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October 01 Boxes to Izium!Quick update, Kristi managed to pack another 11 boxes of clothes, toys and shoes and sent them off with an end destination of Izium, Ukraine! FedEx graciously overnight shipped them to Portland, Oregon for us for FREE! There they will be placed on a ship and sent to Ukraine. Thanks to everyone who has donated money and items. It isn't too late to donate cash either, as we can wire that over once the packages arrive! Thanks again, The Carlson Family August 09 Blog update! (finally)The Blog is being Resurrected! Due to an increase in excitement at the River Oak Ranch, we decided to bring the blog back to life. We won’t be updating it daily, but we will update it regularly with new happenings and pictures, so keep checking back. So, “Why do you think you have so many interesting things to talk about” you may ask. The answer is mostly because of the recent increase in livestock and all the entertaining stories that go along with that, and the fact that we have dove back into the adoption process again. There is bound to be some exiting news from that. "How are the kids doing", you ask? They are doing really well. Max has been in soccer this summer and Danny in Gymnastics. They both are taking (and enjoying) swimming lessons, and have just tested for their Green Belt (the 4th belt) in Taekwondo! Their English is great and they are reading much better. They are finally getting to the point that reading can be fun. The family got to go to Medora this summer on a vacation and everyone had a good time hiking, biking, shopping, touring the parks and watching the musical. "You are adopting again? Are you Crazy?" After speaking with his lawyer, Matt will not be addressing the second question, but the first question is true. We have decided to start the adoption process again, but this time a little differently. Due to our having kids now, and the added livestock (more on that later) it just isn’t very practical for us to go overseas again. Also, because of the age range we are looking at (5-10 years), there are a lot of children in the Foster System that are looking for homes, so we have decided to go that route. At this time we are approved to adopt, and are even a licensed foster family! We are just waiting now for the right child to become available in the MN foster system. "What is this I hear about livestock?" Over the last year and a half we have been back, we have started putting our hobby farm to use. We have slowly grown and expanded our animals to the point that now we count them in dozens, instead of single animals. We still have our 2 dogs and 2 cats, plus some fish. We also have 2 young Quarter horses named Amazing (Zing for short) and Gracie. We have a dozen Icelandic sheep (ie, lawn mowers), including ewes and a Ram. We also have over 4 dozen chickens right now, mostly egg layers but we will be butchering a few this fall. Last, but not least, we have 2 ducks just so someone will be happy when it rains. We will be lambing next spring, and shear the sheep ourselves twice a year. We also get a lot of eggs from our chickens, averaging about a dozen to a dozen and a half a day, and when our younger ones start laying this fall it will more than double! The animals aren’t a lot of work, and are a lot of fun. They also help keep the bugs and weeds down in the yard and provide us with lots of stories to tell besides baskets full of eggs. We will continue to update the blog with interesting animal stories and as we hear more about adoption progress. March 30 IT HAS BEGUN!The fundraising for the girls has finally begun- Life2Orphans has completed the assessment process! The assessment consisted of a representative of life2orphans visiting the orphanage, touring the facilities, talking with the staff, and meeting the kids. This establishes a relationship between the charity and the orphanage, and helps the charity understand the needs of the orphanage. This is what we found out: The orphanage is even poorer than we thought. Last winter was incredibly cold in Ukraine, and they said in the coldest times they had to move all of the kids (55!) into one room because they were unable to sufficiently heat the orphanage! They have a lot of building maintenance to do, and would like to get some things to improve the life of the orphans. Here is a list of the requests they had- Most Urgent Needs: • Linoleum to repair flooring in 5 rooms • Office Xerox • TV - they have bad TV signal, they are dreaming about satellite antenna • Computers- as the children have a lot of free time • Clothing - 18 months to 16 years • Outdoor Clothing - Boots, shoes, jackets, hats, gloves, etc • Paper - Notebooks of any size, coloring books, etc • Karaoke Machine - Help with Music Time • General Shipping Fund As you can see, there are a lot of needs, and that doesn't even address the heating problem! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= GOALS =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-= Cash- $10,000 Clothing- 500 lbs Computers 5 These are our initial goals, we are going to try to meet and surpass them by doing numerous different fundraisers. Any help in these fundraisers would be greatly appreciated. To Donate cash you can just go to the life2orphans.org and donate directly. To donate clothing and computers contact us at riveroakranch@hotmail.com and we will collect, package and ship them. We will be updating this site with the current donation totals. More information at- http://www.life2orphans.org/izium.htm For those of you wondering about the girls, they are doing fine but are not currently available for adoption, if they ever are, we will go back. As of now, the only thing we can do is help the orphanage to give them a better life. And, of course, for those of you wondering about the boys, they are doing great. Max just had his 10th birthday and had a lot of fun. They are learning REALLY fast, and have made amazing accomplishments in both spoken and written english (they both can read/write english better than they could Ukrainian already). They also have made a lot of progress in other studies, especially math. We appreciate everyone's support and encouragement. -Matt and Kristi _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ January 13 Our first Month homeWe have now been home for over a month now, the time is flying by. We have really started getting into a schedule and things are going smoothly. The boys have been working hard on learning english, and are starting to use english a lot in thier daily language. They intermix English and russian words as they know them, and have started using a lot of english words even when talking to each other. They both have the Alphabet memorized and Max has started reading english books already! They are getting a lot better at counting and can both count to 100 in english, and Max can do it unassisted (danny still needs a little help occationally). While Danny is a little behind in the Reading and Math department (which he is expected to be, he is 2.5 years younger than Max) he isn't at all behind in the spoken english department, and adopts english words as fast or faster than his brother. They are both getting the hang of using thier english words when talking to other people, since that way the othe people will understand them. When playing at a local indoor playground they excitedly came and told us that they told another kid "excuse me" when they wanted to get by and the kid moved! And later they asked a kid if they wanted help (technically, they said 'help') and the kid said yes so they helped them climb up something. They were very excited about the successful communication with kids they didn't know. At home things are going more smoothly, trouble spots like bed time and meal times have gotten much easier. They are getting to know our foods and seem to like them. They have commented about how they like it in america because they get to eat fruit, chicken and sausage (hotdogs) all the time. That seems to be paying off because they have both grown about 1/2 inch in the first 4 weeks of being home! Danny had his first real injury last week in a "sledding accident" and injured his shoulder. He is pretty tough though and doesn't let it slow him down too much, unfortunately every time it starts to feel better he does something too reckless and hurts it again (like jumping off the swingset). More Exciting news