Time for an update!!

I can't believe it has been almost a year since my last post. Time really does fly by quickly. I have posted the latest picture of our family taken at Michael's birthday at the end of June. I had no idea that all my kids were growing so fast until I saw the comparison from a year ago. So much has happened in the past year. We have had a lot of adjustments but are now at a place of being comfortable and used to this dynamic of having another boy in the house. Erik and his Daddy love to fish every Saturday morning and even go in this heat. We went to Hot Springs, AR for vacation in July and had a fabulous time of resting, relaxing, swimming and of course fishing for the boys. One day they went out and caught a bunch of bass so you know we had to do a fish fry. My mom was with us so she did most of the frying as I do not like to be around a dead fish. I guess someday I will have to suck it up and do it but for now my mom was gracious enough to get it done. She is used to it from the years that my Dad would fish. If my Dad were alive today he would have loved fishing with Erik. We can't help but think of my Dad when we see Erik's blond hair, blue eyes and some of the same mannerisms as my Dad. Somehow I know this is God's way of helping us to remember my Dad.

We just found out recently that several of the children that were in Erik's orphanage were hosted this summer. Now 4 of those children are going to be adopted by their host families. One of those families lives right here in Oklahoma. It is such a small world!! It is so good to see that more of these great kids will get their forever families. God is at work!! I am also working more with Eli Project which is the ministry we went through to adopt Erik. We are hoping to bring about 20 children to Oklahoma this December from Ukraine.

I am also posting pictures of each of our kids from all the birthday celebrations we have had the past 6 weeks. Michael's was in June and then Julianna and I were in July and Erik in August. Erik was able to have his first "boy" party. He invited several of his friends from church and we had them over for grilled burgers, cake and ice cream. Then we went to his aunt's pool to swim and play around for awhile. It was fun to watch these boys just be boys and brought a lot of joy to my heart to know our son is happy and comfortable in his life with this family from Moore, OK. God truly amazes me when I stop and think how we first heard about Erik and now months later he is our son and it feels like he has always been here and a member of our family. I did not think it was possible to love him so much but I truly do. God is so good!! I hope you all enjoy the pics. I will do my best to update the blog as often as possible. Many Blessing to you all!! Denise

A Quick Update!!

We have been home for a month now and have not had a lot of time to update the blog. Here is a short update with a few pics of our new, larger family. Things are going very well and Erik is adjusting well to our family. He is loving Oklahoma and all the family and friends he now has. I will update more pics in the next day or two with pics of our trip home and some of the fun things we have done since coming home. Thanks to everyone for your prayers!! Denise

Coming Home

We got Erik's visa today from the U.S embassy in Kiev today. We are free to go. We will be flying out of Kiev Tuesday morning 7-20-10 at 5:30 a.m. and be in OKC around 8:00 p.m. same day. What a long day that will be! But...landing in OKC and seeing our sweet daughters for the first time in 6 weeks will be the sweetest moment.

See you in Sooner country soon!!!

Michael

A hot day in Kiev

I am borrowing Em's computer since it seems to be running better so here are some random pics from yesterday.

A short update

We do not have a good internet connection here in Kiev so I am sorry for not posting anything in awhile. We are doing well. It is hot here just like it is in OK. We were able to start our paperwork at the US Embassy on Thursday and now are just waiting on Erik's passport. We hope to have everything we need on Monday to complete the process with the US Embassy. We are scheduled to fly out very early Tuesday morning. We will have to leave our apartment at 2:30am, yuck!! But at least we will know we are on our way home. We spent the day yesterday playing in the fountains which was a lot of fun especially on a hot day. Erik seemed to have a really good time swimming in the fountain. We went back again last night to the fountains since we had such a good time in the afternoon. Communication with Erik is going good. He is a funny boy and likes to play and have fun. We find ourselves pointing at things a lot to show what we are meaning to say. He is picking up on a few words like Hello, Please, fountain, good night. It is like teaching a preschooler new words when they are learning to speak. We laugh all the time and the funny things he does and I feel like a kid again when hanging out with him and Emily. Last night we were all hanging out in the living room eating ice cream when he brought us all coffee cups full of water. He has a very caring and generous spirit and of course as his mom I love it. He has a lot of energy which is keeping Michael and I on our toes. It is good for us though and is keeping us young at this point. Right now we are hanging out in the bedroom and he is blowing bubbles. Too cute!! He is sleeping well at night and wakes up all energized in the morning.

