Finally finished this 5 day update...no energy left for proofing, so please excuse errors in grammar and spelling. Also, make sure you don't miss the pictures at the end!!
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Happy Anniversary to us! On this day, Weej and I celebrated our 20th Wedding Anniversary! In KIEV! Wow! Since we dated 2 years before marriage, and since we knew each other for 6 years before we dated, we also celebrate 28 years of knowing each other!:) I am so very grateful for my amazing, protective, hard-working, Godly, singing, cooking and loving husband!
Monsoon: The day started out a little rough with news that our bank had cancelled the transaction we had attempted due to suspected fraud. They wouldn’t take our word for it (yes, it was really us and YES we wanted the transaction to happen) over email, we had to call the U.S.. Since we have no way to call the US we contacted our friends P & J whose host family has a line to the U.S. Fortunately they were home and we could use their phone. Unfortunately it was MONSOONING outside! So we bundled up in coats, scarves, ponchos and umbrellas and all headed out. Since we don’t know any bus routes that way- it was on foot… over a mile…in the rain…in the wind…through ankle deep puddles…..with J1 getting tangled up in his fitfully swirling poncho (makes me laugh all over again), An. hanging onto her umbrella with TWO hands to avoid being swept away like Piglet in Winnie the Pooh’s blustery day, umbrellas flipping inside out so many times we just gave up. As we trudged along, I looked over at Weej, through rain soaked bangs and poncho corners..and said, “Happy Anniversary”. We both laughed out loud. To know Weej, you know he is a changed man to have been able to laugh at that scenario! Previously he would have sounded more like Yosemite Sam!
Fortunately we were able to get to P & J’s host family’s home before they had to leave and make our call. (UNFORTUNATELY, now 5 days later and it still isn’t straightened out!) But fortunately, we have a representative in the US now who is on it.
Celebrate: We trekked back through the monsoon to our apartment and prepared for our date! My thoughtful husband had been conspiring with our new Ukrainian friends and surprised me with an AMAZING dinner overlooking the water of the Dnipro River. The food was scrumptious, the service impeccable, the view superb and the setting incredible. We were one of only two couples in the entire room. Our Ukrainian friends had gone ahead of us and reserved a specific corner table, and dropped off a beautiful balloon and purple velvet box containing sparkling heart shaped earrings and priceless note from my Hubby. It was an event to remember. An Anniversary we will truly never forget….in Kiev!:)
Our amazing new friends had not only set this event up, they stayed with our kids while we dined. Oh, and how could I forget-the hardest part of all, they arranged a cab for us. Our dinner reservations were at 7, so the cab was supposed to pick us up at 6:30. Due to the horrible weather, the traffic in Kiev was horrendous and the cabs were backed up. Sweet Sl. called 10 different cab companies for 2 ½ hours to get us a cab out there! We told her several times to let it go, we’d go out another night, but she insisted. Not only did she remain on the phone for hours calling cab companies, she called the restaurant several times in order to continue pushing our reservations back! Fortunately they were open until 12 midnight and were still happy with us when we FINALLY made it at 10 pm!
We returned after dinner to find our priceless friends playing hilarious games with our kiddos. They had more fun than should be allowed!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
COURT DATE! We finally reached the pinnacle of our journey over here! At 10:30 the driver picked us up and we bounced, veered, swerved and lurched in typical Ukrainian style to the Pepto Bismal Pink Court house. I think I already mentioned it, but I have learned to bring Dramamine for my child prone to car sickness for the days we have to use a driver. Even we adults had to use some on one particularly turbulent ride!
We arrived in our van, and were soon met by another cab with our facilitator and the “inspector” from CPS . The facilitator brought along not only our documents but a bag full of sausages which she fed to a beautiful stray German Shepherd which she had seen there before. That dog was in love and wanted to come into the courthouse with all of us. Upon arrival, two of us needed to use the restroom, so our facilitator assisted us in that matter. She asked around and was finally informed that the restrooms were out back, in a building behind the courthouse. We proceeded outside and to the right venturing beside the Pepto Bismal pink building, down a creepy narrow alley on a partially dirt covered path beside graffiti covered walls. Oh, my goodness…..it was a journey….beyond the pink building, and around a dilapidated fence, around an abandoned graffiti covered garage structure to the WORST Squatty potty I think we have seen or smelled in all of Ukraine. Imagine the WORST Porta potty you have ever experienced.. now multiply it by 100..and you’ll be close to the experience. Even the facilitator held her breath and ran in when she had to go. She said, “I’m Ukrainian and I’m not used to it either.” EWWWWW.
