Home Life

Well we have been home for 5 weeks, thought I'd give you an update on how it's going around here with the kids.

The kids, I think, have been adjusting well to life in America and our family. They are well-behaved so far and are doing well in school, or as well as we can expect.

We enrolled Valya and Sergey at Mitchell Christian School, which is where Mark has attended since he was in preschool. Wow, now we have $1,000 per month tuition. That is painful, but worth it as I can't imagine our kids in a government school.

Valya is in 6th grade here, while Sergey is in 5th. They are both 2 years below where their ages say they should be, but neither child is able to be one grade up, let alone two. It will be interesting to see if they will be able to make up time during the coming years or if they will always be two years behind. I don't like the thought of them graduating from high school at 20 years old, but I suppose it is possible. We plan to enroll Valya in summer school this year, not sure about Sergey yet. Overall, they both enjoy school and their teachers say they don't get into trouble. Valya spends 2 hours a day using Rosetta Stone to learn English. One of those hours, she has a female high school student with her as well to help tutor. Valya is now on the 2nd of the 3 Rosetta Stone disks. At home, her English is getting better. We haven't reached that point yet where she has really taken off, but we can tell she understands MUCH more than she is willing to speak. She is quite a drama queen so it should be interesting when she starts REALLY talking to us!

The kids have the week off this week as it is Spring Break. The school shuts down because the Juniors go on a mission trip every Spring. They went to Jamaica.

Mark and Valya are both in track. Valya will be running jr. high, while Mark will be competing at the high school level. They have workouts every day after school for at least an hour. Valya's coach is trying to teach her to pace herself. As far as I know, she has never participated in an organized sport. She loves volleyball and is anxious for that to start in the Fall.

Sergey is now in Boy Scouts, and his new patrol was just inducted into the troop last Tuesday. He will be going to Boy Scout camp this summer for a week.

Both of the kids have made some good friends. In fact, Valya stayed overnight last night at a friend's house. Sergey has had a friend stay overnight with him here.

Gradually, the kids' taste in food has been adapting to ours. Initially, it was challenging to find things that Valya would eat but that has been getting easier. Valya usually won't eat the school lunches, so we have to give her something to take to school. She especially loves fruit. Valya would eat 10 bananas a day if we let her. When we first got home she would hide them in her room! We have gone through a case of Clementines a week since we've been home, and untold grapes, plums, pears, and apples.

We have the kids attending Sunday School and youth group at our church. They have been enjoying that. Both of the children were baptized into the Christian faith, Valya as a baby, and Sergey about 5 years ago. I posted Sergey's story before. Speaking of which, Sergey recently wrote a letter to his Godmother in Russian, which I scanned in and emailed to her. She was wondering how it was going for him and was glad to hear from him.

We have had very nice Spring weather since we have been home, even with temps up into the 70's, but today we are having a blizzard. Seems like that happens every Spring in South Dakota. Mark and Valya's first track meet of the season was supposed to be today but was canceled.


Here are some pictures.


A couple of days after we got back, Nancy took Valya over to see the Tolly's. Lienna and Tanya were from Valya's orphanage, and it was through the Tolly's that we learned of Valya. She doesn't realize it yet, but she owes a lot to them for their part in finding her a family. This picture shows 2 of the 4 Tolly girls, Tanya and Morgan.




Here is Valya with one of her friends, Ellie. We painted her room bright colors and she loves it. We ordered the bedroom set from JCPenney catalog, but the night stand was backordered and now has been discontinued. Figures. Now we are looking for one for her that will match her new pieces so that she can have a clock and lamp next to her bed. We ordered the pieces while we were home between our two adoption trips in January. That red bag on the bed is the one that I got her at the Privoz market in Odessa the day that I took her from her orphanage. It still has the Lufthansa ID tag attached.




Playing Uno a couple of days after coming home.




The weekend after we got back home, Mark had an 8th grade basketball tournament that lasted a good part of a Saturday. Valya and Sergey came and watched. Valya especially enjoyed the snack bar. Here is Mark in a shootout.




Nancy's sister, Karen, was not able to meet us at the airport when we arrived. She and 3 of her 5 children did come down to Mitchell from northern Minnesota to stay with us for a couple of days. Valya and Sergey got to meet yet three more of their new cousins, Britta, Sophie, and Isaac. They adopted their little boy a year ago, and are in the process of adopting another little one.





