End of Day #6

I'm feeling better. I got a call from Drew at 5:00, him telling me that he made it to Kiev safely and without incident. Hooray! That was one thing that I was really worried about.

At 2:30 I started to the orphanage and it took me about 20 minutes to walk there. I didn't see Masha at first, so I just walked around the grounds a little bit and watched all of the kids. Many of them were helping clean up the grounds. Now that the snow is melted, the people around the city are all doing spring clean up. They are sweeping up the dead leaves from last fall and picking up the trash and burning it in the piles located in their courtyards. It is starting to look better, like what I remember it being last year. Same for the orphanage. The grounds are looking better with all of the debris being picked up and disposed of.

While I was walking I had several children come up to me and say hello. One girl that did English with Masha and I on Monday took my hand and led me to where Masha was. She is very sweet, but she does have parents that she goes home to on the weekends. Her name is Anya. She has a very pretty face.

I wasn't in the mood for school and English today, so I told Masha that we should just walk around and get a little exercise. She was happy about this. While we walked I asked if she wanted to buy a treat and she was of course very excited. We walked and walked and talked and talked. When I am trying to ask complicated questions I have to relate it back to something we have already experienced and work from there to explain what it is I am wondering about. For example, I wanted to know if her grandma could teach me how to make the pasta dish that Masha ordered after our court last Friday. How do you ask that, right??? Well, I started with saying we went to lunch last Friday with Oxana, Victor, Nadiya and dad. Do you remember? She nods yes. Then I take it a step further and say I want grandma to teach me how to make the food she ate then. She thought I said I wanted to take her and grandma to that restaurant. So I back up again and we finally make it through the conversation with success. She and I are going to go food shopping on Friday and buy all the food we need to make Borscht, soup, and the dish she ordered last week (I think she called it pamilee). Her grandma is going to teach me how to make it all on Saturday. Yippee! One thing knocked off my list.

I figured this is the best English lesson she can get anyway. Learning how to speak and comprehend what I am saying. It ended up being a nice evening. We bought our treats. I was needing the treat for comfort and it worked. She bought a bag of candy and shared the majority of it with her friends at the orphanage.

I stayed at the orphanage for a little bit longer, but I have a splitting headache today from the crying this morning. I don't know if anyone else has this, but when I cry it gives me the worst headaches. Masha walked me half way home and we hugged and went our opposite ways. She is such a good girl. I am very fortunate to have her.

Yes, I do have three more novels I can read and I have three more scarves I need to knit. I should be able to get it all done over the next week until the 12 days is over. Thank goodness I have something to do. I am so glad I brought it all with me now.

Another manhole that we passed on our walk today. This one went about 10 feet down. Scary!

The kids that all came running up to me saying hi. Anya, the girl I mentioned earlier, is the one in the center.

Spring cleaning. Does anyone remember Tolik from the 2008 group? This is him in the red sweatshirt. He stayed with three different families that year, I think because he was a little difficult. He looked happy and cooperative today.

See, the grounds are looking spic and span.

Day #6

Drew is gone. I cried and cried. This is going to be harder than I thought it would be. There are no facilitators or translators here. Just me and Masha. And Masha is in school everyday and I can't see her until 3:00 in the afternoon. On the weekend, Nadiya said she needed to stay at her Grandma's house. So that leaves me alone for probably 90% of my time here.

Drew gave me a blessing and I am feeling a little better now. I WILL be okay. I know I will be. Drew asked me what I was worried about when I bursted into tears before the blessing and I told him I wasn't worried, I just didn't want to be alone. We just hugged and hugged and he helped calm my emotions. When you lose the people that you love, you realize just how much you love them and need them. What would I have done without Drew here these first two weeks???

Alright, this post is making me cry even more. I'd better go for now and get my emotions in check.

5 minutes later...

I'm okay again...:). Really, I am. There are a few things that I want to do still here in Dniprozherzinsk. I need to find a Ukrainian keyboard. I want to see the dam that is somewhere on the outskirts of the city. I want to visit a hospital here and see what it is like. And I want to make Borsche while I am here, preferably with a Ukrainian and see if I can improve the Borsche that I have been making and make it more authentic. While I am at it, I would like to learn a few other authentic and yummy Ukrainian dishes. I just need to find someone that will take the time to teach me. Maybe Nadiya will this weekend. We'll see. I hope I can knock everything off this list within the next week. There is plenty of time, it's just a matter of figuring out how to get to these places and find the people that will help me!