is that we have now started the process of getting the Girl's orphanage on the life2orphans (www.life2orphans.com) list! We are very excited about that and hope to get the assessment complete soon so we can start fundraising to send over money and supplies for the kids in the orphanages. STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFORMATION. I will be updating here as it becomes avalible. December 29 UPDATE!We have been a little slow on updating the blog, but we see people are still checkign it out, so we will get back on the ball and start updating some more. So far the boys have been having a great time. Amazingly enough, even though they have traveled to a different country, have a new family, new house, pets, and everyone speaks a different langauge, there has been no fear or anxiety about the changes... only excitement. The one exception might be the language thing, Max is pretty sure that we should just learn more russian instead of him learning english (although his english is progressing well). There has been a lot of new things to learn and try... and a lot of different customs here than they are used to so they are still trying to figure out all of the rules. They both really like gadgets and anything they can put batteries in. They are constantly playing with flashlights, remotes, lightswitches, radios, MP3 players, etc. We would like to think this is a phase that will soon pass, except Matt still does it too. Food- Meal times have been interesting. First of all, they love fruit, and are constantly eating it. Considering how healthy it is, we keep a lot of fruit availible for them. We have been trying them out with new foods and trying to figure out what they like. Unfortunately they are kids, so what they like changes daily... every time we think we have it figured out it changes. The only constant is McDonalds, Mac & Cheese and Hotdogs (proving that they will fit right in as american kids). For a while they sat down at every meal and said they didn't want it before they even saw it. We would just wait it out till one of them decided to try it, and then realized it was good and would tell the other. Usually both would then have multiple helpings. Now they have gotten over the "I don't want" thing and usually will try it and decide they like it pretty quickly. It probably helps that they recognize most of the meals we have now. Toys- The boys seem to have struck gold when it comes to the toy department. Not only do we have an abundance of electronics, instruments, etc... but being christmas time they are constantly getting new stuff. Among the big hits have been MP3 players and CD players. They really like to listen to music, but even more they like to be able to control the music that they are listening to. They really like playing games on the computer, but we have restricted them to only educational games. That works good because it is all they really know. They watched a little TV right away, but lost interest in that (its all in english) and now only occationally watch a movie (some in russian, some in english). They got sleds from thier aunt, which really went over well. They enjoy pulling each other around the yard and really enjoy going to the sledding hills. Musical instruments are still a lot of fun too, and they like to sit down and play with the piano, organ, keyboard, guitar and drums. Family- We have been fairly controlling on who they meet. We were told that it is very important to shelter newly adopted kids from meeting too many people at once. So far it really seems to have had the desired affect. The have spent a lot of time with the grandparents and are always excited to go see them. They also have met and played with a lot of thier cousins, and really like that too. Once they meet relatives they are pretty good with names also. We do have some confusing parts though, such as thier aunt Coralie and thier uncle Cory have names that are just too close together to get right. Grandpa Kelly and Aunt Kelli are a bit confusing. Cousin Jake and Cousin Jack get mixed up a lot too. I guess we need more Unique names in the family ;-) We are now to the point were we are starting to introduce them to more people outside our immediate family, and are starting to try to introduce them to more kids thier age so they can have some more playmates. That will help give them more drive to learn the language better. Langauge- Our knowing some russian has really made things a lot easier than it would have otherwise been. We don't understand everything, but usually are able to get by. The boys are doing really well learning commonly used words, and are starting to use them more when talking. Often if we don't respond right away they will try to think of how to say it in English. They are both doing well at learning the alphabet and sounding out words, and Max is really good at reading words if they use basic alphabet phonics... we haven't started on most of the other rules yet. We have found that them speaking russian has been handy in numerous situations. they have walked up to people and said very embarassing things (they apparently haven't heard about the policically correct movement) but the people don't understand russian, so we were saved from the embarassment. It is also nice because we can tell them things in russian without others listening in, such as, "if you don't behave you can't play on the computer tonight". Casual observers just see us saying something and the boys suddently straightening out. Gotta love that! Now I just need to learn how to say in russian "If you don't behave I am going to kick you through the goal posts of life". Humerous Antidotes- - Danny only focusses on one thing at a time. This is important to keep in mind. If he is sitting at the table, holding a glass of koolaid and you ask him what is on his elbow he will quickly lift his arm into the air to look at his elbow to see what is there... spilling the koolaid all over the floor. At that point he will insist it is your fault for asking him what is on his elbow. - They learn odd words from TV and games. They know how to say the name of the company that made one of thier favorite games (commedia) because it is said every time you start the game. When watching the movie "Monsters Inc" they picked up on the name of the one monster "Mike Wizouski". In the movie a very young girl also picks it up and repeats it throughout the movie. Danny now also randomly throws out that word, just as she does (but not realizing the humor in it). - Max has figured out that if he breaks stuff, Papa will probably fix it. He just goes to bed and the next morning it is better again. This seemed like a good idea at first, but now there is little fear of breaking stuff, cause he know it will be better again in the morning. He wears his over the ear headhphones constantly (much more than he actually listens to music) and has now broken them 3 days in a row, and each night they get glued back together. - Danny loves to be chanced and tickled. When playing this game, if you hide he will come to try to find you, and often you can jump out and surprise him (which he thoroughly enjoys). Psycologists should study him though, because it is well documented that when people are scared there is a "Fight or Flight" reaction. Danny has a third reaction. It is called "Fall". When surprised he will scream and just tip over. It is absolutely hillarious. So remember, in times of fear there is now "fight, flight, and fall". - Max really likes reading stuff around the house. He looks for brands that "Papa" prefers. He found that we have a LOT of Sony equipment so he is always looking for sony stuff. He has also found that Papa likes fords. Matt was trying to show him another favorite, microsoft... They were sitting infront of the computer and Matt noticed that it said Microsoft on the screen, on the keyboard and on the mouse. He asked Max to read it and he said Mmmm Iiii Ccccc, MIC... and by that time Danny had already figured it out.. it said MIKE WIZOUSKI! Ah, close enough. December 13 Home Sweet HomeNothing can go easily or smoothly on this trip. We were delayed by 22 hours by fog in Amsterdam, and had to sleep on the chairs there for the night since the boys needed visas to leave the airport. They did surprisingly good considering the circumstances and didn't have any major problems on any of the flights. We expected them to throw at least one fit, but it never happened.
