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!

Looking Back

It has been a week since I posted. We've gotten emails from some of our friends and family telling us that they have blog withdrawals! I know that when you're interested in a blog you're disappointed when there is nothing new. We are humbled that there are so many of you that care what is going on with our family.

We are at home for now. Last Tuesday morning, after finding out that we would not be getting court, Nancy and I took the bus over to the airport to look into getting a flight out of Dodge, er Odessa, as soon as possible. Turns out that we were able to get tickets for that same afternoon that would get us to Chicago. The gal at Lot Airlines suggested that we get our own tickets from Chicago to Sioux Falls, as she thought they would be cheaper. So we go a taxi from the airport back to the apartment and went online and learned that that were no seats available from Chicago to Sioux Falls for Tuesday. We were able to get them for Wed. so we decided to stay overnight in Chicago.

So we quickly packed, summoned a taxi, and we were off to the airport for our 2:00 flight. Our connection was in Warsaw, where we caught the flight to Chicago. It was 1.5 hrs. to Warsaw from Odessa, and 9.5 hrs from there to Chicago. We had no trouble in customs and we were at our hotel by 10:00 PM Tuesday. Flying west works out really well because when you get home it is time for bed, which works out perfectly, unlike going east.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express at O'Hare. After being in Ukraine for a month, it was like heaven. We have been in a lot of HIE's, and this is one of the better ones. It is near the airport but we never heard one airplane. If you have a need for an overnight at O'Hare I recommend it. It was funny, I never appreciated the breakfast buffet like I did the next morning. Finally, food that tasted like we are used to. And there was no one to weigh the portions on a scale!

We had set up a 5 PM flight out of Chicago thinking that we would be wiped out from jet lag, but actually we were all up pretty early, so we just relaxed all morning. We arrived in Sioux Falls on New Year's Eve, and then drove to Mitchell. We got home about 9 PM.

Did you know that South Dakota's state motto used to be The Sunshine State? Back in the 90's we changed it to The Mount Rushmore State. I mention it because the sun has shone brightly every day since we have been home. In fact, yesterday and the day before there were NO clouds in the sky at all. What a difference that makes. I don't know how the people in Odessa can stand the gray every day. It is truly depressing. People that live there say it will stay overcast until March. Ick.

OK so what about the adoptions? We have court scheduled for Mon. Jan. 19. Nancy and I will be flying back to Odessa on Jan. 17, and will arrive on Jan. 18. At this time, it looks like Nancy will fly back home to America again after court and I will remain. This is subject to change but that's my thinking right now. Our plane tickets for this last trip were $1700 each. We don't want to make too many trips at that price. If our internet is good, then I will be able to work from Odessa and it would be better to stay. If not, I will need to come home as I have to get work done for my job. My vacation time is totally exhausted, plus I have an important project to complete.

After court, there is a mandatory 10-day waiting period where absolutely nothing official happens adoption-wise. If no one appeals the ruling, then there will be an automatic final judgment and the kids are ours forever. They will then be free to leave their orphanages. However, there are still new birth certificates and domestic passports that must be issued, plus Valya has a property issue. I will probably elect to keep them in their orphanages until these are resolved. That way I can get some work done and they won't be bored out of their minds. Once they have their passports, we can leave for Kiev for medical exams and US immigration paperwork at the US Embassy. Then we can come home for good.

While we were in Odessa, we were wanting to take some time to thank you all for your kind words and prayers for us. Until you've experienced it, you just have no idea how uplifting it is to be so far from home and hear from friends and family. Here is a sampling of some of the things people wrote to us. It is by no means complete.

I just want you to know that I am praying constantly for this to be resolved with Valya. I am on pins and needles waiting to hear, but I know God has it all under control. It may be hard to see right now, but I still believe He is going to work this out. I can see how much you love Valya and how much she loves you.

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I am praying for you and hope that you have a good time there with Valya and Sergey. I know it is really hard to go to different country and live there for a month 0r two I know how it feels because my parents go throught the same way like you right now.

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My dear friend, you have been in my prayers constantly... all of you! I know it's hard being away from home right now, spending Christmas in a foreign country with people you hardly know, and missing all the sights and sounds and faces of home. But actually I think the Christmas you are celebrating in the Ukraine is much closer to the first Christmas than anything you would have in the States.

Like Mary and Joseph, you are in a foreign land, far from family and friends, in humble circumstances, not certain of what lies ahead. They were certain only that the baby would be born. You, like them, await a new addition to the family - actually, two of them! And just as the Lord was with them, was their strength and confidence, He is with you there. I am praying that He will make His presence more clear to you there than ever before, that your Christmas can be rich and full of joy.

Just think - next Christmas you will again be in your now much noisier home, surrounded by all that is familiar, yet experiencing the joy of His birth in a new way, with Valya and Sergey. I can't help but think you will then look back on these days and view them as a very precious time in your lives!

I miss you dearly and can't wait till you are back home.

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God will never give you more than you can handle and he will never get you to it without getting you through it.

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I can't imagine the weariness that you must be feeling right now. We pray that God will give you strength, peace and encouragement to press on. I will be waiting to hear about your news of the court date on Tuesday. You got to think positive!!! We love you guys and it is such a terrific thing that you are doing for these children. You have sacrificed a lot for them and I know that God will bless you for this.