OK, business taken care of, it was back down graffiti alley to the court house. We made our way upstairs to join Weej and J. The staircase ended in a central room surrounded by office doors. We stood among several others awaiting court (no other children there, so no other adoptions were happening.) Eventually little V. and the Social worker showed up. We had heard that he would come in a suit so didn’t give him the one we brought for him. He wasn’t in his suit, but still looked handsome in his oxford and sweater. He looked nervous and shy. I wonder what goes through the mind of these children on Court day. Fortunately we didn’t wait long before we were called in. We went into a little office where two men sat behind their computers (transcriptionists?) and V., the social worker, the inspector, our facilitator, Weej and I took the 5 available chairs. Fortunately our Bio kids were old enough to leave out in the “holding area” right outside the door. Soon thereafter, the imposing Judge walked in. She reminded me of Cathy Bates…in a huge black robe and NO smile. Scary. We were required to stand and state our names and addresses. We were asked several questions, the main one being, “Why do we want to adopt?” It was intimidating, but actually quite nice for little V. to hear our perspective on the matter through the translator as she relayed the information to the judge. The facilitator had asked us to talk a LOT about why we wanted to adopt. Evidently in the past others had just said, “To complete our family” or something brief, and the judge said, irritated, “Is that ALL?!” So we went on and on. One great thing about being in a court in another language is if we say something stupid, our facilitator can edit it out in her translation!;) Eventually, the judge got to V.’s part. He was asked several questions about his past which I am sure were painful to answer. She asked if he wanted to be adopted? Yes. She asked him to describe our family and rather than saying we have two girls and a boy, he said, “two sisters and a brother”, which the translator thought was really sweet. She asked him what he liked in school, how his grades were and his favorite subjects (music and singing- of course:) Fortunately, the judge was very kind to him. She smiled and even laughed a few times. She made a tough time (being reminded of his abandonment) much less horrible for him.
After our questionings were over, we were ushered out of the room for them to deliberate. They called us back in with formal style and informed in flowery legal speech that our adoption of our sweet boy was approved. Pending the 10 day waiting period, when we will receive her official decree, we are now the parents of J.V. Lynch!!
Dental work is no way to celebrate: Sadly, our celebration was not able to resume immediately as we were told by the social worker that J.V. had a dentist appointment at 4:30 pm. In addition he hadn’t brought his backpack or any of his overnight gear so had to return to the orphanage for that. They decided that the social worker would return him to the orphanage and they would take him to his normal dentist. I think it was more of an orthodontist as when we saw him again later that evening, he proudly showed me that his dental appliance on his bottom teeth had been removed!
Big hearts: Later that day, around 5:30 pm, little J.V. showed up at our door! We had been prepared to pay the driver who was being sent, and meet them at the gate, but he showed up with his foster Mom’s 19 year old daughter, who had brought him to our door via metro and bus! WOW! That was amazing and incredible. From doing that metro & bus ride ourselves we know that it takes nearly 2 HOURS! The generosity and kind heartedness of his foster family and amazing Christian orphanage just seem to have no bounds.
Sushi! For our celebration we HAD to have Sushi…OF COURSE! A boy who composes songs about sushi and is able to sing them endlessly for 30 minutes at a time simply HAS to have Sushi for a celebration! We celebrated with our newly formed family of 6 along with our newfound Ukrainian college student friends, Sl. and Sa. We always have a hilariously good time with them and their language skills not only help us with J.V., but have kept us out of a LOT of trouble around here!
Friday, October 19, 2012
Dad’s Checking Out: Now that court was complete, one parent is able to return home. Although he enjoyed our time here MUCH more than he expected to, Weej had to get back to work. He used 4 weeks of vacation and is pretty much out. He worked hard all morning to get an appointment with the US Embassy at 1:45 so he could process his portion of the documents which are needed for me to complete the adoption process by myself. He simultaneously worked with our travel agent to book a flight back to the US for Saturday morning…at 6 AM! He couldn’t book the flight until he knew if he had the Embassy appointment. The travel agent is on Eastern standard time in the US, so he didn’t come in until 3 or 4 pm our time. At what seemed like the last minute Weej was able to make it to the 1:45 Embassy appointment and also make his plane reservations. As desperate as he was to get on that flight, I must admit that I secretly hoped he wouldn’t get a flight for a few more daysJ It has been a wonderful, amazing, relaxing, and fun time as a family. But he got the flight and spent the rest of the day packing and preparing.
