Tuesday

In the morning and kids and I did our bike route through the wooded trail near Koliba (the nearby restaurant). We had to come home right away because Kennedy had been too close to some foliage and had an allergic reaction to it. Little whitish, raised bumps appeared instantly on her ankle. By the time we got her home they were gone, so I think her skin was just irritated by them. I applied a little "itch" cream and she was good to go. Then, we walked down the big hill to the playground. The kids had a good time there, especially on the merry-go-round. We came back at 12:30, had lunch, and then it was off to naps.

I finished watching "One Night with the King" DVD, then headed over early to the big house and tried to get some reading done of this book I got in Hawaii. It's written by their last queen, I think, named Liliuokalani. It's quite boring. It recounts every person she visited and what they served and wore and how polite and proper their children were.....There's supposed to be some controversial point about how she was "done wrong" when it came to saving/protecting Hawaii's royalty and reign instead of becoming another state under the U.S. government's authority, but I'm not really getting that. 110 pages to go. I originally purchased the book because I thought it was about the princess that defied the beliefs/worship of "Pele" (the volocano goddess) when she walked the trail to the volcano eating the only-for-Pele berries and threw them into the volcano. If only I had read the first page before purchasing. It tells that this was Queen Kapiolani, who was Liliuokalani's great-grandaunt. It says "..one of the first converts to Christianity. She plucked the sacred berries from the borders of the volcano, descended to the boiling lava, and there, while singing Christian hymns, threw them into the lake of fire. This was the act which broke forever the power of Pele, the fire-goddess, over the hearts of her people. See? Doesn't that sound like an interesting story? (Maybe only to the Hawkins =) I have a lot of books that I think are going to be really good, so I'm eager to finish it. Why? you ask, don't I just quit reading the boring book and get on to what I think I'll actually enjoy? I don't know-one of my many quirks. I have to finish. Today is "school day" (daycare, really, at least in the summer), so I have some time to knock out many pages.

Jill made an awesome-tasting lasagna for dinner! She thought it wasn't too flavorful and it gave her heart burn later, but I loved it and Ollie and Kennedy both finished their plates, so they liked it too. Radek is coming this Sunday night, but will have to leave on Tuesday. He's coming because he has three days off and we have not seen or heard anything about our Russian papers yet! Jill's getting a little worried that it'll be too late for us (in her condition) to go by the time we get the papers. A lady associated with the Yaroslavl, Russian team is in charge of completing the paperwork (our "invitation" from the team to Russia) and sending it to us, then we sign it and give it and our passports to Anna and she will take them to Prague to the embassy and have them stamped and our visas issued, then we can go.

Jill started having her first "contractions" yesterday!

It's going to be crazy!

(I think I'll offer to move to the big house from the day of her c-section-or surprise delivery- until I leave for Christmas. That will probably only be about three? weeks. -especially because Radek will only be allowed ~4 days here at delivery time.)

It's going to be crazy!