THe LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He give strength to the weary, and increased the power of the weak. Even youth grow tired and weak, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:28-31

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Yes, I do find it a bit odd to think and feel so much for people, a family, I've not met, but your blog writing has made me feel close to you in some odd way, and I just feel the need to let you know I'm out here thinking of you and hoping for your family to be together soon.

Here is a picture that our friends sent us of Sparkle.



Thanks again to you for thinking of us.

While we would have wished that this adoption wouldn't have been split up into multiple trips over there, I am still very grateful that all of the adoption approval paperwork was completed. That was a huge thing for us. You may recall that Valya's adoption was by no means assured. I feel that we went to battle for her and we won. Some day, the kids will understand what we went through for them and we will have tangible evidence of our commitment and love for them.

Nancy says it is God's money anyways. If He has decided that we should spend it on airfare and living expenses over there, then so be it. Since He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, I suppose he could sell one and provide us with the funds! I joke, but everything we have does come from His hand.

We never got to wish you Merry Christmas, so here is our greeting to you, and our prayer for you that God makes Himself real to you in some way in this New Year. Blessings to you.

Sergey Said "Da"

It is morning in Odessa. This post was written last night. The internet connection here gets flaky at night and I wasn't able to post it. I will post it as is without editing it to say yesterday, etc.

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Hooray!

We finally had our appointment this morning at Sergey's orphanage. Our facilitator Oles, or Sasha, called on-time today and told us to walk down to the Inspector's office. This building is on the next block south of us. Well the blocks are enormous here but still it only took about 5 min. to get there. Sasha and the Inspector, Alexandra, were waiting there with a taxi to take us to the orphanage. We didn't know what to expect about the Inspector and what he or she would be like or look like. I had expected someone older. But she was young with supermodel looks and dressed very classily. It seemed hard to believe this person had total power to put an end to our adoption of Sergey. Well Sasha did not realize that Mark was with us and had gotten a fairly small taxi. He told me to sit in front and then he, the Inspector, Nancy, and Mark were squeezed tightly in the backseat of this little BMW. I would have loved to take a picture of them. The irony of the situation was killing me. Here Nancy was smooshed up tight against this lady that had the power to put an end to our adoption and they were packed in there like school friends.

The taxi ride was about 10 min., and when we arrived at the orphanage, we were led in to a lady's office. Her name was Dina and she is the orphanage social worker. She is a middle-aged woman with big reddish-purple hair. She asked us all kinds of chit-chat questions about Obama, Hillary Cliton, how much we tip waitresses in America, other odd things. But she had obviously read our homestudy because she knew many things about us. She asked which church denomination we belonged to? We told her Reformed in America. I didn't expect that would mean anything to her but Sasha added something about it being Calvinist, which we did not mention, but which she seemed to understand. It was surprising to me that either of them understood that as I would bet there is a fair number of people who go to our own church that wouldn't even know that. We talked about how we knew Sergey. We had pictures along that we took last summer, some of which are on our blog. Let me tell you those pictures went a long way to making her and the Inspector comfortable with this adoption. For example, it turns out that Dina is a dog-lover, and one of the pictures was of Sergey, Mark, and Sparkle together. So of course we had to talk about the dog for awhile. Like what kind was she? (She's a Teddy Bear Shi-Tzu mix). What was her name? They both looked at the pictures carefully and smiled. They also asked about Valya, and we showed them a picture of her as well. How do we know her? She was a friend of two sisters that were adopted by friends of ours, the Tolly's, in our town. At some point Sergey showed up, since he had been summoned when we arrived. He had been in class. They asked him if he wanted to be adopted by us and he told them in Russian, "It's OK". No they said he had to say "I agree" or "I disagree". They got a laugh out of that. Do you know about this girl that they are adopting? Yes, we had told him about her last summer. Then they gave him various admonitions such as he needed to obey his parents and do well in his studies. In the end, the Inspector stepped aside and filled out a couple of forms, both of which we eventually needed to sign. We don't even know what they were. Didn't bother to ask, just did what they said.

Sergey has a 19 y.o. brother whom he hasn't seen for seven years. He must talk to him occasionally because Sergey knows his phone number by heart. They said that the brother will be coming in on Saturday to sign a paper that he agrees to the adoption. We will try to find out more details because we would love to meet him and take a picture of him for Sergey to remember him. Sergey also has a grandmother. She's in the picture somehow so we are also going to try to find out more about that.

They told us to come back after 2:00. So we hugged Sergey goodbye and walked back to our apartment.

At 2:00, we returned back to the orphanage, and met with the director. Her name is Anna. This time we didn't have an interpreter along, and she didn't know much English, so we waited for Sergey to arrive so that he could translate for us. Again, most of our conversation was smalltalk. She spent the majority of our time talking directly to Sergey and we don't know what she was telling him. One part was interesting, however. She also asked us about or church denomination, are we Catholic or Protestant? She told us that the children in the orphanage do not attend church but that we shouldn't pass judgment because when they leave the orphanage they are free to attend whichever church they wish. Apparently, she is not familiar with Proverbs chapter 3. Whatever. Finally, she told us we were free to visit Sergey fron 2:00 to 5:00 every afternoon. We are not to take him from the orphanage nor visit while classes are in session. At the end of the meeting I asked if we could take a picture of her and Sergey. She seemed surprised but pleased at the request and said something in Russian but I recognized the word, "souvenir". "Da, souvenir," I said.