Day #5

Sigh...I am a little down hearted at the moment. Drew is leaving soon. He's just in the shower now and once he is ready will be on the road and I won't see him for two or more weeks. I want to cry! Well, actually, I've already cried. He offered to pay $1000 to change our flights and for me to go home and him to stay. He said he could work from here on this computer for work. I almost said yes...!

I'm taking the chance to catch up while I have a decent computer here. He is taking this computer with him and I will be left with the dinosaur. I'm not sure I will be able to get too many pictures downloaded with it because it is so slow and gets bogged down really easily.

Yesterday, Tuesday, we went to the orphanage at 3:00 and put English on the computer for Masha. I did a little English with her before she sat at the computer. I have been reviewing the sounds that letters make. It is surprising that she really only knew about half of the sounds correctly and there were several names of letters that she didn't know either. She almost has them all down now. We have probably reviewed these 5 or 6 times now. She did English for an hour and a half and afterwards had her Ukrainian movies and wanted to watch Harry Potter. She is flying through the English lessons and I will have her start them over once she is done with them. Just to solidify what she has learned so far. She is understanding most of what Drew and I say to her, for which I am grateful. Last year, Anastasia didn't understand anything and it was hard. We made it through that, so I think we'll make it through this!

Prior to going to the orphanage we just hung around the apartment. Cleaned up a little, watched a movie, did laundry, ate lunch and watched the time tick away! Oh, and by the way, for those families still coming. I know we love movies and last year with the Lawrence's we tried figuring out how to rent movies online. We couldn't do it through Netflix. We brought several movies with us for down time. But, this year, we figured out that you can rent through I-tunes and watch it through that if you have an account with them. We have now rented and watched two new releases. The only kicker, is it takes 5-6 hours to download the movie, so you have to plan ahead if you want to watch one and you have to have internet in your apartment.

We spent 3-4 hours at the orphanage and that was our day! Not much to write about. Here are a few pictures of Masha.

This is Masha with her friend Kristina. She talked about Kristina last year a lot, but we never met her. She is here this year and they watched the movie together.

Me working on my second scarf.

Oh, and I amost forgot. Last night while I was cooking, I was a little bored and started looking through the freezer to see what kinds of things Ukrainians keep in their freezers. Look what I found! Chicken feet! Literally.

Day #4-Gabrielle's Birthday Wish

After we gave the boys their gifts (look at the next post for pictures of your boys) we were told that we couldn't have Masha until 3:00 when school and lunch had ended. This was about 12:30 and we were kicked out of the orphanage! Just kidding. We weren't really kicked out, we decided we didn't want to sit on a bench at the orphanage and wait for 2 1/2 hours. We headed to "Billa" and grocery shopped. When 3:00 hit, we headed back to the orphanage and distributed the gifts that a special girl from Salt Lake collected and donated for us to bring to the kids. This girl, Gabrielle, every year for her birthday collects the money that would usually be spent on birthday gifts and donates it to a charity. Her mom said that they usually write out a check and just donate that to one of the shelters, but this year, knowing that we were going back to Ukraine, they wanted to donate to the kids at the orphanage. Gabrielle and her friends collected up $400 and bought all kinds of small gifts that could be distributed to many children. Way to go Gabrielle!!! We sure had fun giving away your donation and all of the children couldn't say thank you enough. We heard "thank you's" everywhere we went for the rest of the day. Even if they had already told us, if they saw us again, they would tell us again! So thanks to you Gabrielle! You made a difference today. Enjoy the pictures of all those smiling kids (As soon as we figure out why the website will not allow us to add them to this post).
Gabrielle's friends that took part in this are Kathleen, Gillian, Francesca, and Caroline. Thanks girls!

The Orphanage Boys

We finally made it to the orphanage (internot, as it's said in Ukrainian, so that is what I have gotten used to calling it) today to give the gifts to the boys here at our orphanage. Last week the kids were on holiday and so we didn't take them, but today the school was opened back up and they said we could come and they would gather the boys for us!

So here they are! They are all such good kids and were very happy to get a little something from their moms and dads. I don't know the details, but I guess Sasha and Vova were in the hospital and I wasn't able to give them their gifts. Vladik took the things for Vova and said he would give them to him when he gets back. Nadiya said he isn't sick, he's just there to get medicine in his mouth. I don't know what that means, but apparently it's not serious.

Vladik, Bogdan and Ruslan all writing letters for me to bring back home to you. Nadiya, the orphanage director said they would write another letter tonight that she wants me to bring back. So when Drew gets home this week, give him a call and come grab your letters! :)

The boys and Nadiya. They were all very excited to see all their surprises.