Neon Chicken: Friday night we celebrated his last night in Ukraine with some traditional Ukrainian food with our great new friends, Sa. & Sl. again. The restaurant has neon sign with a car on it, but for some reason Weej remembered a chicken on the sign after the first time we ate there and called it the Neon Chicken. We found that to be hilarious, so affectionately refer to this place as the Neon Chicken. What a difference a few weeks make in understanding what to order at this place! We now know what we LOVE in Ukraine and what we want to avoid. They love dill, for example…on nearly everything. I like dill ON PICKLES, but have decided that’s about it!:) But the kids and I are really going to miss Vereniky when we go. Meat, potatoes, cherries, almost whatever you want! You can have a complete meal- all stuffed into a few noodles! J
Good bye : We completed the night with Weej saying goodbye to our new friends and to us. It was so sad.
Saturday, October 20, 2012.
This day was my parent’s 51st Wedding Anniversary! I am so grateful for their love, commitment and example!
A little Mourning: Sackcloth and ashes were in order. Weej left the house at 3:30 am or earlier, via a ride from the amazing Ir., our host's fiance, to catch his 6 am flight. The house was SO weird when we got up; sad, quiet and empty without my Sweetheart. His usual spot at the table with his laptop was empty. The coffee pot which was usually filled with aromatic blend when I awoke…empty (although he did get the water and coffee grounds ready for me…one last time here). He is super busy, ants in his pants and always on the move. So in order to keep himself sane here, he had busied himself with cooking, running to the store and other various assorted chores around here. Now..all gone-which is the main reason I haven’t blogged in several days- too much to do here nowJ I’m pretty much a single Mom for now. My cooking, shopping and kitchen cleaning Hubby left and took his laptop with him. L So, we stayed in our pajamas all day Saturday and didn’t leave the house until 10 pm just to take out the trash. We cleaned the house up for Sv.’s return from Germany at 11pm, and did some school work, then made dinner and watched “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”. It wasn’t a terrible day, just lonely and weird. We stayed up late to see Sv., who had been on business in Germany all week, and his sweet fiancé, Ir., who had so sweetly taken Weej to the airport at :30 AM! Again, the generosity of the people we have met here blows me away.
I must add that our little J.V. loved the daily homeschool checklist I made for him on Friday and worked so diligently to complete it. Since we weren’t able to finish it on Friday, he was determined to finish it on Saturday! The Original Three were incredulous that he would want to do schoolwork on a Saturday, but fortunately they didn’t damper his enthusiasm. Most of what was left included our Classical Conversations memory work songs. It was our first time doing the CC Memory work with him, so I was eager to see what he thought. I was so pleasantly surprised when he eagerly attempted to sing along with EVERY song we played for him. After observing his eagerness to learn, I feel much more confident about his ability to “hang” with the other kids in the class once we get back! And for my CC friends who are reading this, after listening to Week 7 of timeline a few times in a row, he was walking around the house singing, “Jesus the MESSIAH!” It was awesome…and still a bit surreal. I must be dreaming, please don’t wake the MommyJ .
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Church at ICA was wonderful and refreshing, as usual. Our friends, P & J thought they may leave last Sat., but delay upon delay necessitated a few more days here and we were able to see them on Sunday again! The Church prayed over them and we enjoyed a message about wounded hearts. How appropriate, as our boys know all about that. They were in Children’s Church during the message, so were not reminded of their pasts. The Associate Pastor gave a great example of how the only true healing for a broken heart is Jesus. He said anything else is similar to going to the hospital and seeing everyone but the surgeon. The nurses and techs, etc. all take very good care of you, but without the Surgeon, you’re not going to make it!
Along the wounded heart lines, my little J.V. fell apart when he had to part from us to ride back to the orphanage one last time with the Director. It was heart wrenching and the first time I’ve seen him cry. Poor, sweet boy. He tried so hard to keep it together, but had his head buried into me in a longer than the usual hug. When I looked at his sweet face, it was red with tears streaming down. I didn’t hear crying, just saw the evidence. Sadly, we left before the director did, so I heard from P & J that after we left J.V. hugged P and just bawled. It is good that he misses us a lot already, but I sure hate to see him so torn up. It made my already melancholy heart just ache all day.