After the meeting, we were free to go with Sergey. He gave us a tour of his world, including his classroom and various other places, such as the clothes washing room, shower room, bathrooms, art room, music room, and playroom. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the playroom meeting his classmates and playing games. Mark and I taught some of them to play Dutch Blitz. They had fun with that.

The next step for us is a court appointment, which we do not have yet. We and Sergey will need to go before a judge in Odessa and he needs to approve the adoption. He will ask all of us many questions, but we don't anticipate any trouble. After court comes a mandatory 10-day waiting period where officials try to contact any known relatives and allow them or others to come forward and contest the adoption. Just because they contest, however, doesn't mean they would prevail. They would have to agree to adopt him and prove that they have the means to support him. And where were they the last 7 years, and why did they not go visit him before? If there are no complications at the end of the 10-day waiting period, Sergey will be legally ours and we can take him out of the orphanage.

I explained to Sergey that we would try to visit him every day but that we are not sure that we would be able to do so. We also will be traveling to Andreyevo or somewhere abouts to visit the Inspector for that area. It will not be the same one we had in Odessa. Which is too bad. I think we're on her good side. Eventually, if all goes well, we will be able to adopt Valya. If so, we will intend to actually stay at her orphanage for several days so that we can get to know each other. Our adoption situation is a little tricky because the two orphanages are 150 km. away from each other. We obviously can't be in both places at the same time. It is premature to be concerned about it right now, but I hope this is a problem that we will have.

My impression after our meetings today is that these people genuinely care for these children.

The last point I will make about today is that I am truly amazed at the attitudes of these officials toward us. We have heard anecdotes about some of these same people behaving much differently toward other families. I believe the prayers of our friends and family are having an effect here. Before today I would never have believed that these meetings could be jovial, but they were. They were actually fun. How can we explain that? God is blessing us. Thanks to you all for interceding for us.

Here are some pictures from the day.

We walk from our apartment to the orphanage. It takes about 20 min. This is our apartment building.



This is behind our apartment building. It is where the entrance is.



This is the main street in front of our apartment building. It is very busy day and night.



They do not have clothes dryer appliances in Ukraine. Everyone leaves clothes out to dry after washing, either indoors or outdoors.



There are stray dogs and cats everywhere here. Here are some of them. A pack of them will chase cars out of parking lots or bicycles riding by. They are all friendly. The cats are feral, however.



This is the neighborhood of the orphanage. There is a public elementary school across the street from the orphanage.



This is the front side of orphanage #4 in Odessa. It was recently painted. But they only painted the side facing the street. The sign says Shkola Intyernat #4. Orphange #4 is actually what they call an Intyernat, which is a boarding school as well. There are kids here that go home on the weekends, also older kids who are attending a nearby technical school. There is room for 400 children here, but at this time there is only a little over a hundred or so.



This is Sergey and the director of #4, Anna, in her office. The picture on the wall is of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushenko. The book on the desk next to Sergey is a visitor's log that visitor's must sign. She has two little girls of her own. One of them was playing outside of her office with an older boy. I assume he was assigned to watch her.



This is Sergey's classroom. The 6th graders are in the same room all day. He showed us his school books.



I got a laugh from this picture of a page in Sergey's geography book. Kiev Ukraine is the center of the world! There is also a poster on the wall that shows cursive cyrillic letters.



Sergey showed us an American Rifleman magazine that we had sent to him in one of our Care packages. It was well worn from lots of use by the boys. They love looking at the guns and bullets and stuff in there. Boys are boys everywhere.



Two Dasha's. While we were in there, a lady named Dasha was tutoring a classmate of Sergey's in English. Her name is Dasha as well, and will be adopted by the Strainick's soon. Sergey had also been tutored by her in English by the family that hosted him in the US last December and summer.



Sergey gave us a tour of the orphanage. Lots of long hallways in there.



This is the dining hall. They got all new tables and chairs last week.



There is a bookcase with several pictures of adoptive families. Here is a picture of the Hoffman's from last summer. They will be adopting a girl from Sergey's class soon.



Here Sergey is showing us his treasures. Everything he owns is in this shoebox. He will be allowed to take this with him when he leaves. Everything else stays, including his clothes and shoes. When we go to take him from the orphange for the last time, we will need to bring him clothes to change into.



This is Babushka (Grandma) Lela. She is an American from Florida who has spent many years here in Odessa at this orphange. She provides love to the children. Every time she comes she kisses each child on the lips and tells them that she loves them. She tells us that many tell her that no one has ever told them that before.



This is Nataliya, the playroom supervisor. The kids really like her. She is having a baby soon.



Here we are playing Dutch Blitz with some boys. It takes a little to get used to. They should be experts by the time we leave Odessa.