Catching up after bad weather!

7^th day:

Today I have been missing home. I miss my son, friends and family . I know he is in good hands but I miss  being able to talk to him and pick on him. (Hi Shawnie!! I love ya). We miss the food, ice cream, MOUNTAIN DEW, having water pressure in the shower, washing machines and many simple things we take for granted everyday. The only thing we don’t miss is the cold weather, it has been in the high 40’s here with some sun.

Jack, Yes the kids like dogs. They seem to be very interested in Bella because they have never seen a white German Sheppard. Pavel wants a cat. Jack and Noah be prepared Maxim is very good at legos and loves the build new ones that he has never seem before.

We got up at 7:00 am to go to see Vera (Executive of the Department of Children) so we could pick up some documents she made for us. Last night we got a call from Sedgwick FMLA about our claim. They want documents we cannot give them until the end of the adoption as proof of what we are doing, they also want papers on placement date of the children. We do not know any of these things. Like we need any more stress! We explained to George our situation, that without these papers Shawn could loose his job because none of the time he has had off will be excused. He called Vera at home and asked if maybe she could help. She started working on the document from home and we agreed to meet in the morning to review and hope that she could find someone to sign the document. George left about 8:00, we left at 8:30 to meet him in Vera’s office. When we arrived they were still reviewing the document and trying to word it properly, there are words in the Ukraine that do not translate to English and vise versa so if a document needs to be translated it can take some work to make it work out. When the letter finally was done Vera had to see if she could find someone to sign. When she returned we had to wait because she had left the letter with a favorite and trusted employee of her  Chief so we could guarantee that the letter would get signed. When she received the letter we found that there were mistakes and the letter had to be rewritten and signed again. This process took 2 hours and that was very fast for them. They have no fax, e mail, and things are walked from building to building for signatures and approvals. Things can take a lot of time. Now we needed to find a place to fax the letter. In the city square there was a “store” that was set up with booths that had phones, wifi and a fax. George explained what we needed and the letter was faxed to Sedgwick as well as Shawn’s HR department. Thank you Mike Andrews for getting us the fax numbers we needed!  Next we were off to court to drop off some more documents and then home. George has to catch a bus at 11:15 to make it to his train so he can go to Kiev and finish paperwork at the SDA for court for us. He also has to help finish up another adoption he has in process. He hope to only be gone for 4 days but as you can see nothing has any definite time line. We will visit the children as scheduled with the driver and see some sights until George gets back to Kerch. George dropped us off at the apartment left for the train about 11:00. We decided to walk to the internet café so we could e mail Mike Andrews and Kim DeForest about the fax they should be receiving and that a copy was sent to Sedgwick. We also explained what has been happening and asked if maybe they could help us. Back to the apartment to get a snack and take a nap. We had until 4:00 before the driver (Andre’)  would  be here to pick us up to go see the children. When we woke up and was getting ready to go for lunch  Kim DeForest called and said that she received the fax and was going to fax it to Sedgwick and talk to our caseworker’s boss about the situation. She said not to worry she would take care of the problem. Thanks Kim! Now we can relax again, it is hard to think about bringing home 3 children and having one more at home and not having a job. Went to lunch and used their wifi to post.

Just to let everyone know, the pictures are all from different days but the children always wear the same clothes. I think they bath and change clothes on the weekends. We bought legos for Maxim and a small doll dressed as a bunny for Sasha. We also found a book for Russian children to learn English. They are always very happy to get gifts. They are so surprised and happy it is amazing to see their faces. Maxim is very interested in the electronics. They go to the library with their class rom time to time and do know how to use computers. He spent most of the night playing mine sweeper and solitaire. He is very good. English #’s and Ukrainian #’s are the same but with different names 1 is adeen 2 is dva… They look the same, add, subtract etc. the same, just different names. Sasha spent a lot of time taking pictures, at the end of the night she worked in the English book we bought. She was tracing the letters of the alphabet very well and saying the names of the pictures in Russian and then in English. Shawn and Sasha spent quite a while on this project. They also worked out of a book on colors we bought. After the computer ran out of battery Maxim put together his lego fighter plane. He was so interested in this that he refused to go to dinner with his friends. They looked very sad but left without him. It was a really big project and very confusing (to me) and he had it finished before we left. We were very surprised because in the beginning we thought it would be too hard for him. One of the caregivers came in to tell us thank you (in English) for the gift we bought for Sasha’s groupa. It was very nice because she does not speak English. When we left Pavel was waiting to tell us good bye. We are assuming that he is not able to come into Sasha’s groupa because he is sick and we hope he can return to us soon. We are happy to see that he is out of the hospital, but we do not know about Vitaly. Pavel was very happy to see us and seemed to want to tell us something, this language barrier is so hard sometimes. We said good night and left for home.

