Food Arts and Crafts

How to occupy 2 boys for 2 hours on a very cold day when they can't go outside? Well I cleaned out the cupboard of old candy, put it on a plate with some toothpicks... And they became very intent on their tasks of creating snowmen, fireplaces, people, etc... Who would have thought they'd be into it for 2 hours...

This was A.'s favorite masterpiece!

Deep Cold

We've been trapped in a really cold weather pattern. Temp is currently -25 at our house, the wind is blowing and gusting to 75 mph. Needless to say the wind chill is impossibly bitter cold. Coldest temp so far this winter. It's going to be another week before it warms up above zero again. We like zero ;) I put weather links on the right hand side of the page. It's warmer in Khabarovsk right now.

I send the boys outside to run around the house 5 times and they come in with red faces. (They have full gear on so don't worry). It's good exercise right now until they go back to school next week!

Little Hands

Dec 29th...A new update! Our letter arrived from Moscow! WOW!! So our agency will file all our paperwork to the court on January 12th.

Just an update.. that we have no update on the adoption front. We are hopeful that the "magic" paper made it back from Moscow before the holidays. Once our agency rep in Khabarovsk has this approval from Moscow, she can file our big packet of paperwork to the judge. We haven't heard if it arrived, so it probably didn't, but we can hope.

Right now we are in the holiday closures in Russia, the courts will be closed until Jan 12th (Russian Christmas is Jan 7th). So when our agency opens the week of the 12th we should have an update. The paperwork can then sit on the judge's desk until she has time to put us in her court calendar. So we're still looking at end of Feb/Beg of March, but in reality it's all up to the judge. Of course, April looks good too, as the lady judge is on vacation and the male judge comes in to cover, he's really nice.... :-)


@ 27 months old this little gal measured 31 inches tall and weighed 21 pounds... 2% on the scale for height and weight, but her measurements are identical to our youngest son when we got his referral and he's now taller than most of his class and just a growing weed.

She's been in the orphanage since birth so it is home to her. She is loved by the caregivers and truly seems to love being there. The sooner we can get her home, the better, but she's in a good place right now until we can get there.

I have more stories from Khab, that I'll get posted soon...

Blizzard

We've had a blizzard the past 2 days wtih high winds and over a foot of snow. Needless to say it's made driving interesting. Here's a few pics. We will try to get out and about this weekend to get you some real Alaska shots!
The trees next to our house (above) and the roof of our house (below)...

And this would be our poor camper, dreaming of summer time, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Belated Merry Christmas

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas! It was a great Christmas around here. Special thanks to a last minute mystery package that saved the day. As A whispered, maybe next year Santa will bring us some toys :) Then they opened the mystery box and wow! A received his dream football outfit and S was just in a green mode all day with his Hulk outfit. Thanks Lola!

Moose Sighting

We interrupt the gingerbread cookie making for a snapshot of our afternoon visitors. They were pretty skittish and took off as soon as I snapped a picture from the deck. The mama really resembles a horse, but it is definately the moose that's been living in our neck of the woods.

Visit with Santa

We don't have a mall in Wasilla. The nearest mall is an hour away in Anchorage. So the local stores often play host to Santa. He was visiting Home Depot today, so we dropped in. The boys were quick to point out how much better he looked this year. He looked fatter but cleaner they said ;) A. kept craning his head looking for the reindeer. They must have been parked around back.

First Photo

Here's another photo of the boys. This is the referral photo we got, Oct 2004. I believe S. was recovering from Chicken Pox. Keep in mind there was 5 months between trips for us on this adoption and the boys grew a lot.

For those adopting. Here were the boys' russian Main Medical diagnosis. Our little girl referral was very similar in terminology. Keep in mind it sounds worse than it turned out to be. I can't underline enough that you have to actually meet the children before you judge their medicals. That's why we liked adopting toddlers as you could see what their capabilities were.

A. tempo development delay; abnormally located chorda in the left ventricle, severe hypermetropia, red dye allergy (translation: mentally delayed from orphanage, heart murmur (he's outgrown), severe vision (no real issues); still gets cold sores if he eats red sauce, but that's it for the allergy)

S. tempo development delay; mild hypermetropic astigmatism; functional cardiopathy (translation: mentally delayed from orphanage, eye issues, possible heart issues (No real health problems in reality).

How they have grown!

I've been thinking a lot lately at how much the boys have grown since they came home in June 2005. They are healthy, bright, athletic boys and my how they have grown. It seems like we were just in Russia yesterday for them.

In 2005, A was 3.5 years old. He was outgoing, had a fairly good russian vocabulary, was barely able to run, had no fear, stubborn, and had lots of smiles.

In 2008, A is just shy of 7 years old .He is still outgoing, very social at school and well liked, academically on target, very athletic, a tad more serious, a thinker, still stubborn, but a sweetheart who is already chasing girls away.
In 2005, S was 2.5 years old. He was shy, very non-verbal, barely able to run, more reserved, but quicker to love and cling.

