The Great Freeze - Part 6ish

And we are back...
The day after our adventure to the  springs we headed to Igor's grandmothers house to visit, see the new kitten and to get ourselves a Holiday tree. It hard started softly snowing in the morning which I was elated about. I love snow. It's probably because growing up in California you don't get a whole lot of that unless you live in the mountains so it is still very much a novelty to me. By the time we headed out to the village the snow was thick.

If you remember, I am not sure that I ever wrote about it, but Igor's parents didn't have a car when we first visited or even last year. So the only way to get to the village was by motorcycle, not ideal in the winter, walking (which no one but Igor and I are crazy enough to do), or when Igor's aunt Zena comes to visit. Well earlier this year Igor gave his family some extra money so that they could buy a car. This has made a very big difference for his family, especially his Grandmother, since she is older and needs help with the little farm. The car means that Igor's father goes and visits her more often and she loves it.

So we all piled in the new car and although Igor wanted to drive since it was snowing his dad was a bit hesitant. Once we got there we played with the kitten, warmed ourselves sitting on top on the big brick oven, and then headed out to find ourselves an epically awesome holiday tree. (I say Holiday tree here because Christmas is not celebrated on Dec 25th like it is in the US. Belarus like many other countries is on the orthodox calendar so Christmas is really in Jan for them. Thus, our tree was a New Years Tree or Yule Tree, ahh the things you learn). This was a really cool experience for me. I have never gotten to cut down my own tree before. It is so much more fulfilling being able search the forest, select it and then finally cut it put it on your slay and take it home.

It was beautiful out. Not too cold, slightly over cast, with lovely white snow drifts playing in the breeze. We took the dog Bikal with us but lost him not more than 5 minutes into our jount. He decided he didn't want to join us and ran back home to play with the chickens. Silly dog.

Igor looking for Bikal

our little sled

When we decided where he had gone we continued on our way. There were soo many good trees. We must have selected 15 each one we would say "this one is perfect! Look how full it is! Look our pretty! look how happy it is!' and then we would decided that we would keep walking and come back for it. I marked where our favorite ones where with sticks in the form of arrows so we would know where to go. But in the end we decided on this guy. Not too big, not too small, and full enough to hang stuff on.

the prize

Hail the conquering cutter

Taking it home

There was some rather heated discussion between the Family members in Russian of course about whether the tree was going to be able to fit in the trunk of the car or not but in the end it fit just fine and we were able to take it home but not before...

Lumberjack time. Man! look at that pile. 

"he's a lumber jack and he's ok..."

When we got back to Zaslonova it was time to put up the tree. Igor's mom pulled out all the old ornaments and we started decorating. I have to admit it was not what I think of as a traditional tree but I did have fun gussy-ing it up with the garland that we had bought earlier in the day. We even got lights to hang in the window that would cause seizures in all who spent too much time looking at them.

our tree topper

some photo shop action

so dramatic

The next day Igor and I decided that we wanted to play with the kitten again and chop some more wood. So off we went to grandma house. We walked the whole way, still looking at all the really good wild Christmas trees that lined the road and commenting on how good ours was in comparison. I have never chopped wood before so this was my first real experience with it. I am not so good. I did get better with practice but I also nearly chopped my shin in half when I badly missed  the log and got my leg instead.

suspense!

Don't WORRY! I didn't get hurt that bad. I ended up with a little bit of swelling and a small bruise. No blood, didn't even cut my waterproof pants. Obviously the axe was not very sharp (thankfully or this would be a very different story) but it was sore for quite a few days after.  You know that, of course I did this as Igor was trying to take a picture of me chopping.

After hitting my leg, I was rightfully a little put off from chopping so I went back inside and hung out with the kitten. It was getting quite late and dark and cold, plus we still had to walk 6 miles back home so  once Igor warmed up his hands a bit we trekked back to Zaslonova.

Some highlights that are not covered in our day to day events are waking up super late, at you know 11am, yes even Igor. The food his mom made was wall really great. My favorite though by far was her Borscht soup. Man... amazing. So I am kind of a sweat things or eggs for breakfast kind of person, that said I did have Borscht for breakfast more than one morning. I ate so much soup that Igor actually asked me if I was ever going to eat any real food. She also made me Pelmini (like tortalini but different - meat inside usually), mushroom soup, cutlets, smoked fish, fried fish, uuhhhh it was all good. :)

Ok, ok enough about the food. Anyhow, the day after I tried to cut my leg off, Igor's dad had a change of heart about us driving the car and decided to give Igor driving lessons (manual transmission you understand requires more expertise, expertise that I don't really have). But you know, Dad's can be funny about cars sometimes...and apparently we both were slamming the car doors (sound familiar dad???), and we were going to break the car so I decided that I didn't really want. Igor did really well. He only stalled the car one time. Igor drove us out to the local world war two monument to all the village families who were killed and/or burnt in the homes by the Nazi's. Kuplevich family is on the list.

After much convincing I did drive the car a very short ways from this monument to Igor's grandmothers farm. It was less than 2 miles away but still I waas very nervous and conscious of the fact that I had not driven a stick since my great stalling incident in Norway 5 years ago. I did fine. I think I stalled or at least almost stalled once but I still got us there. It wasn't like the other time that I drove a stick with Jamie across the US and got us stalled in the middle of Chicago in rush hour...pretty sure I still to this day don't have nightmares about that.

We chopped some more wood and then headed back to Zaslonova Igor at the wheel.

Get ready because my birthday is next!!!