Vladik. I am so happy that he is being adopted. He followed Drew and I around everywhere last year and I thought he was the cutest, sweetest little boy. I was thinking if we weren't already getting two children that we would take him because he was just such a sweet boy and you could tell he wanted to have a family take him to America too. Congratulations to you for adopting such an incredible child!

Bogdan and Ruslan were all smiles the whole time too. Ruslan was really good at translating for the rest of us! That will be so nice for you when you get here to have him help in restaurants, etc.!!! I was impressed. I know Drew and I have loved having Masha translate, it makes things so much easier when all the facilitators and translators are gone. It was REALLY hard last year when I came back alone to get Anastasia. She didn't speak a lick of English and couldn't help with a thing that anyone was saying to me! It was a nightmare.

Bogdan

Ruslan

Day #3

The Elders, Drew, Masha, me, the sister missionaries and Sister and Brother Hardy (a couple that serve in the mission office.)

This is Elder Johnson, the missionary that was adopted from Russia when he was 7. He was very sweet and I can tell he loves the work he is doing here. He has a special spirit about him.

We went to church today again in Dnipropotrosk. We were a little late to the meeting but found our way alright after being there last week. Having the car has been nice for us to be able to go where we want, when we want but it did take a little getting used to the driving culture. We now know where the cops usually park themselves and we know what potholes we can skim over and the ones we have to crawl over. I think I have a life of adventure ahead of me with Drew, who really enjoys his independence. The driving has been an adventure for sure. I think there is good reason for us being the first family to drive ourselves around and probably the last. :)

Like I said, we were a little late to the meeting but we did make it for the sacrament and the rest of the meeting and afterwards took pictures with all of the sweet missionaries. They are so fun to be around. We asked them to give Masha the first discussion during the Sunday School time. Of course, they were happy to oblige and we had a wonderful hour with the sister missionaries teaching her. A couple of the Elders translated for us, one of them being the one that was adopted from Russia. They showed the church movie about Joseph Smith and the Restoration and it just made me ball. Masha looked at me and wondered, "What is up with my mom???" Whenever I feel the spirit, I can't help but cry. It's the way I've always been. So it was a special hour and Masha seemed receptive to what they had to share with her. Masha said the senior companion (Sister) that led the discussion was very pretty. I hope she got a little more from it than just that! I'm sure she did.

After the discussion we walked around the main street for a little while and then headed home. It was funny when we pulled up to the apartment Drew said, "You never thought we would call a place like this home sweet home, did you?" It is so true though. We have come to feel at home in Constantine's apartment and to be near the apartment makes me feel safe. I feel safest when I am inside the apartment. It is very funny to think, though, that I could ever consider a place like this home.

The garbage outside is horrendous! With all of the snow melting off, it has revealed all of the trash that was trapped under it. It is such a mess right now, much worse than last summer. And, it is muddy, muddy, muddy. Half the time I don't know if I'm in just mud or if I'm stepping in dog pooh also. Alas, this is home!

We watched movies, knitted and did email. Pretty lazy day again, but nice.


We missed the blessing for our new little nephew today. Major bummer, wish we were there with the rest of the family! Hope you all enjoyed yourselves.

Dniprozherzinsk Day 2

It is day 2 of the waiting period down and 10 more to go! We won't be able to start on the birth certificate until day 12 because of the Easter holiday. We had a good time yesterday. Drew and I just took our time around the apartment in the morning and I took many hours downloading pictures to the blog! Sometimes blogger drives me crazy with how long it takes to download pictures. It took me like 4 hours to get all the pictures from Odessa downloaded! So anyway, by the time I was done with that and we did various things around the apartment it was 11:30 before we left to pick up Masha. We got to Babushka's at 12:00 and took off. Everytime we go to Babushka's she is still very dramatic about us leaving for America on an airplane with Masha. Even when Drew is just there to drop her back off for the night, she is starts crying. She is a sweet lady, but please, we're still here for three more weeks and if you are that sad, why don't you take the opportunity to come talk to Anastasia???? I know it would be hard to see the girls go and maybe she feels being dramatic is the only way for her to communicate to us that sorrow.

Yesterday we were able to pick up Masha and keep the drama to a minimum and quickly leave to do some shopping. We asked Masha if she would help me find a black church coat and whether she wanted to the shopping in Dniprozherzinsk or Dnipropotrosk. She wanted to stay in "zerstink" as Wendy calls it. I was surprised and thought she would want to go to some place new and explore. She didn't and that is what I have found. These people like to stay where it's familiar and comfortable. She did know what she was talking about though. She showed us the way to a perfect spot to buy a coat for me.

