportunity to read and relax.  We are unaccustomed to such activities and have decided that must be what R & R(read and relax) stand for.  This was such an unusual thing for us we actually found waiting enjoyable.  I could not help be reflect on our previous trip with the 6 kids on a discount airline (where we had to pay $40 for checked luggage) so we had each of the kids take a rolling suitcase and carry-on.  Did I mention that the twins were 6 months old at the time?  Did I mention that the oldest was 8?  Did I mention we had 6 kids?  I did not think to take a stroller, so Jeff and I were carrying the kids in addition to pulling our own rolling suitcase and carry-on and helping younger kids with their stuff.  Just for the record MaggieMae's bag was not as heavy as the rest of us...come on the kid was three.  Then there was the occasional nauseous kid, plane turbulence (did I mention we flew into a hurricane?  Seriously, we were the last flight out of both airports, they had closed down all airlines and we only got to land cause we were so close.  When we left the airport the rain was literally flying sideways).  Oh, that was an eventful trip.

So memories of other trips made this one delightful, although I felt compelled to ask anyone who had small children if they needed help.  They all turned me down.  Let me warn you, if I am in the airport with lots of kids, and you ask me if I'd like help, I WILL say yes.  I am not an idiot.  I have never received an award for wrestling a stroller down a flight of stairs.  Actually, I have never received an award for any of the labor intensive things I have undertaken so that my unusually large family can do the same things that many smaller families do without thought.  And I am OK with that.  I know what I do is because I want my family to enjoy life, not wait for it to happen.  Which is just the reason why I found myself in the airport waiting for 2 and a half hours, because when given the chance, I am going to enjoy the world around me, with or without my kids.

Mommy will lava melt your eyes?

Yes, this sweet little 4 year old girl actually asked me that question. The conversation went like this:

"Mommy will lava melt your eyes?

Yes, if lava touched your eyes they would melt it. Lava will melt almost anything.

"How bout my hands?"

Yes, it would melt your hands.

"What will it do to water?"

Water?

"Yes, will it melt water?"

Well, the water will cool the lava down and turn it to rock. The lava will turn the water to steam because the lava is so hot.

"Will it melt rocks?"

Yes, lava can melt rocks.

"Could it melt my ears?"

Yep, it could melt your ears.

And with that our conversation closed with me taking a picture of her making a face about her ears melting. My children are fun to chat with, fun to hang with and I never know what we are going to talk about next.

This year's rainbow cake

Last year I made a two level round cake that was multi-color with white frosting and a skittle rainbow that went over the whole cake. Maggie wanted another one. I initially agreed, but then I flubbed up the day before and did not make it and foolishly I scheduled her party for 9:30 the next day. So I pondered a bit (my way of saying I was stressing a bit, mentioned it to God in my nightly prayer, and got this idea sent to my head) and came up with this.

Last year I mixed the cake mix in half a dozen bowls and then poured each one in the correct sequence to make a great cake that ended up splitting down the middle because it was so heavy/large? Anyway, I decided to switch to a 9x13 pan, and just put in different swirls of color as I went. Below is the pre-cooked cake, I wish I would have gotten a post cooked picture. It really looked awesome. I frosted the top of the cake and we put on a small (compared to last year's cake) rainbow of skittles and we were all set!

Doesn't this just look fun?