Valya with our dog, Sparkle.




Valya with some more of her friends, Kelsey and Kaitlyn.




Valya at home, and on the trampoline. When we first arrived, Energy Girl would get up in the morning and jump on the trampoline before school. Now, she will come home after track practice and jump for a 1/2 hour. And jump vigorously, kicking her legs, throwing her arms, doing flips, running circles. I don't know how she does it.




Sergey at Lake Mitchell.




On one of the nicer Saturday's recently, Sergey and I went on a bike trek to the James River and had a picnic. I showed Sergey some trees damaged and killed by beavers.






Nancy's sister, Valerie, and some of her family stopped in as they were passing through the area, and got to spend some time with the kids.




Here is Sergey working on a Merit Badge for Boy Scouts. He was inducted into Troop 75 recently.





Valya discovered Mark's old scooter in the garage and likes to ride it. I have offered several times to teach her how to ride a bike but she refuses. One time when I wasn't home she got on it by herself and crashed and banged up her leg and foot bad enough that she couldn't run track.




It's never dull when Valentina's around.




Last week, our school had their Fine Arts festival. Mark is in 8th grade and gave his last ever speech for this. He has been doing them since 1st grade. He spoke on his "Spiritual Benchmarks". One of the points in his speech was how he saw God move for us during our adoption trip in December. Sergey read a piece called, "Where is Heaven?" and received a Superior rating. He did a very nice job. I told him that if I had to read Russian I would have received an Inferior rating!




Valya didn't participate with her classmates because she can't speak or read English yet. Here she is with her 6th grade teacher, Miss Fenske.




Here's a picture of all of us together at the school. The week after we got here, we posed for a professional portrait. Our church delayed the church directory until we could get back to have our portrait taken. That was very nice of them.

Homecoming!

I so apologize to you, our faithful readers, who have been emailing, phoning, and personally asking for an update to our blog. Yes! we are home. We have been home for 13 days. I will catch you all up on what has happened since we've been back, starting with this post, about our arrival in Sioux Falls.

I wrote this post a week ago - I never got it completed then, so I will post it now. I'm sorry - but it's better late than never!

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Well where did this week go. The last time I posted, on Sat. evening, we had just landed in Chicago, where we stayed overnight.

Sunday morning (Feb. 15), early morning, the kids woke up at 2:30 am, awake for the day. They graciously let me sleep until 5:30, when they tickled me awake. On our body clocks, 2:30 was really 10:30 am, which was very late for them, since they always got up at 7:30 while we were in Odessa.

We enjoyed the American breakfast buffet at the hotel. Even Valya found things she likes. She is very picky, not quick to try new things.

On the way to the elevators I noticed the exercise room, so we stopped in there. The kids loved it, especially Valya. She spent an hour on all of the various machines. She is very physical.

We took the hotel shuttle for O'Hare to catch our 1:00 flight to Sioux Falls. On the way to the terminal we saw Air Force One parked there. President Obama was in Chicago over the Valentine's weekend for something. It was fun to show the kids the president's airplane. Our flight was quick - we actually arrived in Sioux Falls 20 min. early. I was concerned about that because I knew that we had a crowd of people that would be there to greet us and I didn't want to get there before them! I made sure we were the last ones off the plane and we walked slowly out of the concourse to give them more time.

Nancy and Mark greeted us at the top of the escalator. She had asked everyone else to wait below so that we could have a little private time together first. We had all been together only once before, on Dec. 27, when we had taken Sergey from his orphanage in Odessa up to Andreyevo to let Valya and Sergey meet for the first time. After hugs and kisses, it was down the escalator to greet our friends and family. I didn't count but I would guess there were about 30 who came to meet us. What a great time we had. Thanks so much to everyone for coming to meet us. It was unforgettable.

And so we end this phase of our adoptions. Now, we are a new forever family embarking on a new adventure!

Gotcha Day!

I am happy to report that we are now the proud parents of Valentina Grace Louise and Sergey Alan Gordon Pretre! January 19 will always be a special day for us.

Though we were granted parental rights over the children, we cannot take them until the completion of a 10-day waiting period and the final decree.

