Last Tuesday I braved downtown Chicago traffic to deliver the donation boxes to MEEST to ship to Artemovsk. That was quite a trip! I'm not used to the heavy traffic, big city and I really had never driven to downtown before but I made it in spite of having both kids in the back seat and Sonny Boy poking at Igor every other mile and making him emit a blood curdling scream. Ha!
The MEEST office is in the heart of a Chicago neighborhood called Ukrainian Village. Most everyone I spoke with had a Russian accent or spoke entirely Russian or Ukrainian. Sonny Boy was amazed that the people spoke Russian. I think he thought I had driven him to Ukraine in an hour and a half. While in the neighborhood I stopped at a Ukrainian deli to look for some of Hubby's favorite Ukrainian beer. When I asked the man stocking the beer case he only spoke Russian or Ukrainian, thankfully a young woman there offered to translate and I was informed that we would not likely find his beer here as it's a relatively new beer not being sold in the states. The girl that translated for us said she couldn't wait to look for it on her next trip as she was traveling in a couple of months. Just a guess but she must be first generation American as she spoke fluent Russian and her English was completely un-accented. There was also some sort of Ukrainian museum there and several orthodox churches and a Ukrainian Catholic School. Made me wish that we lived a little closer in order to expose Igor to more of his culture. However it's not terribly far so when he gets older we can go to the museum and such.
The Toy Drive was a huge success. I ended up shipping 158 lbs of stuff to the orphanage. Thank you to everyone who donated. If you didn't donate, start saving your pennies as I will do it again sometime in the future but not real soon. Here are pictures of most of the items that were shipped. After I packed them there was still room in a box so a few more things went as well.
So if you happen to end up in the Artemovsk Baby Home keep an eye out for these items and let me know you saw them. It would be a relief to know that they gave the toys to the kids and didn't just sell them at the open market or take them home to the workers children.
Our town trick or treats the weekend before Halloween on Sunday afternoon. Not very spooky doing it in the afternoon hours but safer I suppose. Everyone got into the holiday spirit this year, even hubby who donned his old costume from a party a few years ago to take the kids trick or treating. I stayed home and handed out treats. We had only half the number of trick or treaters that we usually have so now we have lots of candy left over not to mention the loot Sonny Boy gathered.
Sonny Boy had a difficult time in the robot costume and it came home several times before they really got going for revisions, however it got rave reviews from others. Hubby even said several people stopped their cars and honked and gave a thumbs up. It was a simple costume to make, however this is probably the last year he could have worn it as he wouldn't have been able to get is arms and legs into the dryer vent hose. My own costume, well we are not sure exactly what it is. Hubby bought the mumu thing at Salvation Army to play a trick on his homophobic co-worker a few years ago. He never actually played the trick so it's been stuck in a bin for a while and I figured since Hubby was going to actually dress up I would too so I stuck it on and found the loudest headband. We decided I was either a gypsy or a hippie. What do you think?
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