On the way home we got a call from Sedgwick FMLA stating that our claim had been approved, the paperwork was sufficient. They gave us until the 26 of December to return to work. They stated that they did not get the fax from us but did get the information form Kim for the approval. Thanks again Kim! Now we can sleep.

8^th day:

We woke up to rain, rain and more rain. We can only shop for a day or so at a time because the shopkeepers sell the food until it is bad. If you buy enough for several days it can be spoiled. So it is pouring rain, we have very little food and we have to walk to get every where and we have no umbrella. What a great start of the day. We waited for a break in the rain and walked to the internet café to send out some e mails. It is not possible to post unless we have wifi and they do not. It is too far to walk in the rain to get to that café. We stopped at a small market on the way home and picked up a few things. The lady at the counter was laughing because we were trying to order and she was trying to talk and it was not going so well. Usually they just wave us on. We were supposed to go see a castle and ancient ruins that are dated 5,000 years BC but it was raining, so we stayed home and waited to go see the children. We spent some time trying (the key word) to learn more Russian, just so basics for the ride home and to help with the visits. Some  words you may want to know:

                Da/ Tak                 yes                                                                          da-dush-ka           grandpa

                Nyet                       no                                                                           ba-bush-ka           grandma

                Po-zhaowl-sta      please/ my pleasure (after spa-sea-ba)           uncle                      da-da

                Spa-sea-ba            thank you                                                             aunt                        toe-tya

                Po-ka                     see ya                                                                     friend                     droog

                Zos-twitch-ya       hello                                                                       brother                   brat

                Men-ya  za-voot    my name is…                                                     sister                       ses-tra

Good luck and have fun!

George called and let us know that things are moving a long with our documents. He said Vera has documents that he needs and that it is good news but he didn’t have time to talk. He was waiting in line at the SDA and will talk to us later. George needed us to pay Andre’ (the driver) to travel to Vera’s office, pick up the documents, take them to the train station to give to the courier so the documents will be on the train tonight and get to George in Kiev. Sounds kind of like the pony express?  Any way George says good news so we will keep you updated as we know.

I am not quite sure how it happened, Sasha may be the only case in the world but some how she has ended up very spoiled while living in the orphanage. She will actually curl up in a ball against a wall and tuck her head down and pout until her brother gives in to her. As soon as he does she is all smiles and off she goes. We were trying to play cards and she was off doing what ever and when she came in and saw we were playing without her she sat in my lap and tried to put her feet where the cards were. She would laugh and mix them all up. If I gave her my card to play she was OK but when she was not paying attention and noticed the game was going on without her she would start again. She is very strong willed and too cute, that is a bad mixture!! HA HA! Be prepared for some trouble when we get her home. Maxim played games on the computer and when it was time for dinner I think he may have been gone for 10 minuets. He must have ran there, eat as fast as possible and ran back. His sister leaves 15 minuets before him and she was still not back. The dude eats fast. Maxim is really trying to talk to us, he is trying to learn new words and he seems to remember them well. He is getting really good at hand gestures and helping us figure out what he is trying to say. Luckily I usually know one of the words he is trying to get us to understand and we build from there. He also uses the books we brought to find words or pictures that help us. He is a very smart boy. Tonight they acted like they did not want us to leave. Usually we will get up and put on our shoes and they will start picking up their toys. Tonight they started getting out more toys and not wanting to get ready to go. Maxim was just dragging his feet but Sasha was not wanting me to put her down, she was whispering in my ear (I have no idea what) and kept giving us more hugs. Tonight we even got kisses! We have never gotten kisses before.

When we left it was snowing and raining. The streets are all flooded. It was a very interesting ride home. Winter has finally found us. It is getting very cold. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

The kids cloths so far as we can tell are Sasha size 6 pants and tops and size 3 shoe, maxim size 10-12 pants and tops no know size shoe and Pavel is still not able to join us. We will let you know.

We got our new plane tickets. We should arrive in Detroit on December 25^th unless things change and we get to bring home the children. Then it would be the next week.