We had a GREAT day together today. The orphanages allowed Sergey to be with us until 5:00 and Valya's has let her stay overnight with us.

Let's go right to the pictures, shall we?


Our translator, Alyona, coaches Valya and Sergey on how to act and respond to questions by the judge. She admonished both of them, this is not a time for jokes. Pictured with them is the social worker from Valya's orphanage. She also coached Nancy and me.



Pictures with the judge who made us a new family. The Prosecutor testified that no one else wanted the children and that it would be in their best interest to be adopted by us. The sad thing is that there are 14,000 other 12-17 y.o. orphans in Ukraine that nobody wants. It is a shame; many of them would love to be adopted. The judge seemed shocked and pleasantly surprised that we would ask him to be in our pictures. We told him that this is a very important day in their lives and we want them to be able to remember it.



Together as a new family outside the court room. We are sorry that Mark couldn't be here. He was in Ukraine with us during the tough ugly battles and didn't get to be here for the good part.



Sergey and his new big sis Valya outside the courthouse. They really do get along well together.



So to celebrate the big day do you think we would go to some fancy restaurant? How about McDonald's? Valya had never been in one before. She wasn't impressed, and she doesn't really like hamburger. Now she and I have something else in common, neither of us like McDonald's.




After lunch, we spent the afternoon sightseeing in downtown Odessa.




As we were walking downtown, Sergey wanted to go visit his Godmother. He was teasing us that she lived on the 83rd stair of the Potempkin stairs. He is funny that way. Actually, he said that his Godmother's sister was the director of the Odessa Opera House. Well, I'm not sure about that, but she is the director of this theatre and recital hall. We were in luck today as both of them were at the theatre at this time. We went inside and were able to meet his Godmother. She is the one responsible for getting him baptized. Not sure of the details here we need to find out more. But she was thrilled that Sergey was being adopted, and adopted by Christians. The lady on the right is his Godmother, and the one on the left is her sister, the director. They asked us to stay for a vocal recital that was in progress, but we declined as we didn't have much time. I took a quick peek, though, and it looked like high-society types in there. I told her that I would be in Odessa for a couple of weeks yet and perhaps I could visit again? She liked that so I'm going to try do it. She offered to get us her email address so that Sergey could keep in touch. That would be good.




Walking around, looking at the sites. Acting like siblings.




Are we glad we did these adoptions? The picture speaks for itself.



Valya and Sergey both like to take pictures. Valya especially likes to take pictures of us.



Energy Girl saw the Potempkin Stairs and immediately dashed down to the bottom and back. Nancy: Where's Valya? Me: Oh she's down there at the bottom.



Nancy and Sergey stroll ahead while Valya, the physical one, is being, well, physical.



"Sergey come help me! Pull me, I'm stuck." He did.



It is still the Holiday Season in Ukraine. There are several large Christmas trees on display in Odessa.



This is an ornate city government building. There are large columns and Valya was hiding from Nancy.




Outside the Odessa Opera House.




Valya discovered the doll that we bought last December. We bought it because its hair reminded us of Valya. Valya, not knowing that, motioned that its hair was like hers. She took the little headdress and put on her own head. I told her that the doll was for her. She noted that it had a Ukrainian dress. I wasn't able to explain that it was for her to remember her heritage. But I think she knew.



The is the view from the 4th floor down into the courtyard. It was fun hauling our luggage up all of the stairs as there is no elevator. It looks like a mess down there but that is because there is a lot of renovation going on.



After we took Sergey back to #4, it was just Valya and us. We stopped in for a visit with some other Americans staying here. Pictured are Jay and Martha Swinney, and Rick Partch, all from New Mexico. They are adopting 3 boys between them, Tolik, Vova, and Oleg, all of whom are 16 years old. One of the joys over here is getting to know new American friends that you can share advice and war stories with.



At the end of a long happy day we enjoyed a pizza at the Aphena mall. Everyone was exhausted and ready for bed. Tuesday, Valya returns to her orphanage, Nancy and I do some more paperwork, then she and I are flying up to Kiev so that Nancy can be there for her 5:30 AM flight to America on Wednesday, then I will return to Odessa for the mandatory 10-day wait, birth certificates, and domestic passports. Valya has a property issue, but our facilitator thinks she can take care of it during the birth certificate wait.