When we got landed in Fargo danny ran out of steam and just shut down. By the time we got in the car he fell asleap and wouldn't wake back up. We carried him inside and he slept on the couch while his brother blew on the trumpet right next to him. He wouldn't budge. We eventually brought him upstairs where he continued sleeping. He slept for 11 hours before waking up at 3am when we all got up (our sleeping schedules are pretty messed up right now. He spent his first 11 hours at home without ever seeing it!
Max and Danny are both having a blast at home. They are constantly finding new and exciting things to do and play with, and they haven't seen half of it yet. We will update the blog again soon with how they are doing, but thought we would put in a quick note saying we all got home safely and are Loving being back in America!
December 09 Click your heals together 3 times and say....THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!
Our Travel Agent is GREAT! We emailed him and called him and in less than an hour he called us back here and had great flights for us on SATURDAY! That means that in less than 12 hours we will be heading for the airport to get home, so this will be our final blog entry from Ukraine (although we will probably give more updates from home). Don't forget to check the new pics we uploaded!
So, a few final thoughts...
It has been a much longer and harder trip than we ever expected.. and some times think to ourselves "Why did we do this" and then we look over and see the boys and think "Are we crazy?!" as they run in circles screaming! As it turns out, our timing is bad, and we have been told that this is the hardest time to adopt here since they have opened it for international adoptions. It could have been worse though, because currently Ukraine is not accepting new applicants for adoptions.
The Boys are great, and I am sure you will all get to meet them soon (at least those of you who live close to us) but we ask that we have a little time alone when we first get home. It is going to be very overwhelming for the boys with all the new things, places, people, language, etc. It is best for them to stay at home for a while without visitors to get used to that environment, and then slowly expand. So we appreciate everyone understanding when we can't bring them around right away and show them off. Don't worry, you will see plenty of them soon enough.
Additionally, I would like to thank every for all the prayers (we know that a LOT of people have been praying for us). BUT, don't stop now, keep those prayers coming... just now pray for Sanity. Not for us, we will be fine, but think of these poor boys. They are going to have to live with Matt for many years to come... they guy who wrote all the nonsense in this blog... the one who refers to himself in third person. You don't think it will be that bad? Consider that they will be learning English from a guy who named his Cat "Puppy". (Some of you may think Matt is making that up, he is not).
Also, we have found recently that you can buy REALLY CHEAP Chicken here now, so if anyone wants us to buy them a few, email us and we will bring them back ;-)
Don't forget about the girls... we haven't. We do not have a current update on them, but are sending some gifts for them from here and will be doing some fund raising for their orphanage in the near future. Unfortunately, they are not part of Life2Orphans.com yet (we have started the process) but should be early next year. If you would like to know more about the progress on their situation and have the opportunity to donate to their orphanage, please mail us at riveroakranch@gmail.com). We will be keeping in touch with the orphanage, and there is a chance that they will be available in the future, and we have submitted paperwork saying that if they are ever available we want to be contacted and will come back. It is a long shot, but worth it.
Thanks to everyone for following us on our trip, it has been a fun ride. I hope you read the fine print and realized this was a paid subscription... you will be receiving a bill in the mail shortly.
God Bless... December 08 Serenity Now!When we left our tireless adventurers they were trapped in a hotel in
Odessa... wondering if it was possible to do everything they needed in the time
they had. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s a bumpy ride.
Wednesday morning we got up, got everyone packed and headed back to the
building to get the final paperwork done. Or taxi driver was right there waiting
for us, as she always is. We drove there and arrived early so we could try to
get out of town as soon as possible. We were there at 8:45, and they were
supposed to open at 9. Matt and the boys waited in the car while Kristi and our
Taxi driver headed into the building to get the work done. They had power, so we
were relieved. They went upstairs but the lady wasn't there yet...
they waited and finally at 9:20 she came in. They finally were able to talk to
her, and she looked at the papers. She said she needed something else,
but Kristi couldn't figure out what since we didn't actually have a
translator with us, just our taxi driver. We ended up calling our translator and
handing the phone back and forth. The lady said that she needed some more
papers, our translator said that she had shown her the papers yesterday, and
then took them with to Kiev. The lady said that she never saw them yesterday, it
was someone else that was there the day before! ACKK! She couldn't do what we
needed without seeing it. The other lady only did that paperwork on Tuesdays and
Thursdays, so we would have to wait one more day!!! This wasn't acceptable as we
didn't have the time to wait one more day. Kristi and the taxi driver waited
upstairs and eventually the other lady came to work. They went in and talked to
her, and she remembered seeing the paperwork, but said she didn't do that on
Wednesdays. We weren't sure if she was even working that day, or if she had just
stopped by. Our taxi driver had a little talk with her and for a little extra
cash she decided that she could get it done for us... in a while.. at 11am.
While they were up there Kristi saw a familiar face! A couple that we had talked
with in Kiev while we were stuck there was also trying to get the same thing
done! They had also been there the day before and had to wait also. It was fun
talking to them, and they seemed to have everything in order (they even had
train tickets back to Kiev!). By 11 Kristi and the taxi driver headed back
upstairs, the boys and Matt had been sitting in a parked car for the last 2
hours and 15 minutes, bored out of their minds! They eventually came back and
had the papers! Now we could leave this stupid town, but how?
We called our translator in Kiev, she had called the airport and there were
no available tickets to Kiev. Our taxi driver brought us to the Local McDonalds
which is conveniently directly across the road from the train station. We ate
while she ran to check on tickets. The boys were happy to get out of the car,
and even happier to go to McDonalds. They had learned that word very fast, and
the current happy meal toy is a matchbox car with an LED light in it, and
they like that even more than the food (ok, a lot more). Eventually our taxi
driver came back and had bad news. No train tickets to Kiev either! We NEEDED to
get back to Kiev, so there really was only one other option. We had to pay our
taxi driver to bring us there... there is really no more expensive mode of
transportation, but this is the same driver we have had for a month now and she
was incredibly dedicated to helping us, so we didn't have a problem paying her.
We hopped in the car for the ride to Kiev, the boys had already spent 3 hours in
the back of the car already, and now had another 5 hour drive to go. We were
less than excited about the drive, but found out they must have recently redone
the highway because it was 4 lanes and smooth the whole wait to Kiev! It really
was much like an interstate in the US, complete with mile markers and road
signs. Our driver was in a hurry to get us there as fast as she could, and was
really pushing her car (keep in mind, its only a LADA). She doubled the speed
limit numerous times (only on down hill stretches though) and narrowly avoided 4
speed traps on the way. Now, doubling the speed limit sounds really fast, but
the speed limit is only 70km/h, so it really isn't that much. Kristi sat in the
back with the boys and put some movies on the laptop and they were well occupied
throughout the ride.