Today we plan to go and check out a Natural History Museum and some other tourist things here in the city. The hardest part of the process is over and now we can relax and just wait for the day we get to come back home. I believe that God wanted us to be here a few more days so we could get more comfortable with Erik as he trusts us more and more each day. He is such a joy to be around and seems to love his new found freedom. I am overwhelmed at the joy I feel in knowing that we get to be a part of this little guys life and show him love and what a family is really supposed to be like. I am so thankful that God chose us to love him and to be his Mom & Dad. I am trying to upload some pictures but it looks like it may have stalled so for now you may just get the update with no new pics. I will have to wait to post pics when we get home. It is frustrating but oh well, at least it is at the end of our trip and not the beginning. Thanks so much for all your prayers and kind words on this journey. We are almost home and oh what a day that will be!! Love you all, Denise

A day of sightseeing and taking a break last Sunday

Here are some pics that were uploaded last week but I did not have time to post it to the blog so you guys get to see it almost a week later. Last Sunday we decided to take a break and Oleg drove us across the river to the "Island". This was not far from our apartment and is where a lot of the locals go on the weekends to rest and relax. As we got in the car to head out for the day it was raining again. We decided to go ahead and go anyway in hopes that the rain would go away. It eventually did!! We drove across this bridge and were able to get out of the car for a little bit to take some great pictures. The sights were breathtaking and we were so happy that we got the chance to see this part of Zaporozhye. As we were walking to this reconstruction of an old village Oleg showed us a wild plant that is growing all along the pathway. We found out that it is marijuana!! Yikes!! I have never seen this in person, only on TV so it was crazy to see it just growing all over the place. So of course we had to take some silly pictures with it so that is the pics you see of each of us standing among some plants making funny faces. What a sight to see!! We had a really good day with our new friends here in Ukraine. We miss them so much already. We have been greatly blessed by knowing them for this short time in our life.

One More Week!!!!!

We have been in Ukraine for 4 weeks now!! I really can't believe that. If everything goes the way we are praying it will then we will be home next Saturday. We have official business to take care of at the orphanage on Tuesday so we have to get up and out of here by 6:30am that day to get our day started. We will get the court decree also on Tuesday morning stating that Erik is indeed our son and the 10 days waiting are over. After getting this decree we have to go to the town that Erik was born in to get his Birth Certificate and change it with his new name and parents. This town is over 2 hours away. We will have to wait there to get all this paperwork completed and then drive back to Zaporozhye and back to the camp to get Erik to go get his passport started. Whew!!! What a day that is going to be. I am getting tired just thinking about it. Please pray for us on Tuesday as we really need everyone to do their job and do it promptly so that we have time to get his passport started or we will not make it home on Saturday as planned. Why does it seem that we are always cutting things so close?? It definitely makes me pray more and trust God for ALL the details.