Prego: After Church we rode with Sv. and Ir. to Prego, an Italian café, where kids are able to make their own pizzas complete with dress-up in a red and white striped apron and hat! The food was great, minus the “Special Lemonade”, which tasted more like fingernail polish remover to meJ The entire table was sharing the “special lemonade” after the servers recommendation, and none of us could identify what bizarre flavor it was. It was pink and had not one thing lemony about it! Sv. decided it tasted EXACTLY like the Spa he got for his birthday SMELLED! HA! We affectionately named it, “Smoke Juice” and had great fun laughing about it.
Nature Mission: After lunch we went on another Sv. adventure! We were off in two cars to find branches for Sv. and Ir’s wedding, as well as beautiful fall leaves to decorate. We stopped near a forested area, parked on the edge of a 4 lane highway in true Ukrainian style and walked across said Highway to the woods. Evidently our nature retrieval mission edged on the illegal in Ukraine, so we were having great fun with lookouts, secret bird calls and rushing about with branches in blankets. It was all very hilarious!
After the secret nature mission, we returned to the apartment to tidy up and prepare for our big night out on the town! Our crazy gang was headed to the National Opera House to see Swan Lake!!! The Ladies had all agreed we would dress up! Sv. decided to dress up, too….in his finest cowboy attire and his Billy Bob teeth!!! When Ab. saw him, she said, “Ohhhhh, poor Ir. She’s getting all beautiful and he’s looking like that.” Ha! Our cheap seats were cheap for a reason. We were in the balcony with an obscured view. But for $2.50 per ticket I was pretty thrilled to be able to see ¾ of the stage perfectly! J
The dancers were poised, accomplished and striking. The costumes were beautiful and the music superb. Even if you aren’t a ballet fan, the live orchestra alone playing Tchaikovsky was phenomenal. I enjoyed it immensely. I think most everyone enjoyed the ballet and most definitely the company. J. saw the first 20 min and the last 20 minutes with a good solid 2+ hour nap in between. He said he would have rather watched 5 episodes of Strawberry Shortcake with An. than suffer through that ballet. J
Monday, October 22, 2012
Today is my amazing, sweet, and funny Mom’s birthday! The kids and I caught up on some MUCH needed sleep and slept in several hours!
We did some school work, laundry and planning. We decided on spaghetti and meat sauce & garlic bread for dinner, let Sv. know and invited his friends. We made a mad dash to the store, for the first time by ourselves! We were able to walk there, get the 8 bags of stuff we needed and back to the apartment in just over 30 min! Between me handing each item from our full cart to the cashier (no conveyor belt) and all three Original Kids stationed on the other side of the cashier with a bag in each hand, we nearly had a military operation going on crammed into the tiny checkout aisle (everything seems small here…I need to get back to the States and breathe a deep breath!!!) We were able to accomplish our mission and race back to start dinner. Our funny guests arrived around 7pm.: Sv., Ir. , K., Sl., Sa. and their Youth pastor, J. There were 10 of us total and fortunately we didn’t run out of food.:)
It was fun but still not the same without my other half. I’m incomplete; and even more so this week with a missing husband and second son. L Looking forward to getting these next few weeks over with and restoring our family!
10 Opera House tickets to Swan Lake- only $25 total!!
The Opera House
Our Amazing New Ukrainian Friends, Ir., K., Sa. & Sl.!
Happy Anniversary, Monsoon Style:)
Much better:)
The Veranda entry way
The Veranda
Our eventually private room!
Fun friends
More fun than we ever imagined!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
The Court House
Creepy Alley to navigate to get to the restrooms!
The Courthouse bathrooms...rank, nasty, squatty Potties.
Our Four kids!
Gratitude
The New Improved Lynch Family
That View again!
The Celebration Begins..notice our photo bombers!:)
This spells Sushi Me!:)
My Sushi Boys!
J. V. stands in awe of so many things - it is neat to see life through his eyes.
This Photo made possible by Jehovah Jireh!!
My "Baby" Boy- catching up on 13 years of snuggles-
he fell asleep here, just like every new baby likes to do.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Homeschool, Kiev style!
My two "Littles"
Great Ukrainian food, aka, "The Neon Chicken"
Sunday, October 21, 2012
"Smoke Juice" ewwwww
Making Pizzas at Prego!
This guy frightened me a little when he came out of the bathroom.:D
Can you tell Ir. is not so sure she wants to be seen with Bubba;)
Thank you Sv., that's much nicer:)
Beautiful ballet, beautiful dancers
The Prince and his Princess
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