We arrived in Kiev at about 6pm and were brought to our apartment.
Conveniently enough it was the one that we were in last time we were in Kiev, so
it felt like we had come home. Even better we knew where everything was, so we
hit the ground running. The boys thought they wanted to eat at McDs again for
some reason (maybe it is because they haven't gotten the complete set of cars
yet). We new that tomorrow we had to go to the doctors for a check up and then
get to the embassy. Our facilitator had gotten us an appointment for the
embassy, but we needed some forms filled out to bring there. Apparently we were
supposed to bring those with us, not a problem though because we have them on
our laptop, we just don't have a printer. Argh! We decided to see how far the
boys could walk and headed off to independence square to go to a internet café
and pick up some McDs. Besides, the boys had spent over 8 hours in the
car and they needed some exercise. We managed to get all of our papers printed
and fill the boys up with some more cholesterol. They were excited because
in 2 days they had ate at Mcds 3 times and had gotten 3 of the 4 cars! We
walked back and they were getting pretty tired, it is over a half hour
walk there, so we weren't surprised. We played games a little while when we
got back and put the boys to sleep. It is hard for them to get settled down
because there are so many new and exciting things, but once they do they are out
like a rock!
After they were dead asleep we worked on filling out the forms (ok,
mostly Kristi) and planned what we would have to do on Thursday to make things
work.
Thursday morning we got up early, the boys didn't want to get up yet
(the first time they haven't gotten up before we did) and Danny was moving
in slow motion since he hadn't completely woken up yet. That was our
entertainment for the morning. By 8:15 a different translator stopped
by to help us through the day. She talked about what all we would need
to do and bring with us, and by 8:30 we were headed off to see the
doctor. We walked in to the office and sat down. As we were waiting
we saw the couple that we had just seen in Odessa walking out. They were just a
hair ahead of us again! It was great to keep seeing someone else we knew. We sat
for our appointment, and kept waiting. We weren't sure what was taking so long,
and neither was our translator. She finally found out that everyone was in a
meeting, but said they would be out in plenty of time. We had an appointment at
the US Embassy at 11:30, so we had to be done before then, but we still had
time. Eventually they came back and called us in. They checked the boys
eyesight, and gave them a brief physical. They also went though all of the
previous medical papers to make sure they had all of their vaccinations, etc.
Everything checked out great and they had a clean bill of health, so we were
able to get the papers and head out. But not yet, things can't go that smoothly.
The facilitator and the boys had checked their coats into a coat check, and the
door was locked and no one was there! Of all the stupid things to be stuck
waiting for... About 5 minutes later someone came back and we were able to get
them, but it has reconfirmed why Kristi and matt never use coat checks in
Ukraine (that and often it is FREEZING in the buildings).
With our clean bill of health we headed back to the apartment. Conveniently
it is right next to the embassy. We filled out a little more paperwork and
headed there for our 11:30 appointment. We got to the embassy and there was a
huge line of people outside. We were told that since we were Americans we can
walk past the line and go inside. First we had to get through security. They
have a very strict security setup there and we had to to through a metal check
and couldn't bring hardly anything with us (you couldn't even bring a bottle of
water!). Our translator couldn't come with us, but wouldn't need to since they
spoke English here. We headed inside and realized quickly we didn't know where
we were going. We walked in the first door we saw and came up to a person we
thought we would ask. We waited in line and Kristi heard someone tapping on the
door, it was a security guard telling her to go inside to the next door. We got
in there and found a sign for adoptions. We followed the signs and finally found
the counter we were supposed to be at. We were pretty stressed at this point
because we didn't have any wiggle room. It was the last appointment of the day,
and today was the last day that our paperwork was valid. If we didn't get it
finished today it would take nearly a week to update it.
Someone finally came to the counter and we handed her our paperwork. She
looked everything over and said that first we would have to pay and then
realized that we didn't have the right photos for visa in their passports! Wrong
pictures? Apparently our pictures were for Ukrainian passports, and were not
sufficient for this (slightly different size and wrong background). We thought
we were stuck, but the lady said there was a place that took photos across the
road. She said to do that and come back, and by then she will have finished some
of the paperwork. We paid the bill, and then headed off to find the photo place.
We went to the road and didn't see anything. We decided to head back and find
our translator, but as we were walking back Matt saw the word "photo" in Russian
on a sign. We followed it into the basement of a building and there was a guy
there who just took these pictures. He had a digital camera and would take them
and print them right there in just a few minutes! WOW! That was awesome! We got
4 pics (2 of each) for $10. We weren't sure why our facilitator hadn't gotten
these pics earlier when we got the other pictures, but we seemed to have solved
the issue.
We went back in and sat down in the waiting room. It was now after 12:30
and we were the only people there. Earlier we had seen our American friends, who
are always just a little ahead of us. The waiting room is set up for kids with
lots of toys and coloring books. The boys grabbed some coloring books and were
occupied. Whew. We waited and finally they called for us. We hadn't finished all
of the forms because we didn't know what to put on them. She went through each
one and helped us finish them. We kept waiting for her to say something about
the expiring paperwork... but so far, so good. We got through all of the papers
and another guy came out to ask some more questions. He asked us some pretty
important questions, like, "are they drug smugglers" and "have they ever been
convicted of a felony". It was pretty funny. We were laughing at his questions,
and he told us that once a lady came and said that she was a psychic, and then
later said that she had been convicted of possession of drugs. He asked her if,
since she was a psychic, she knew how the interview was going to end. Apparently
she wasn't a very good psychic because she was wrong.
He finally said, OK, that’s all, come back at 4 and pick up the papers!
That was it! We had made it! PRAISE THE LORD!
Now of course we have one issue left, plane tickets. We went to the local
KLM office and they could get us some tickets, in a couple of weeks. That’s not
going to work, so we put together an email and will be calling our travel agent
and hopefully he can get us out of here shortly.
Thanks for all your prayers and we are now home free... We just need to
figure out how to get home...
As an interesting side note, our "taxi driver", who in many cases was more
helpful than our facilitator and translator started driving for us Monday
morning and stayed with us through wed night in what ever town we happened to be
in. She even brought papers back for us on the way back, so she wouldn't get
home until Thursday evening! This was a truly wonderful lady and we never would
have done it without her. Needless to say, she got a considerable tip for her
effort.
