Marveling

We've been home with the Ukies for 3 months, but every once in a while I watch them and am amazed that they are part of our family.



The other day I was watching Valya walking down the hallway toward her bedroom, and it struck me how a year ago it was near impossible to envision her here. Back in Ukraine, I never believed that Sergey would be any problem to adopt, and he wasn't. Plus we had gotten to know him since he was Mark's penpal for awhile and we were able to have him stay with us for 2 weeks last summer. But Valya, she was a complete unknown. We hired a stranger in Ukraine to meet with her to find out if she wanted to be adopted... we waited anxiously to hear back from him... then were thrilled to get 4 small photos by email.



Then, when we were in Ukraine we didn't know for sure that we would be able to adopt her until probably 3-4 weeks after we got there... After we got word that all 12 or so of the officials in-region had agreed... I was talking once with our friend M in Odessa about Valya, and she commented how amazing it was that we came all the way from South Dakota and were plucking this girl out of the middle of nowhere in Ukraine. It was incredible - and still seems that way to me.

So, once in a while, I pause and take it all in, and marvel.

Our Valentina

I put together a slide show of some recent pictures of Valya. We have more pictures of Valya than of Sergey, because frankly, Sergey doesn't like to have his picture taken too much.

Valya has a distinctive little mole on her upper lip that will always be endeared to me. We had specifically petitioned for her and Sergey at our SDA appointment on Thanksgiving day, last Nov. 27. At the appointment, they showed us two data sheets of the kids that each had a little postage stamp sized picture in the corner. When the lady showed us Valya's, she asked, Is this her? Well, the picture was 7 years old, and the child in the picture had her head completely shaved. It did not look like the Valya we had seen in pictures, except... for that little mole. When I saw that I knew it was her!

The snowy pictures in the later slides were from last Saturday. Our balmy Spring weather has been replaced by snow, but it is beautiful. Now it is warming up again, and quickly disappearing. Valya loves snow and tells me about the way they used to play in it at her intyernat. How blessed we are to have a girl who loves snow, because we do get it here in the Winter. Next season, we'll go to our sledding hill, plus see if we can teach the kids to ski. You people in Colorado I hear you laughing... But we do have a little bit of skiing available in South Dakota! In those pictures she is wearing the coat that I bought her in Rozdilniya and gave to her the day that we took her from her orphanage. You'll see her wearing that coat in our pictures in Odessa and Kiev and the video along the Black Sea last February. But she doesn't wear it too much anymore because now she likes bright colors.

Her English is improving. It is good getting to know her a little more every day. She has a story to tell about her life and we are anxious to hear it. We are getting some of it in little pieces already and it is a sad one.

When you adopt kids there is a time of bonding. It is a two-way street. We often talk of how the kids are bonding with the family, but we also are bonding with them. I think, every day, our love grows stronger for these two gifts that God has given us.

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!

US Population: 305,818,710 + 2

After about 19 hours of traveling, we have arrived at our hotel in Chicago. Our two flights today went very smoothly and on-time.

Valentina and Sergey officially became US Citizens when their immigration paperwork from the US Embassy in Kiev was processed at the Port of Entry at the airport. They actually have dual citizenship. At the age of 18, under Ukrainian law, they may formally renounce their Ukrainian citizenship. But until then, they are both Ukrainian and American citizens. The US Embassy in Kiev sent home with us some helpful information that explains all of this. We would have to be careful taking Sergey over there after he turns 16 because they could conscript him into the military.

Our day started at Borispil airport, which is a city about 15 mi. east of Kiev. It is a beautiful drive to Borispil as it is birch forest almost the entire way.

After we got checked in and got our boarding passes, we headed upstairs to the international departures lobby. At the east end of a very large room, there is a collection of booths called Passport Control. It is here that they check your passports, and in the case of adoptions, check the adoption papers.

I've read bad stories about this area on other blogs, so I quick scanned the booths and picked one with a young woman. When we walked up to the kiosk, the lady was wearing an army green military type dress uniform, complete with shoulder placards with some bronze stars on it. That looked very normal. But later when she got up to do something, she was wearing a short short tight miniskirt of the same uniform material, black nylons, and knee-high glossy black leather boots. I mean this is an official uniform. It's very odd to see. Anyway I picked a woman, supposing that she wouldn't be as intimidating as the other guys.

Our facilitor had reminded us to be sure that we brought one of the original 16 signed court decrees granting the kids to us. Yep, she asked to see that along with the passports. Taking about 10 min., she read all 4 pages of the decree, then asked the children, "Do you want to leave?" In unison they both replied "Da". I guess that is the last safeguard the Ukrainian government has in place to protect the children. I wondered what would have happened had either of them said No. We got the approval to pass through to the gate and we were off for Frankfurt, Germany.

While we were waiting at Borispil, we ran into Jim Vanderburg. He was also leaving Ukraine, with his three new daughters. Turns out we were on the same flight out, and our connecting gates in Frankfurt were even near each other. Valya, of course, hit it off immediately with his girls, and they all became friends in a short time.

In Frankfurt, Jim and I spent quite a bit of time visiting about our adoptions, and the girls goofed around like girls do. When it was time for our flights to board, we said goodbyes and traded email addresses and phone numbers so that the girls can keep in touch.

As we were boarding the flight to Chicago in Frankfurt, I was suprised, but glad, that the gate agent requested to see the US Embassy packets for the kids. Yet another safeguard in the system to protect the children.

Our flight to Chicago was 9 hours, which went pretty fast, in retrospect. United gives every seat a video screen with 15 channels or so of programming, plus a dozen music channels. Valya was unusually cuddly with me, which I really enjoyed.

The kids have been great. I've never had one discipline problem in the last two weeks. Everyone was tired today, but they hung in there and never whined or complained once.

When we got to the hotel, we all showered right away, then they both fell asleep watching Sponge Bob. They are both breathing deeply in slumber. Before Sergey fell asleep he commented to me that he couldn't believe that he was in America. I know this is a dream come true for him. What a joy and blessing they are.

Tomorrow, we can sleep in and relax before we catch our 1:00 flight to Sioux Falls. We are looking forward to being reunited with Nancy and Mark as a complete family of 5 again, something we have only been able to do once before, on Dec. 27th last year.


Here are some pictures from a great day.


Jim, Miranda, Karina, and Jessica Vanderburg and us together at about 4:30 AM at Borispil, waiting for our flight to Frankfurt.



Jessica and Valya talk about music.



Last moments on Ukrainian soil, on the way to a new life in America.



Hanging with Sergey as we wait for our flight to Chicago.



Valya saying goodbye to her new friends Miranda and Jessica in Frankfurt.