Today was our last day at the orphanage camp. We are taking the day off tomorrow to travel to the island across from the river here in Zaphoryze. Our friends Oleg and Yana will go with us and give us the tour. We hope to see a museum and just relax on the beach that they have there. This journey has proven to be emotionally exhausting so we find ourselves taking several breaks right now to keep our spirits up. On Monday Michael and I will celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary so we will probably walk to the river and start packing for our trip on the train and then home. We need to rest up for our long day on Tuesday. Today when we went to the camp and it was threatening to rain, AGAIN!! But thankfully it just sprinkled and we were able to spend some time with Erik and the other kids. On Thursday Erik asked us to bring him and his friends some Pringles so today we brought a can thinking he would share it with his buddies but they were all still at rest time. We went down to the pond and he set there and ate the whole can!! Our grocery budget has definitely just gone up! Oh well, he is obviously a hungry little guy and he enjoyed those Pringles. It is really kind of cute right now. When the kids were released from their rest time we got to stand around and play with them. They like to show off now and show us little games they like to play. Several of the boys loved being picked up by Michael and just shown some attention. They also love our camera. They are constantly asking me if they can take pictures so some of them I will let do it if I think they are mature enough to use it. They have come up with some funny pictures. While we were there today we saw the camp kitten again. It is so cute and we had a lot of fun cuddling with it and it made us miss our little pups at home, Molly and Maiya. Oh how I can't wait to cuddle with our pups. They probably think we are never coming home again. While at camp today Erik seems to be getting more comfortable around his Mama. He enjoyed throwing these little seeds from the tree at me and he soon realized that I could fight back. I grabbed some seeds myself and chased him down to throw them back at him. It was a lot of fun and we laughed a lot while playing this game. He also likes to come up behind me and touches my back and yells "ahhhh" so that I will scream and come after him. He soon realized that mom would catch up with him with dad's help and it was time to see if he was ticklish. He is!!! What fun I was having!! He is such a joy to be around and seems to have not lost that childlike spirit and really seems to enjoy hanging out with his ol' mom and dad. He even played the same game he was playing with me with his sister Emily. It is so cute to see them playing back and forth and it makes this mom so happy. I am still amazed that God chose our family to come and rescue this little guy and in turn we are being blessed with his love and childlike spirit. We can't wait until he learns English so that we can have conversations with him and tell him how much we love him. For now we will have to do this with our actions and this seems to be good enough right now. After about an hour and a half it started to rain a little harder and we realized it was time to go once again. We told of couple of the older kids that this was our last day with them and they gave hugs or did the secret handshake. The younger ones will not know that this was our last visit and I just pray that they will always remember this American family that visited them for the past couple of weeks and showed them as much love as we possibly could. I will miss so many of them and it makes me very sad when I think about it but I quickly shift my thinking back to Erik and know for him we are able to make a difference and that has to be enough right now. So many of these children have touched our hearts and I will not soon forget their sweet smiles, beautiful faces & soft hugs. We have been able to do so much more than I ever dreamed possible on this journey to Ukraine. For this we will always be thankful. These children will always hold a special place in our hearts and we hope to see them again some day in Ukraine or in Heaven.

On our way back to our apartment, we saw a rainbow in the distance. I tried to get a good picture of it but it was not possible. We believe this is another one of God's signs assuring us that everything is going to be ok and He is in control. God loves us so much and if we will just take the time to look around we will see this in so many things. After the rainbow we came across the most beautiful sunflower crop. I was trying to take pictures from the car window because I know that my daughter Katie loves sunflowers and it would be cool to get some pics of this beautiful sight. After trying to get a good pic, Oleg stopped the car on the side of the road and told us we could go into the field and stand amongst the sunflowers to get a better picture. I was thrilled and it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. What a moment!! This is not something I have ever done in Oklahoma. It was so nice to take the time to enjoy God's beauty. We got some wonderful pictures as you can see from our post. I can't wait to get home and frame one of our photographs for Katie. I know she will love it!! We soon got back in the car and started back down the road when Michael spotted this military tank that is on the side of the road on our way to camp. He has been wanting to stop and get a pic of this for his friends at home so once again Oleg stopped and we got out to take some more pics. It felt like we were on vacation with our family and this was one of the sightseeing stops along the way. We have seen several things everyday for close to 3 weeks from the car window but we are always on a mission to get to the camp or get back to the apartment to rest. On this day it was nice to take in some of the sights and just enjoy this beautiful country of Ukraine. I had no idea that I would become so fond or would enjoy this country as much as I have. Most of this is thanks to Yana and Oleg. They have been with us everyday that we have been here in Zaporozhye and we have felt so loved and secure while in their presence. These two people are some of the kindest people we have ever met and I will miss them both so much. I wish I could say that we will see them again soon but since we are so far away this is not likely but who knows. God is in control and maybe He will bring us back here again some day to love on these kids and see our friends Yana and Oleg again or maybe some of you will travel here some day to adopt a child you have seen on our blog. I can guarantee that you will be well taken care of by this team of good people. They have become like our Ukrainian family and they hold a very special place in our hearts and in our lives. That is all I have for now. I hope you are having a good weekend in America and that you are enjoying the many blessing around you. Hug your kids a little tighter today or your mom or dad or even a good friend and just be thankful that they are in your life and that you have someone to love. Love you all, Denise