Stay tuned for more details.... December 07 Why does this always happen?We started our voyage Monday morning. We were waiting for our translator to
come so we could go get the paperwork. We waited and waited and finally gave up
and called her. She was already at the courthouse getting our papers. As
everything else, it took longer than expected. Then we went to the orphanage to
fill out some more papers. Almost everything here is done by hand because that
is the slowest most painful way they can do things. Our translator was really
worried that the orphanage director wouldn't be there, because she has been gone
a Lot recently, but she was there. We spent about 1/2 hour signing things and
filling stuff out. Then we had to bring that back to the inspector, fill out
something else, make some more copies and then bring that back to the orphanage!
They couldn't make this more inefficient if they tried. Finally, we went at noon
with all of the paperwork in the town completed so we could pick up the boys. We
went in and gave the orphanage director the papers and she started telling us
their eating and sleeping schedules, etc. Then she asked us what we were going
to do about school, it was like she was trying to drive us crazy making us wait.
Then she left the room, she was going to get a picture book to show us other
kids who had been adopted, but she couldn’t find the one we wanted, finally we
got a break! We said our goodbyes to here and started walking out of her office,
we got a little ways away and she hollered for us, she had found it. DOH! We had
to go back and look at more pics of more kids that had been adopted, any other
time during the 4 weeks we had been stuck there we would have enjoyed that (they
were really cute kids, and there was even a picture of a Cathy Harris reunion),
but now it was just driving us crazy.
We finally got moving again and went upstairs to get the boys. Their group
was gone! More waiting?!? Fortunately they came in right behind us. The boys
were wondering where we were since we said we would be there in the morning, and
now it was 12:30. They were happy to see us and we gave them their backpacks so
they could change into their new clothes. While they did that we gave the group
leaders the snacks we brought for the party, they can have it without us,
because now we don't have the time to stick around (Also, this is not the
boys group, they were only in this group while we were visiting them)!
We left the orphanage with the boys, happy that it was over, and knowing
that now that we have custody, the only thing they can do is make things take
longer. We went to the clinic and had lunch. We were trying do decide how best
to do the logistics of getting to their birth town and to Odessa in the shortest
amount of time possible. Our taxi driver suggested that we drive to the birth
town on Monday with everyone, and stay there for the night so we would be there
bright and early the next morning. That seemed like a good idea, and our
translator had an Aunt that lived there who we could stay with! Finally we get a
break! We had already packed everything so we said our goodbye's to the people
at the clinic and headed of for their birth town (Kotosvk). The boys were
excited that we were going there because they remembered that they used to live
there. That was humorous. We were told it was about a 4 hour drive, but we had
to do a few quick things before we left. After about 1/2 hour we had
everything done and headed out of town. We got to a gas station just
out of town and Max says "TOILET!" (fortunately the same in English and
Russian). We were less than impressed at the fact that we had only gotten
about 5 miles out of town before he needed us to stop. We were at a
gas station so the boys went and we were on our way again. We got about 1/2
hour down the road and came to a big bridge that crosses the bay on
the black sea. This is one of those bridges that opens and closes for boats to
go through. Apparently it opens and closes at an incredibly slow rate! We sat
there for over 1/2 hour waiting for the bridge to close in a long line of
cars. We were far from the front so they must block the road for at least 45
minutes, if not an hour. While we were sitting there we got another
"TOILET!" call from Max. Fortunately there was a nice big tree that
looked like it needed watering near where we were stopped at.
We finally got past the bridge and started heading towards the birth town.
We drove for a while and the boys were surprisingly calm. They both fell
asleep not too far down the road, and by the time they woke up it was dark. The
roads we drove on were smaller than we expected, and really twisty. There
are very little road signs so it is hard to tell where you are at. This was
emphasized by the fact that our driver would stop at every questionable
intersection to ask someone which way to go. At first she would pull
over when she saw a police officer, then it got down to just a parked
car with a person sitting in it, or even someone walking down the side of the
road. When we were on one of the rougher roads we got another "TOILET!"
call from Max. By this time we (Matt and Kristi) were keeping a tally
and had a little competition going between if Max's potty breaks and the
Drivers direction questions. Max won with only 3 breaks to the drivers 4
questions. We are still not sure if we took a direct route there though, as it
took us 5 and a half hours to make what numerous people had told us was a 4
hour trip, but maybe the other people hadn't factored in the fact that we were
in a Lada.
We got to the town and found our translators Aunt's house. She was
very nice and made us supper (authentic Ukrainian food, almost inedible to our
pallets) and had a room with uncomfortable beds for all 4 of us. Our wonderful
driver Katya insisted on sleeping in her car (we aren't quite sure why, but know
there is some paranoia of theft). The next morning we got up and had
breakfast (we just ate bread and butter cause we learned our lesson the night
before) and Kristi and our translator went and got the birth certificate
stuff done while Matt stayed with the boys at the house and played games
like "fight over the computer" and "how many things can we break here". By 11am
everything was done and we headed off to Odessa. We made pretty good time,
with no potty breaks for Max and only 2 direction stops for the driver
(in one case she stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out and
flagged down the only other car we could see). Most of the trip
to Odessa was on very nice smooth highways, they looked like they had just been
made, and it was by far the nicest roads that we had seen
yet. Unfortunately it was very hilly, so we had the continuous epic
battle of "The Lada vs. the Incline". This Lada never lost a battle,
although sometimes was reduced to speeds under 30mph. You may be thinking "wow,
those hills must be steep", they weren't.
We got to Odessa in good time and went to the first stop, to register their
new birth certificates in the region. The elevators weren't working because the
power was out. We climbed up to the 5th floor and almost needed to dig
out the flashlight to see what was written on the doors. We did find the
right office at the second door. They said they couldn't do it then
because the power was out!?!?! What? We NEED that paper. We had other
things to do so we fought our way through the heavy traffic and found a
notary to create a notarized petition for passports for the boys (notaries
in Ukraine are people who have paid government officials to give them
nonsensical and expensive paperwork to do). We got that done and headed to
get their passports. Amazingly enough they were done in less time
than it had taken to put together the paperwork to ask for them! We headed
back to the first place as quickly as possible. We got there at 4:45 and
they closed at 5... but the lights were still out and everyone had gone home
(doesn't make much sense to sit there in the dark). Now we were/are stuck. We
had tickets to take a train to Kiev already for Tuesday night, but can't use
them because we have to be in Odessa on Wednesday morning do to
this last bit of paperwork. This complicates things a lot more,
because we have papers that expire on Thursday, so we HAVE to be able to
get to Kiev and get to the doctor for the checkup and to the embassy by
Thursday morning (since they only do adoption stuff in the
mornings). We checked and as of Tuesday night, there are no open seats on
any airplane or train leaving from here for Kiev tomorrow. That really stinks.
