Hello and thx for reading my ever present ramblings. Today i will reveal a few more pieces of my personal puzzle(life). I live on an island...yes literally an island. The river is on one side about a 5 minute walk and the ocean is across the road another 5 minutes. We encounter a hurricane about every 2 years. Some are bad but most are not. Mu mother lives on the mainland side in the country. Our population is @ 35,000 year round residents but in summer we get a half million tourists per week. That is from the end of May until the end of September. Because many American college students are lazy we have to import students from the former Soviet states as well as the Philippines and Jamaica. Overall we average abouy 5,000 younget college students using the Work and Travel programs. That is how i met my ex wife. YES, She is from Belarus. We have a 14 year old son together. My best friends from Russia and the Ukraine were once my roommates, Kostya and Alec. They are more like brothers to me actually and they were both in my wedding. I could not choose which one would stand as my best man so i chose them both. They were there when my son was born, and my son calls them uncle and their parents call me.son and my mother calls them son. Once on a horse at my mother's farm Kostya fell off a horse while holding the Russian flag....it was so funny. We were all very close for a long time until my mother in-law came from Belarus. After that things went downhill for my marriage. We were married and lived together for a little over 5 years and waited for divorce for another 3 years. Yes...she left me. She is super smart and attractive but is also very cold. I didn't see it at first because of what i like to call the 'sparkle period!" That is the time when you first meet someone and the sex is great and you both are trying to impress the other one. Then there are the red flags that we overlook at first that always come back to bite us later, sometimes months or years down the road. That was what happened to me. That is a whole other blog for another day. Look out for that one :) Moving on.... i was in love and the world was all blues and greens and brilliant deep reds and soft yellows. When the marriage fell apart i was very hurt. I love family life and being a father is my calling. I never knew my father, he left when i was 3 years old so i knew what i was never gonna do and that was give up and leave. When it became clear to my ex wife that i was not gonna give up she started to cut me off. Americans know this term. It's when your woman cuts you off from making love or sometimes just having animalistic sex, raw and untamed! She began cutting me off for months at a time and even though she took care of herself she still had less patience. I had infinite patience with my son Evan. He was such a good baby and made it so easy. When she figured out that cutting me off and having little patience would not drive me away she began staying out at work more and more, or enrolled in more classes at the university. Finally that was enough and she left. I have always admired her hard work and drive to educate herself but the rest was not the best. We still co-parented well together and shared a meal 3 nights a week with my son. We celebrated birthdays and even went to holiday parties together. There was no physical relationship but we still tried to get along. I realized then that although we were divorced we still got along well. When i traveled to Russia or the Ukraine i realized that many women there were very educated and warm. I knew then that i would find a bride from there. Siberia in winter is unbelievably cold....-39c! The Black Sea in summer was warm and welcoming and so were the people. That was when i decided to narrow my search to the Ukraine! My son has traveled with me and it was then he realized that he could get 2 Christmas holidays! One would be the traditional USA holiday and one would be after the New Year on the 7th of January. Evan loves it! He gets gifts from my family December 25th and from his Belarusian family he gets gifts after the New Year. This leads me to ask if anyone reading this celebrates in January or December 25th? Would you want to celebrate both holidays or just the version that Americans celebrate? I appreciate your input on this very traditional holiday. Thx and Merry Christmas to all.