They have this outdoor market that Drew and I did see last year. It is huge! We started out at one corner and went through it for two hours and still probably hadn't seen half of it. There were some shops that lined the outdoor market part. We looked through a few of these and found a couple coats, but we found the one I ended up buying in a little tent shop in the middle of the market. It was 300 grynva, which is under $40! I love the coat and have fulfilled my need for shopping.

While we were there we also found some tights for Masha, Anastasia and me. I like the tights here. They have thicker ones for their harsh winters, which will also be good for Salt Lake. We bought some with flowers on them. Masha liked them. They remind me of the tights and nylons that my neighbor wears and I always thought she looked so fashionable! I'm excited.

After we shopped we asked Masha if she had eaten lunch at Babushka's and she said she hadn't and was hungry. We told her that we had already eaten and so we would just find something simple for her before heading back to the apartment. We started walking to the market and she asks if ice cream and water would be a good lunch. Um, no, that would not be a good lunch is my reply...and so we had a little chat about what is healthy and good for us and what is not. Ice cream is yummy, yes. So it is fine to eat but not until after you have something that is healthy, like an apple. She seemed to understand because when we got to the market she went to the oatmeal and asked if that was healthy. I told her yes, very healthy. Then she pointed to the cocoa puffs and asked if those were. I told her no. They are okay, but not the healthiest choice. We have had this talk back home with Anastasia as well. She has come a long way in learning about nutrition and what foods are good choices and what are things that we should only eat occasionally. Masha in the end bought an apple and some yogurt with fruit in it. I thought this was a good choice when she's just being taught for the first time that it is important to pay attention to what you're putting in your body.

I have to go back a little when talking about this. When we picked her up for church last week, she had a bag of chips in her hand. A BIG BAG! She ate the whole thing and that was her breakfast. I didn't feel like then was the time to talk to her about it and so yesterday was our first talk about nutrition. She was very receptive. Next we have to start talking about proportions and the importance of eating when you're hungry and eating what you need to be full and not just to eat because food is sitting there. She has done this a lot also. She eats and eats and eats just because she sees something sitting there. Like last night we had dinner, then she wanted a banana. A banana is healthy and a good choice so I didn't push this proportion lesson yet. But, to myself I'm thinking, "Are you hungry? No. So let's save the banana for a time when you need it."

The simple lessons that our birth children learn from birth have to be taught to these kids as well. Not only do they have to learn English but they have to learn all the small lessons about nutrition and hygiene!!! Which takes me to our evening yesterday.

Masha and I knitted and watched Harry Potter and after the movie was over I had her shower. I told her I wanted to her to wash her hair two times then put conditioner in it. I told her I wanted to smell her when she was out and to be able to "AAhhh, you smell so good." She laughed at me and said okay, okay, okay. She was happy to be getting in the shower. She spent some good time in there and came out saying she had washed her hair three times!! I smelled and it was SOOOOOOOO much better! While she was in the shower I took all of her clothes from Babushka's and put them in the washer. I gave her fresh, clean pajamas to put on and she smelled like us! Thank you! She blow dried her hair and it was nice and clean and fresh for the first time since we have been here. She is ready for church tomorrow. We also bought her a new toothbrush, toothpaste and deodarant and she used all of these as well. Oh, and I told her to shave her armpits which she also did willingly. She had typical "European" armpits prior to this. Like I said, the lessons don't seem to end with these kids at the start! Masha is a really good and cooperative child though and doesn't put up a fuss about our teaching her new things.

That was our day!

Pics of Kids

Andre and Igor with their new jersey's! Drew was jealous. :)

They were so careful with their package.

Oxana with the boys. She is the facilitator for this city and region. She's wonderful!

Me giving them their gift.

Cute Alina reading the letter. She is beautiful, by the way. It seemed there was no end to her dimples!

Sorry this didn't end up being a better shot. We had a hard getting the kids to even look at the camera. She wrote about Oleg and Vitaly in her letter back to you. The boys never did come to us though. I'm sorry! I think they were having a hard time tracking them down. These kids are all over the place, doing as they please and you never know where they are at any given time if it's not school, sleep or eating time.

The front doors of the orphanage.

Their orphanage playground.

The orphanage.

She's Ours!