If nothing opens up tomorrow we will have to pay our taxi driver to bring us to
Kiev. We really like her (we have spent more days with her now than with our
translator) but aren't looking forward to yet another 6-7 hour day in the car.
The boys are good, but that’s a lot to ask for.
On the positive side for supper - we brought the boys to what we consider
to be the nicest restaurant in Odessa. Its called McDonalds. They had never been
there before (or even heard of it) but did not hesitate to gulp down their food
and enjoyed the toys in their happy meals. Even as we were leaving they were
practicing their new word (McDonalds) so they could remember to ask for it again
in the future. Our hotel that we are staying at here tonight is also pretty
nice, and has internet access (for matt) and a swimming pool for the boys.
Kristi ran to a kids store and bought them some swimming trunks (or close
enough) so they could swim in the pool. They both said they could swim, and max
was right. He had a LOT of fun swimming in the pool. Danny on the other hand
hasn't spent much time swimming and it shows. I am sure he will catch up quickly
with a little more opportunity. The boys also loved our expensive hotel with all
the "stuff" in it, showing us how easily they will be able to be over stimulated
in new situations like this. They got incredibly excited running around finding
all the new things and wanted to try everything (including a space heater and
hair drier). They had a lot of fun, and hopefully that will make up for
what appears to be a very dull day of driving in the car
tomorrow.
Please pray for us that there will be a way for us to get through the
embassy paperwork by Thursday so we can head home over the weekend and not be
stuck here for an additional week while we wait for expired paperwork to be
redone (this added ridiculous bureaucracy is courtesy of the US government, who
didn't want to be left out).
December 04 The Final Countdown!The whole time we have been with the boys the same thought has been running through our minds... "boy dogs are easier" ;-) We have been comtemplating why this is. We determined that the main advantage with dogs is that we have a leash! We are able to limit them to a certain range and can easily get thier attention. Now, the question is how can we get a leash for these boys? We finally found it! It is called "headphones". We put some good rock and roll in the MP3 player and plug in 2 sets of headphones. We now have the boys on a regulation 6ft leash that limits the distance from us they go (since we are holding the MP3 player) and instead of jerking the "leash" to get thier attention we just hit "stop" and they both immediatly look at us. The best part is, just like our dogs, they get incredibly excited every time we pull the "leash" out and can't wait to put it on! Perfect ;-) Today we had a pretty uneventful day. We went there this morning with the intent of going for a walk but they boys were in the bath at the time we got there, so then they had a wet head so we didn't take them out. Of course, since we thought we were going to we didn't bring much other stuff with us so we pulled out the "leash" and they listened to music while coloring the whole time. It worked better than we thought. Interestingly enough they only want to listen to the rock and roll music on the MP3 player, not the kids songs in russian. The Rock music is a christian band called pillar, and Max even skips the songs that start slow because he wants to listen to the heavy stuff! Gotta love that! We headed to the market again this afternoon. Not really because we needed anything, but because we had little better to do. We walked around and bought a bunch of bananas to give all the kids tomorrow at the going away party. We headed out of the market and saw a horse next to all the cars. We at first thought there must be some sort of parade or something, but then looked a little closer and realized this was a work horse! He was a smaller horse that was really sweaty from the walk in. He was tied to an old beat up "buck board wagon" that had a couple of rags on the board that was the seat. The two poles that attach the horse to the wagon were birch limbs that still had the bark on them. It is pretty amazing to see the varience in peoples life styles here, on once side we have people taking pictures with thier cell phones, on the other we have people taking the horse into town. Wow. We went back and visited the boys this afternoon. We brought the computer for entertainment, thinking they would want to play the new games again. When we got there they were just getting dressed to go outside. We decided they should go outside a little bit, but once they realized we brought the computer they didn't want to. Max immediately started saying it was too cold. He said that his legs were cold mostly, and his pants were frequently pulled up high enough so the bottoms were above his ankles, leaving a lot of exposed skin. Because they had just taken a shower they were wearing different clothes than they had been. Matt went up and grabbed the bottom of his pants and pulled them down to his shoes. Max immediately pulled the waist of his pants back up so his ankles were showing again. Now we see the problem, his new "outside" pants are too short! Oops. This makes them match his inside pants more because they are so tight that he has given up on zipping them up (of course, it wouldn't be an issue if the group leader didn't insist that they tucked in thier shirt AND sweaters to thier pants, all the kids look like little Erkles running around). While we were outside we ran into the Italians again. They are very nice people and really want to talk, and are very good with other languages, as they speak English and Russian better than we speak Russian. They asked us more about our timeline and were wondering why thiers was so bad, We are wondering too.. if you think it has taken us a long time, they are much worse off. They are pretty frusterated with Ukraine in general, but have a cute little boy named antonio that they are adopting (his original name was Toilek (pronouned like toilet with a k at the end) which they changed for obvious reasons. The italians were telling me how they really liked americans and had went to a pro-american rally in italy after 9-11. They even had an american flag at home that they took out ever year in rememberance of 9-11. As he said it, they are "pro-western". We mentioned that the boys wanted to go inside because we brought a computer and he said he brought one too because he is a computer programmer. Wow, what a small world. We talked about that for a while (he mostly does Mainframe AS400 stuff) and I gave him my business card so we could keep in touch after we got back. We really want to know how things go for them. Eventally we said our good-byes and the boys drug us back inside to play with the computer. It was about that time that we realized that we had forgotten the CDs so they couldn't play the games! They were not very impressed with that at all. Danny told us to go back to the apartment and get it! We let them do other stuff on it but that wasn't as fun, then the battery went dead on the MP3 player that was occupying the boy who wasn't playing. It just didn't go as smoothly as we had planned, and we were really glad we spent the first hour outside. We finally had to leave and told them we would see them in the morning with new clothes that fit and would have a party. We spent a lot of time packing today and are pretty close to having everything back together to head out tomorrow if we can. Our timeline is that we can get the papers and get the boys tomorrow morning, we will probably have the boys by 9:30 (no one opens before 9am here) and will have had the party and be done with everything by 11am. That will be all we can do tomorrow so we hope to go to odessa for the afternoon and stay the night there. Tomorrow morning our translator and one of us has to take a 3-4hour car ride to their birth town and be there by 9am to get the birth certs. That won't take long and then they have to go back to odessa to get the passports. At that point we have to find a way to get to Kiev. It will be by plane, train, bus or automobile, depending on what tickets are availible. We HAVE to get to keiv by wednesday morning. When we are back in Kiev we have 2 things to do. First we have to get a checkup for the boys for the American Embassy. Not sure