The kiddies

Well, I realized after sending the Christmas greetings that there isn't a lot posted on here yet about the girls lives and personalities. I thought I would tell you a little about each of the kids and what has happened the last year.

J.R. was baptized in May. Very exciting time for us to have our first be baptized. He is now in 3rd grade and loves school. He still leads his class in reading and has earned near perfect marks on his report cards. He is a great example to his younger brothers of being a hard worker. His mom doesn't let him slack much! Sometimes, I drive him crazy and he lets me know it.:)

Tyler is in his second year of preschool and loves it. He has the biggest smile and dimples! His huge brown eyes make me melt. He still remains our best snuggler!

Bryce loves being home with mom. He is never far from where I am cleaning, reading, showering, whatever it is, he is there. I am having so much fun with him! He is extremely active and thanks to his older brothers has developed an attitude of invincibility. He isn't afraid of anything!

Masha and Nastia's mother passed away in October of 2007 of TB. They have different fathers, explaining how different they look. As far as we know, their fathers have passed away also. Death certificates exist for both fathers, we don't know what happened to them though. Their grandma was too old and fragile to take care of them, so put them in the orphanage. Masha is very bright, in fact, the director of the orphanage says I had the best girl in the orphanage. She said Masha is the smartest and most well behaved of all the girls!

Nastia was a very sweet girl and was immediately attached to my side after arriving here. I don't think that she has attended much school yet because of the timing of her mom being sick and passing away. This would have happened when she was five years old. So this has resulted in her being about two years behind in school. We will probably have to hold her back a year when we get her here. Nadiya told me that Nastia didn't even know her letters in Russian yet. So we will have to start from scratch with her. But, she will get there. It will just take a little time.

Neither of them know English. That will be the first undertaking, is getting them into English lessons. From watching other families go through this same thing, we have learned it takes about six months before they will be completely fluent in English. We plan on having them speak Russian to each other and English to us. We want them to maintain being bilingual. What a huge blessing that will be to them in the future. Also, we just want them to maintain their heritage. Ukraine will and always should be a part of them.

Drew and I are happy. We continue plugging away at our church callings and work. I still work very part-time at the hospital. We take our trips just the two of us, with the family and individually. Life sometimes gets busy, but it is fun!