We had court this morning and spent the majority of the rest of the day running around delivering documents here and there. But, yes, she is ours! Court was great. We had the same judge as last year, who remembered us, or at least remembered Drew. She thought I was the daughter being adopted and Masha was the mother!! :) When I stood up she was shocked and we all had a good laugh.

She opened the meeting and had Drew and I introduce ourselves as the applicants. She introduced the prosecutor and court reporter and the officials sitting with her on the stand. Then the social worker, Nadiya (orphanage director), Oxana and another lady from their child care department were present.

She read through a little of our application and stated that everything was in order and asked if there were any objections to our request to adopt from anyone in the court. No one objected so she asked Drew and I why we would want to adopt another child. I opted for Drew to answer first and he did wonderfully. He said, "We hosted both girls and fell in love with them and wanted to adopt both. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get both girls last year, so of course we are here now to adopt our second daughter. We are excited to have Masha as part of our family." He was much more composed than I would have been. After he finished she asked me if I was sure I wanted to be a mother to all of these children. Wasn't I scared??? I told her that Iwas very comfortable with being a mother to the children and she replied that she could see in me that I had the fortitude it takes to care for them.

She asked Masha if she wanted to go to America several times. Every time she brought up a new good reason that Masha could stay in Ukraine but Masha told her every time that she still wanted to come with us and be a part of our family. The judge told her that she needed to be a big help in the home to help ease my responsibilities. I know that she will be. She is a really good girl.

The judge also told us that she wanted us to have patience whenever anyone is rude to us about us adopting. She said there are a lot of people out there that do not understand why we would do this, her included. (Apparently, she thought we would not return after adopting Anastasia. She didn't think we would come back for Masha.) And yet she knows that it is a good thing and she asked that God would bless us in our efforts to be good parents and to raise a good family. She made me cry! I have to admit that right now I feel I will need all the blessings I can get. I know that I couldn't be a good mother if I didn't have divine help and guidance. Everything felt so right in court and it brought all the feelings back reminding me why we decided to do this in the first place.

Somewhere along the way, I had started losing sight of why we adopted and every once in a while I have an experience that reminds me and comforts me. Today was one of those days. I felt the burning inside me that confirmed for me, "This is a good thing. And you will be watched over and guided along the way." Thank heaven for that!

Anyway, back to court...the social worker and child care representative both said they had reviewed the documents and felt everything was in order and that we would be good parents. Then Nadiya talked and told the court all about her feelings that we are good people and that she agreed. She also shared with the court all of the pictures that I had given to her from the families from last year. Nadiay, Oxana and the judge all are trying hard to promote International adoption and our stories are being shared with the media to say, "Here, look, these adoptions are good. These children all look so happy. This is a good thing and we need to remember that there are a lot of good people out there that can help these children and give them families." We are making a difference! Our court turned a little into an adoption promotion rally.

So, in the end, the answer was yes! She is ours. Unfortunately, we won't have the 10-day waiting period waived so our 10 days ends on Easter Sunday and all official offices are closed on Monday for the holiday. So we can't work on the birth certificate until Tuesday, April 6th. Drew leaves next week to head back home...I am so jealous! I will stay here and probably be able to come home between the 10-12th. Sometime that week, which is more than a week earlier than I was originally expecting. So I will only be here for around two weeks alone. I still think that two weeks will feel like an eternity, but at least it's not 3 1/2!

After court we went out to eat with a few of the people involved with our adoption. The social worker, Nadiya, Oxana, Victor, Masha, Drew and I. It was yummy and we enjoyed the company. We also went to the notary and stopped by the orphange for a couple minutes. We had to go to the court to drop off a few more documents again.

Once all of the running of documents was done, we finally headed to the other orphanage in Dnipro to take those children their gifts from their parents in America. So here is the news that most of the people following the blog have been waiting for! I have pictures and will try and post those either tonight or tomorrow morning, so keep posted for those. But, we were able to find Alina (the Hinkson's Alina) at the orphanage and give her your letter. She was so shy, but opened it with Drew's help and then she wrote a short note that I will bring back to you. We found out that Igor and Andre were at a sanitorium a couple of minutes away. We went there and gave them their jerseys. We took pictures of the boys too.

Unfortunately we looked for the Loves' Alina and she was indeed adopted, for which I am so sorry. I am truly sorry that we weren't able to give you good news and hope that you are feeling peace at this time.

That was the end of our day. We will be giving the gifts for the kids at our orphanage on Monday. All of the kids will be back in school then and we will take pictures then as well. I will try and get pictures up right away!

Pics from Court and Lunch Afterwards

Everyone present at court. The judge is in the center in the back.