how hard it will be to schedule that, but I think we will call to try to make an appointment as soon as posible tomorrow, after that we have to go to the american embassy to do the american side of the adoption. The trick is that they are only open from 8am-11:30am on wed and thurs, so we can't have too much for delays. After we go to the embassy, they should have the paperwork done that evening and we can hop on the next flight home! We really would appreciate a lot of prayers over the next few days. We probably won't be able to update the blog until we get to kiev, but please pray that everything goes quickly and smoothly. If we can't get the embassy stuff done by thursday it may mean another entire week here (not just the weekend) because we have papers that expire on thursday. That probably is good though because it will make us push that much harder to get everything done (no expenses spared at this point). Next time, LIVE FROM KIEV! December 03 We're getting close!One More day of visiting and they are ours! This morning we went to visit the boys with the intent of going for a walk, since we finally could. It wasn't raining, but was a little brisk (about 40) and windy, so we thought we would stay inside a little first. We went in and gave them thier snacks (thier daily banana, of which they never tire) and they played with the stencils for about an hour. When they were starting to get tired of that, Matt decided to show them the MP3 player to see if the style of headphones we have would work for them (they hook over the ear). If they did we would buy another pair like that so they could use them to listen to movies on the ride home. They were Very excited to see the MP3 player, but the batteries were dead and it quit after a minute. We told them we had more batteries at the apartment, put it away and went outside for a walk. We wandered aimlessly around the neighborhood for about 45 minutes. It appears that most of the apartments in the area were built in soviet times (ok, probably ALL of them). Each one has its own little playground made of toys of welded steel. Some of the places maintained theirs a little, some not at all. We walked around and played on each one for a short period of time, using the stuff that wasn't broken. They really seemed to enjoy that. Tomorrow if the weather is nice (not raining) we will probably try to go for a longer walk and go back to our apartment (if we can get them in the door, since it does say "clinic" on it and they aren't very excited about that). We went and did our shopping this afternoon. We got the large majority of the stuff we were looking for. On the way back from the market we stopped at the GOOD supermarket (not the one that frisks us on the way out). We bought our stuff and the security guy who checks reciepts at the door told us they had a contest we could play. We had a chance to win a TV. They really don't realize how little russian we understand. We did figure out that it was a prize game and after we paid for our purchase they spun the little box. Kristi put her hand in and pulled out a piece of paper. She had won a candy bar! How cool was that, one place frisks you thinking you stole a 20 cent pack of gum, the other place gives us free candybars! It was about 2 in the afternoon and we hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we scarfed the candy bar down on the walk back. While we were in the market we also purchased a couple of computer games. One of them is a beginners bible game that is in russian or English. The theme is the Birth of Jesus, and it has a bunch of related games and then a quiz game at the end (which really proves how much they learned during the games). The other game we bought was an english learning game that works on foods, numbers and colors. It has a lot of different small games and has an alien theme. We headed back to visit the boys in the afternoon and brought the computer with the new games we installed. They were quick to ask if we brought the computer with us. We told them we did and they remembed that it was Danny's turn to use it first. We got in the room and before we even had the computer out of the bag Danny was asking about the headphones. We told him that we had it with, but he got to play with either the headphones or the computer. Without hesitation he said he wanted the headphones. We gave them too him while Max excitedly starting playing on the computer. Danny listened to the headphones (a mix of russain kids songs and christian rock & roll) for an Hour and a Half! He would wander around the room, sit on one of the chairs, sit on someones lap, but the whole time listening to the music. We suspected he really liked music (Matt already has plans that he will be a drummer) but didn't think he liked it that much. Meanwhile, Max was playing on the computer. We started him with the Beginner Bible game. He worked his way through the whole thing and figured out most of the little games. It took him about an hour and at the end he did the game that was a quiz to see how much they picked up. The quiz was in russian, so we couldn't help him with it, but he got all but 1 right! Not bad. We will keep our eyes out to see if we can find the other 2 games in this series (Noah's Ark and the 10 Commandments). After that he moved to the english game. He had fun with that one, and tried all the different games, some he was better at than others. He got a little stuck in some places because you needed to master the earlier games (or the words they teach you) to play the later games. He wanted to try them all and couldn't do some of the later ones. Finally Danny decided he wanted to play on the computer too. He started playing the English learning game and really didn't get the concept of some of the games. However... we noticed that he was picking up the english faster than the concept of the game! In the game he played they say the color in english, and Kristi would repeat the english color and then say it in russian so he could decide where to put it. He never did really understand the best places to put the colors, but by the end he would usually shout out the russian color after they said the english one! About that time our visit was up and we headed back to the clinic. As we were driving we got pulled over by the cops. They do things a little differently here. They will have a few officers and they will stand beside the road somewhere and watch traffic. We aren't sure what exactly they are looking for, but they have sticks that are painted black and white and they will wave cars over. We had asked our taxi driver about them eariler and she said that they give you papers to go to court, but if you just pay them (off?) you don't have to bother. We got flagged and thought we were going to find out how this works for ourselves. We have noticed that when people see the speed traps they slow down to WAY under the speed limit (assuming they were in something other than a Lada and were able to get above the speed limit) presumably because the cops don't have radar guns so they pull you over if it looks like you might be speeding. Anyhow, our taxi driver pulled over and rolled down her window, the officer walked up to the car and then just waved her on! WHEW... that was close. We have heard there is a lot of corruption in the police system here but didn't want to find out first hand. Soon our blog entries will be getting a lot more exciting. We will probably be hitting the road on Monday and updating the blog when ever we have a chance. We will be doing a lot of moving around (not sure if by car, train or plane) and will shortly be able to get our tickets to head home. We can't wait to start moving again. December 02 When it rains......we get wet :-( We taught the boys a very important word to day if they want to live on our house. It took us a while to get it across, but the both now know how to say "FORD". Next we will work on the word "RULES". Today it rained again. We brought the computer and they spent a lot of time exploring what all the different buttons did. They have now spent many hours on the computer playing with it and really enjoy it, just think how much fun they would have if there was a game on it they could play! They are definately getting the hang of it and are quick to learn how to make things happen, unfortuantely they don't know what to do with them after they happen. They can open a lot of programs but don't know how to use most of