I really feel grateful for Tyler who just keeps rolling with the punches. Vitaly and Oleg are so brave to be willing to leave all they know and love (Vitaly keeps looking at the picture of his girlfriend) and trust us to give them a good life in American. They are both wearing their American flag shirts today. I didn't even ask them to match and so we are going to get along great (my kids give me a hard time when I make them match :) I am also grateful to Holly and Brian and Heather and Joe who dropped their regular lives during their break from school to be the Mom and Dad at our house until Dave got home. I feel indebted to them and wish that I could be home to offer help to them and see James and Blake while they are growing and changing. They will probably be riding bikes by the time we get home.
I am grateful to Devin who is handling all the HeartRise stuff which is not an easy task. I miss Daniel, Alisa and Scott a ton. Sometimes I feel like I am losing touch with life at home. Tyler was looking at DVDs and I said "We can rent that at the Redbox when we get home" and the word Redbox actually sounded foreign. I am reading things in Russian and Ukrainian and wonder if I will miss the little strange letters here (I doubt it) but I hope and pray that I don't wake up some morning and find out that I am Ukrainian.
We got into the Birth Certificate office. We are behind schedule but things are working out OK. Tyler and I both feel slightly nauseated. I guess it is good that we will be able to get 2 kids out of this process that reminds me so much of pregnancy.
I think I posted the wrong picture of Vitaly's girlfriend. He seemed to be flirting more with the girl I posted but Tyler says that he actually likes and plans to marry the other one. The name is correct but I will post the new girl's picture. She has an earring or something shiny on her chin and also some by her eyebrows. She looks a lot older too and so who knows. I was happy to hear that Arri's boys are afraid of American girls. I was wondering how we were going to do the FHE on dating after you are 16 :)
We are now at the mall waiting.............. The boys are holding spiders and snakes. I am staying out here where I feel slightly safer.
All is normal (for Ukraine)
This is Tanya. The other girl is Yana.
She does look much older than him.
ReplyDeleteJust a warning. My Alex LOVES girls and it NOT shy. (I envy Arri!) He asks girls for hugs all the time. He's into smelling good and walking girls home from school. He's fine with not dating until he's 16 but plans to marry when he's twenty. I asked him about a mission and he forgot about that so he'll get married when he gets home at twenty one. He has it all planned. He's even told me how he's going to ask his girl to marry him. He will give her a ring and say "You marry me?" So just in case your Vitaly is anything like my Alex.....
I loved you're classifications. So sad about the Dadushka's (Grandpas) I saw a few drinking a playing chess once but the Babooska's out number them twenty to one I think. I am happy to know it's a social thing to sell sunflower seeds. I was under the impression they were just very, very poor. They probably are that too but it makes me feel a little better to think it's something they might also choose to do.
Good luck with floods, nausea, smoke and spit. Some day this will feel like a blink. Right now a black eye? But some day a blink.
Wendy
Well, I must say that Sasha is a "ladies man" with all the "hug's" and his gentlemanly ways towards girls. On Valentines Day, he asked the "older" girl sitting in front of us, if she wanted to be his valentine. She all but melted and said, "Of course!" But when it comes right down to it, he doesn't want a girlfriend. I do think that some of these American girls, are pretty scary, with how aggressive they are. You are so right about these ukrainian kids being so beautiful. They come to America with all their beauty and accents and that is a recipe for "Rock Star" status. The girls won't leave them alone! It is stalker scary! That is what I mean about the girls being scary to them.
ReplyDeleteI look at these girls and say, thank goodness your getting them out of the country, but it might just be worse here. Just hope that Vitaly gets sick of it, like my boys did.