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.

Haircuts

We have 29 Blogger followers and about a million lurkers. Thanks for sticking with us waiting for an update from me. It is Mar. 10 today. March 15 will mark one month home as a new family. What fun it has been to have our new kids here.

As you can imagine, this has been a time of firsts for our Ukies, both little (the first experience with an electric can opener) and big (school!).

We arrived in Mitchell Sunday evening, Feb. 15. The next day, we gave the kids haircuts. Sergey was in desperate need of one, and Valya had been indicating since before I took her from her orphanage that she had been wanting to cut it shorter (using charades, snipping with her fingers like scissors). The day I took Sergey out of his orphanage, we walked about a mile in Odessa looking for a barber that could take us in immediately, without luck.

A friend of ours from Rapid City, who by a fortunate coincidence, was in the area and was able to meet us at the airport, is a hair stylist and she stopped in to do the cuts. She is also the one who gave Mark his first haircut when he was a baby.

They did the haircuts while I was at work. After work, Valya would run and hide from me and wouldn't let me see her hair. The reason was because she knew that I preferred it long. Before, when she would show that she wanted it cut, I would say, "no, no, it's beautiful!" Eventually, I was able to grab her and bearhug her and tell her that her new hair was beautiful, too.

She loves her short hair. When she sees pictures of herself with long hair, she says, Bad. Actually, almost all pictures of herself she thinks are bad. I try to tell her often that she is beautiful, maybe it will help. When I tell her she is beautiful, she usually says No! One time she even pretended to punch her face or cut herself with scissors to prove that she is not beautiful. Something in her past has given her a poor selfimage, I do not know what yet.


Cindie gave Mark his first haircut at 12 mo., in Sept. 1995. Valya was also 1 year old, and Sergey would be born a month from then. The seeds of a new family were being put into place on the other side of the world.



This is the only picture we have of Valya getting her hair cut now. She deleted all of the other pictures off of the camera before I could get them uploaded to the computer, including one with a big pile of hair on the floor. She is like that - she will quietly delete pictures off of the camera that she doesn't like, so now I am very careful with the camera and make sure she doesn't delete pictures from it. Sergey has also been known to do that. In Odessa, more than once he deleted some pictures I had taken at Orphanage #4 without permission or telling me he did it. It was only when I'd get back to the apartment that I would notice they were gone.



Sergey would have been just happy if we didn't cut his hair. He wanted it longer. Actually he looks pretty good with longer hair. We will have to experiment with it after school gets out.



After picture with Sparkle!

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!

Together at Last

Saturday, we were able to take Sergey out of his orphanage and take him up to Andreyevo to meet Valya. It was snowing in Odessa for the first time we've been here, and we were unsure what the roads would be like on the way to Andreyevo. Other times we have gone it has been fine in Odessa but bad in Andreyevo. This time, however, it became bluer and sunnier the farther north we went, though colder. The cold, clear blue sky in Andreyevo, with the snow covered fields, reminded us of home. It was a nice bit of something familiar for a change.

The roads near Andreyevo, however, are still treacherous. On Friday, our facilitator had summoned our sometimes driver, Sasha, to go up there to get a document for us. He told us yesterday that there was a 3-car accident on the little road to Andreyevo. I posted pictures of this road a couple of days ago. On the way in, I noted that it had not been plowed or sanded at all since the storm a week ago Thursday.

We didn't know until Friday night that we would be going, and we didn't know that we would be taking Sergey. We had talked about wanting Valya and Sergey to meet before court, but had not set anything up specifically. Well our facilitator just said, you will go to Andreyevo tomorrow to see Valya and you will take Sergey with you. Sasha will be there at 9:30 to get you. Well OK then.

Sergey didn't know that we were coming. When we went to get him, we couldn't find him. It took about 1/2 hr. for someone to find him, turned out he was outside somewhere. We told him what was going on, and we were off.

Valya also didn't know that we were coming. When we got to the admin office like we usually do, Valya was summoned. When she came up we gave her a surprise introduction to Sergey. She knew who he was because we had already given her a picture of him. They did a quick hug, then we headed off to the playroom to visit before lunch.

I think it was about 120 sec. after we got in the playroom that Valya whacked Sergey on the head for the first time. Undoubtedly, he deserved it. They were talking in Russian and I suppose he was teasing her about something. And so it has begun. These two are both live wires, Sergey more with teasing, and Valya physically. Anyway it was all in fun and doesn't seem anything beyond what seems normal in these orphanages. At the end of the day, as we were saying goodbyes, I was standing there with Sasha and commented it was hard to believe that they just met, they looked like siblings that had been together all their lives. They were very comfortable around each other. Mark will need to get used to a new level of energy around the house.

Before we left, we got Sasha to translate for us so that we could explain to both of them the adoption situation. We told them that the SDA rejected our papers on Thursday and because of that it was very possible we would not have court next week. We told them that we will be going back to America next week, no matter what happens, but that we or I would be back at the end of January to get them. They were quiet but didn't seem to mind too much. Sergey seems more interested in court than Valya, because his classmate Karina Nasekos had court the week before.

Here are some pictures from the day.


Our driver, Sasha. He has two teenage girls of his own. He is a pastor that recently moved to Odessa with his family and is between jobs. We are working on him to show him the orphanages and the kids. Maybe he can get involved with orphans somehow.



In the dining hall at Valya's orphanage. There are five meal times. They have a 1st breakfast, 2nd breakfast, lunch, late afternoon lunch, and dinner. They served a cabbage soup with porridge (I think), lettuce salad, grechka (buckwheat), dark bread, and compote to drink. It was different than we're used to, I think you could say. A couple of dogs roamed freely, begging for handouts. Sergey and Valya sat at one table, while we sat at another. I caught Valya kicking Sergey under the table. I gave her that parent look like knock it off, and she did. I guess that translates in every language. Afterward, Valya cleared the tables. The dining hall is pleasant and light, with a large plant display and tapestry. There is a coat rack as you enter, and 4 sinks for washing hands.





Outside the dining hall. This dog has a name something like Pasha and he is the orphanage dog. The other ones are strays, I guess.



Valya's room. Four girls sleep in bunkbeads. There is a small table with a couple of chairs. Each girl has a very small closet. The Christmas Tree that you see will be put into their TV room. Each wing on every floor has its own TV room. Some of them already had their trees up and decorated.



We brought Valya a little Christmas gift. It is a diary with a lock and key. It is pink with valentines on it. Valya is the nickname for her full name, Valentina.



At some point Valya grabbed some vampire teeth and goofed around with them. Earlier this year, the kids put on some kind of play and she played the part of a witch.



Mark, I will always love you.



Our first picture all together.



Now for a picture of just the kids. HELLO?!! Can you guys please stand still for one picture?




Saying goodbye, but Valya finds time to torment Sergey one last time by yanking his shirt down under his sweater.