them (especially when you can't read english). They have found the Windows Help program and spend a lot of time clicking through there, which is the first time I have seen Help actually be useful! Another funny thing was Max was telling Danny what to click on, when a Dialog box would come up he would say "Click Oak". It took us a little while to figure it out, but he was reading OK as OAK... He isn't familiar with the term OK. We brought a map with us this afternoon and got the really old globe from thier group room. We showed them our path home, how we were going to drive to Odessa, take a train to Keiv, and fly home. Max was fairly interested in it, but it was a little to abstract for Danny to get it, he really didn't seem to care too much, he is excited about the rides, but not so exited to see where on a map (although he did like the idea of using the really big map to build a fort). We finally got permission today to take the kids off the orphanage grounds durring our visits. Thats great, but we only have 2 days left and it is wet and rainy out so we don't know if we will be going for many walks with them anyway. I guess we will wait and see. We also found out that our plans for next week have changed slightly already. The birth certificate place in thier home town is closed on mondays so we can't go till tuesday morning, this doesn't really affect our plans because we were sure that we couldn't get it all done in one day anway. We are hoping to spend Monday afternoon in Odessa (a much bigger city with a lot of tourist stuff) and then drive from thier to the birth town early in the morning, drive back in the afternoon, do our last paperwork and head to Kiev. Again, it will be transportation that will be what limits the speed of when we get home. December 01 A day like Most othersToday it was warm, but rained... and rained... and rained. We had to spend the day inside so we brought the computer with us for the boys to play with. They are starting to figure out more and have gotten the hang of the touchpad mouse a lot better. They both understand the concept of the start menu now and go there to find new programs to open. They usually don't understand what the programs they open actually do, but they know what to do in Paint and Notepad. They are always excited when something they click on causes things on the screen to change. They found the CD player on the side and no how to open that. Unfortunately we don't really want them opening and closing that. After they played with it for an hour and a half, we decided to try watching a VeggieTales movie. That worked well and they were excited to be able to watch a movie on it, but since they didn't know the characters, songs, or understand the language, it did not keep Danny's attention for the whole half hour, although Max probalby would have made it. We have some kids movies in russian too, but we are saving those for the long rides and flights home. In the afternoon we brought a deck of cards. That worked well and we played numerous games. Thier favorite now is Go Fish, and Danny even gets how to play it now. We haven't actually told them how to Win at the game yet though, so they just keep playing until someone runs out of cards, then we shuffle and redeal and start again. It is the only game that the don't cheat on. We didn't accomplish much else today since it was raining. We did manage to pick up a few more christmas so we can check them off our list, but plan on doing most of our shopping on saturday afternoon. As you know, We get to take custody of Max and Danny on Monday morning. We will go there and have a little party with the rest of the group and then bring them back to the clinic, all while our Translator is frantically running around trying to do all the paperwork in this town, drive to thier birth town to change thier birthcerts and get to another town to get thier passports. IF she can do it all in one day (she is optomistic she can, Matt isn't so sure... prayers please) AND if we can get train tickets we could possibly be heading for Keiv Monday night, otherwise probably Tuesday night. We have to go to the embassy for a little paperwork and go to another place for a health checkup. Then we need to get plane tickets and head home. If things go REALLY well we could be on a plane a week from today, but we are really hoping we will be on a plane by saturday at the latest. It would be nice to beat the weekend traffic. Our flight home should be reasonabley quick because the timechanges are with us. Our original tickets had us leaving here at 7am (UA time) and landing at 3pm (Fargo time). November 30 HitsWe are quickly approaching 10,000 hits on our blog site! That is a LOT More than we expected, but we have been here a LOT longer than we expected too! Doing the Math we have been getting an average of 190 hits a day. Considering that we only think Matts mom is checking it about 150 times a day (thats 10 times an hour she is awake, or once every 6 minutes) then we can assume that we have 40 other people watching the blog regularly, wow, we feel like superstars.... We think we can consider this our 15 minutes of fame, although it is a lot longer than that since Matt tends to type so much in the blog. So, now you all know that most of the blog entries have been written by Matt. Probably not a surprise to most of you who know us and realize that Kristi has too much self respect to write much of this goofyness. So, Why, you may ask, does he always refer to himself in the third person? Why not? Bob Dole does it, and Bob Dole is cool, so why shouldn't Matt [he says as he holds a pen stiffly in his left hand near his chest]. Today Matt realized the biggest downfall to adopting. It occured to Him that we will never be able to use the line "I brought you into this world and I can take you out!". Wow, that is a big dissapointment. Had he realized this earlier he may have reconsidered the whole thing. Enough with all the nonsense... time to talk about todays adventures with the boys. Today there were no adventures with the boys. It was a fairly low key day. We spent a lot of time outside running around because the weather was nice and we are getting tired of our little cubical room. When we were in our little room this afternoon we had a group of kids walk through to the "exersize" room next door. Then another, and another! Bringing up the tail was the other Adopting family that was here from Italy. The kids were all going in there for some sort of Dancing/exercise/social event/cult ritual. They all stood in a big circle and a lady stood in the corner with what looked like a toy accordian. She would play songs and they would do different actions and dances to it. They often would walk in circles. We sat at the door (the 2 families and 3 boys) and they would stare at us as they walked by, which was humerous because they would be looking to the side and walk right into the kid infront of them (consistantly). They played a few games and eventually it was more than Max and Danny could resist so they went in and played too. It was fun to watch all of the kids interacting. There were 40 kids in there including the boys, and about 4 instructors. This was the second time we wished we had brought our video camera with. Or digital camera can also take short video clips, but we had left that at the clinic. DOH! Once that was done we went back to our room to do the worksheets we had so carefully made earlier. The boys had been really antsy all night, but were happy to do the math problems on the worksheets. Unfortunately, we were almost out of time so Danny didn't get to finish his. Oh well. We haven't been doing a lot of math with him because he normally doesn't want to. Now that we know that he will gladly do it if he knows there is a reward of connect the dots afterwards we are starting again. He does much of his adding on his fingers still, which is really funny because he knows which fingers he has to count (even though he holds them all out) and then touches them to his face to count them. Matt can't wait to start giving him bigger numbers and watch him try to touch his toes to his face ;-). Interestingly enough, if the same problem is done twice in one sitting he remembers and will go back to it and take the other answer, were Max never seems to notice if he gets the same problem twice. As of today we only have..... [Matt is touching fingers to his face] 4 more days till we get custody! Woo Hoo! |