In 2008, S just turned 6 years old. He has come out of his shell and is no longer shy, or quiet (he talks up a storm), a fountain of knowledge, just a sponge absorbing any and every piece of information, he's very bright, loves to draw and write and is a very sensitive, old soul.

Random facts about Khabarovsk

1) Children go to school for ½ a day, they either have morning school or afternoon school. (We had to ask as we saw so many kids with backpacks on throughout the day).


2) The orphanage caregivers work in 12 hour shifts. There were 3 care givers on the day shift in V’s groupa (about 15 kids).


3) Little V’s orphanage diet consists of beets, carrots, and onions. I offered to buy green vegetables, but was denied they said it would mess up the little guys’ diets.


4) The red lights all have timers on them. It counts down how many seconds until the light changes. And believe me, when it gets to one that light changes fast, there is no delay like the US.


5) Traffic jams are very common, the streets don’t seem laid out very well (just our opinion)


6) Hmm.. The driver was actually wearing a seatbelt this time. Of course the back seat doesn’t have them, but progress.


7) They do clear the roads very quickly after snowstorms. We saw this in action. After they plowed, truckloads of men had shovels, brooms and other interesting looking tools and were cleaning off the side of the roads. Irina said the roads are often dry within 24 hours of a storm. Wow! They could teach Alaska a few things!


8) They have studded tires. However, they are starting to fine folks who use them, as they cause more accidents! How about that! Irina said if the car in front of her stops with studded tires and she slides she will hit them. So it’s better if all the cars slide! Only Alaskans would appreciate this one, with the hours and hours wait to get those studs on up here!


9) Hamburg Risola is their translation of a real hamburger. It tastes pretty good. If you want bread, ketchup, cheese. It’s all a separate item you have to order though.


10) If you order coffee, it’s served at the end of the meal.


11) Coke and Sprite are the only soda products.


12) The Amur river was frozen in November; however the winds blew every day to chill the air.



13) Women seem to be very well educated here. All the officials we met with were women and 5 of the 6 doctors were women. I asked what the men do, and Irina said other things. Hmm.. Alcohol is very prevelant here as well. Med school is expensive, but Dentistry is the most expensive school of all.

Trip 1 Packing

I've been asked by 2 different folks what we packed that we were able to take just carryons. We had 2 small rolling suitcases and 2 backpacks.

We had 1 suitcase full of educational toys for little V (stacking blocks, learning doll, food, musical toy, another block game, a blanket for her to sleep with, and a camera to leave). The rest of that suitcase was full of Alaska gifts for our agency representatives.

The other suitcase had our clothes in them. You don't need much. You only need 1 set of travel clothes, you can wash them while there or for 3 dollars have them laundered by the hotel. We each had 1 long sleeved shirt/sweater, if we got cold. We didn't. The hotel and orphanage is always HOT. So we typically wore short sleeves. They don't take much room at all.. They are not concerned about you washing and wearing the same clothes.

I will say the laptop was our saving grace. We watched movies on it, uploaded our pics and movies of little V and I had our DVD movie of her complete before we even got home. That was nice to come home and show to the boys, because they were eager to see it.

Remember travelling internationally you constantly have to go through security in each new country and recheck your luggage if you have it. We have found it much easier to not have the suitcases. We were able to jump on 2 earlier flights standby, because we didn't have luggage checked. We had hoped to catch the Seoul to Seattle flight but didn't make it into Seoul in time, so we still had to do the trek from LAX... Not the easiest airport to navigate, a lot of walking and much longer lines than Seattle... But that's another story :)

Shelly

Status Report

We arrived home early Thursday morning. It was a really long day of flying on Dec 3rd. We didn't have any down time in airports just ran from connection to connection. The good news is the Seoul to LAX flight was only 10 1/2 hours, the first one was 13 1/2 hours, so 10 1/2 seemed quick :) We celebrated S's 6th birthday yesterday. Whew it's been busy!

We submitted all our US paperwork to our agency yesterday so we are officially DONE with paperwork (pending no delays or problems, but we won't think about that!). Now it is just a waiting game. Our paperwork acceptance of Little V, left the Ministry of Education in Khabarovsk on Dec 3rd, it has to go to Moscow for approval from the "official" people. Then it gets mailed back to Khab. (probably take a month). Then our agency will take that and all other 32 documents and file to the judge asking for a court hearing. The judge (same one we had with the boys) then finds room for us in her court schedule. We're anticipating having a March court date, but it's really in her hands once she has all the paperwork.

I'll write more this weekend on some of our experiences from our first trip...

So Long to Khab

It's December 3rd! Happy 6th Birthday S!! S if you read this you can open the box sitting by the fishtank!

We're heading out of Khab today to make the long journey home. One last trip to the orphanage this morning and then we leave this afternoon. It will be sad to leave little V but we're ready to head home and see the boys again. Irina is hopefully we'll be back in Feb/March for court...