Happy Mother's Day!

Hope all of the mother's have had a wonderful Mother's Day! I sure do miss not having our family in Ukraine with us today, but it has been a beautiful day and Grant and I have enjoyed every minute. Jason called early this morning to wish me a Happy Mother's Day and Grant remembered right when he got up this morning and has been especially snuggly all day long (which I LOVE). Yesterday, he had his wallet out and he told me that he needed to run to Food World up the street and when he got there, he bought seeds for us to plant flowers today for the occasion. So, we went swimming after church and then planted our flowers.

Last night we began on Inna's room and actually made a lot of progress. She told us that she likes the color green, so we are adding the girly lime green wherever we can. This is one of my favorite colors too, so it came easy.
Grant is very excited to share a room with Vitali and that is our next project.

Jason is still in the main city of Zhytomyr just waiting on the passports to get done. Once he receives the passports, he will take Inna and Vitali out of the orphanage forever and then they will travel to Kiev to do medicals and Visa's. Jason is very hopeful that he will receive the passports on Tuesday of this week and be able to get them out on Tues afternoon and travel with Sergey to Kiev that night. Of course, we will just have to wait and see if Tues will in fact be THE BIG DAY!!!

While we are in a little waiting period again, I thought that I would share a little more about Inna and Vitali. We seem to get a lot of common questions, so I will try to answer as many as I can or can think of below.

Inna is 10 yrs old and her B-day is in Feb, so she just turned 10. She speaks Ukrainian & Russian (By the way, most Ukrainians speak Russian, but not all Russians speak Ukrainian). When we met her she knew very little English...about as much as we knew Ukrainian :) Communication is definitely a challenge right now, but we have had our translator with us when we have been with her. We went over some words with her while we were all there together and we left an Ukranian to English CD for her to listen to and we are listening at home for us to pick up more Ukrainian words. We are also hiring an English tutor to work with her over the summer, so that we will be able to communicate quicker. God has blessed us with a few Ukrainian speaking friends here in Alabama that have also offered to help translate if we get into a "need some help" mode. Inna is very eager to learn English and we believe that she will learn quickly.
She seems to be very athletic and can climb across monkey bars quicker than anyone I have ever seen. Her personality~ Right now, she just seems to so excited about being adopted that it is hard for her to sit still. Sometimes, when we are all sitting and talking, she will just bounce up and down over and over. She normally gives us spontaneous hugs and kisses the whole visit and held on to us when we would walk around the orphanage. As you can imagine for any orphan, she has had a difficult past and present even at the young age of 10. There will be many challenges to work through on the road ahead, but we see her as a gift from God with so much potential and life and we can't wait to see God's unique plan for her unfold over the years! One of the biggest things that we would like to see in her right now is that she enjoy being a little girl again. Being in an orphanage, the children learn to take care of each other and in Inna's group at her orphanage, she likes to be the "head honcho". She will tell the others what to do and they actually mind her :) Sometimes it gets a little comical. We pray that the transitions of teaching her that she now has parents to depend on and care for her will come quickly and that she will just learn to enjoy being a little girl.
Her favorite foods~ I am not sure, but I know that everyday that we would ask her what she ate, she would always say that they fed her porridge and peas everyday and she seemed to like it. (By the way, does anyone know the closest thing that we have to porridge here in America, so that I can make it when they first get home since that is what her belly is used too :) Jason tried to give her a Fanta Orange drink this past week and she made a bad face. He explained what soda's are, but she told him that she doesnt like sweet drinks. Although, we do know that she liked the juice we would bring her.

Vitali~
He just turned 4 in April while we were all there. Like we said, he seems to be on the level of about an 18-24 month old in every way, except his physical body where he is probably pretty true to size for a 4 yr old. We have already set up his and Inna's appointment at the UAB International Adoption Clinic where they will evaluate his needs and give him the best treatment available. We are VERY excited about the help that they offer. Even though he is not really speaking yet, he seems to understand a lot of the times when his caregivers speak to him in Ukrainian and can follow many of their commands. He really doesnt like to be held too much yet, so Jason gets to hold him if he throws him up in the air and I get to hold him if I feed him Cheerios:) So, we just cherish that quick time. He has the sweetest smile and smiles for us a lot!!! He is in an orphanage that I believe they really care about the kids and try to do the best that they can. We really like the orphanage director at his orphanage. He has been so friendly to us and seems to really care about the kids. He always walks around with candy in his pocket to give them when he sees them. They are all excited that Vitali is getting adopted out. His orphanage is very small and it can be very emotionally draining to visit there sometimes. The orphanage staff does the best that they can, but there is no way to spend the time with each child that they need (and even extra time for special needs kids like his group). We were asking them one day about his delays and trying to figure out what milestones he had reached and one of his caregiver's just said in a caring way that "He is a good boy, but there is just no way that we can give him the individual attention he needs to develop and reach normal milestones". We have no doubt that they have done the best that they could do, but he has definitely suffered the typical results of a child that has not had any stimulation or the care of a family. Just like Inna though, we can't wait to see what God will do in his life!! We have no doubt that he will be a joy to our family!
What he likes to eat: hmmm...well, they told us at the orphanage that he will eat anything put in front of him...YEA!!! He has never had meat though, except for liver! He loves the juice that we bring him on visits and he actually drinks it all in one gulp :) He loves candy too...one of their snacks during the day at the orphanage is candy and juice and we havent found any he doesnt like :)

All in all, we are so thankful that God has blessed us with Grant, Inna, and Vitali and no matter what the challenges are ahead, we feel this adoption is God's plan for our family and that He will teach us all how to be a family together and give us the grace for the days ahead and we will enjoy the blessings that He has given!!!!!!

Comments:
Smurfette~ I think you can find that wallpaper at Ikea and pick me up some too while you are there...lol

Dad~ Salamander..haha...we had fun at the Biscuits Game!!!

Mamaporuski~ Yes, along the way, we have decided that you just might as well laugh. Hope you I-171H gets taken care of as quick as our court decree did. That's a bummer I know!!!

Jerry & Amanda~ We miss you and think of you constantly! We are thinking date for the Hood, Hall, Farrington Reunion in July...what do ya'll think?

Until next time....