iPad Raffle for a friend's fundraiser! ***RAFFLE ENDED***

When you blog about your Ukrainian adoption journey you "meet" lots of amazing friends on the same journey.  One such friend completed the adoption of her beautiful daughter in December of 2010.  Their family has already started the process over to go back to Ukraine in the coming months to adopt another beautiful child.  They are running an amazing fundraiser right now where you could win a raffle drawing for an iPad!  For all the details on how to donate and be entered into the iPad raffle drawing visit their fundraising blog here:  iPad Raffle!!!

Jeff's head just might explode...

Alex came home and told me there are four different boys at school that plan to ask her to the formal dance next month.  She is off the hook from saying "yes" to any of them, though, as she is not allowed to date yet.  How does she know about the four boys?  Of course there was a different boy in her class that shared that information.  I think he was sent to "feel her out" to see if she was interested in any of these boys.

She's a little embarrassed, I think it's funny (for now) and I'm pretty sure Jeff is going to have heart palpitations.  Can you imagine if I sent the two of them out together to shop for a dress for the formal?  Hmmm...I think I just hatched an evil plan.  :)

Bwaahaahaaahaaaa!!!

Another school week down

Today marks the end of the standardized testing (GA-CRCT's) for our county.  Alex was required to take the tests which is pretty funny considering the fact she can only read/understand an extremely limited amount of English.  This is typically a test that a student would have to "pass" in order to move on to the next grade level, but because A is in ESOL she is exempt from that requirement.  I just told her to do the best she can do and not worry about what she couldn't understand.  It will be interesting to see what her scores are, but I'm expecting them to be fairly low.

Only five school weeks remain.  I am really looking forward to summer break.  We have a trip to Colorado planned for my sister-in-law's wedding in June.  I plan to drive and make a stop in Missouri for a few days so I can introduce A to my dad's side of the family.  Then in July we will go back to FL to visit Jeff's mom.  Okay, and hit the *awesome* Siesta Key beach.  :)  And then school starts again on August 1!

Alex is enjoying being able to ride her bike up to the tennis courts to watch Jeff play or even just go for a walk by herself.  She really misses her friends a lot, but she usually gets to call one or two of them on the weekends.  She has also re-connected with her Spanish host family via Skype, which is free!  (Thank goodness!)  She seems to have a complicated relationship with them.  She summed it up by saying they are great to talk to, but not to live with.  :)

Our younger two kids have been amazing with the adjustment of having Alex home.  There have been no jealousy issues and even though they sometimes get on A's nerves (they are 9 & 6...they get on my nerves, too)  she has been a great big sister to them.  I really don't think I could be any more proud of them than I am.

 

Two days is too many...

Alex continues to go to school and has adjusted well to most things.  Reading and writing in English are a great source of frustration for her, but I know it will just take time.  Her conversational English is pretty darn good at this point.  She mentioned a few days ago that the 8th grade class is taking a two day field trip to Charleston at the end of the month.  I told her to bring home the information for it and we could decide if that was something she could do.  She would never bring the info home so I ended up e-mailing one of her teachers asking for the details.  Finally Alex told me that she didn't want to go.  She said that she had just gotten her family and two days was too long to be away from them.  Yeah, that was definitely a feel good moment!

Also coming up in May is a formal 8th grade dance.  Poor Jeff was disappointed when the answer to his question, "Is this a Daddy/Daughter Dance" was "ummm....no".  I didn't know they did *formal* dances in  8th grade!  Time to take the Fabulous Miss A dress shopping.  *sniff*  This is going way too fast!!!

It's permanent...

Earlier today while we were at my mom's house Alex picked up a Sharpie and proceeded to draw on her hand.  Daddy, Uncle Greg and Grandmom all told her it was permanent, to which she sweetly replied, "It's okay".  Not too long after that she was surprised to see that the marker wasn't coming off her hand.  Everyone said that they had told her it was permanent.  I saw the look on her face and asked her if she knew what the word permanent meant.  She shook her head "no".  Oops.  Her English speaking skills are so good that it is sometimes hard to remember that she doesn't know what a seemingly basic word such as "permanent" means.

Road Trip

Alex is on her first American "road trip".  We loaded up the car on Sunday morning to drive down to Jeff's mother's home in Florida to stay for a few days over Spring Break.  After a long day of driving in heavy traffic and more that one Interstate parking lot we arrived at our destination 11 hours after we began what should have been a 9 hour trip.  Jeff didn't come with us as he needed to stay home for work, so it was just me and the kids.  Alex actually chose to ride in the back seat the entire way so she could watch movies on the DVD player with R&M.  I have a car that has a third row that can be used as storage or as additional seating.  For the most part R sat in the third row while A&M sat in the middle row.  At one point they decided it would be fun if all three of them sat together in the middle row.  That lasted about an hour.  :)

On Monday we went to the beach.  We got there early enough that we were able to carve our a piece of real estate close to the water, but it wasn't long before the beach was jam packed.  The water was cold, but all three kids ended up swimming a bit.  I chose to keep my toes on dry sand.  :)  R&M spent a lot of time building a sand castle with several other kids and Alex spent some time just catching some rays.  One very, very cool part of the beach trip was when three dolphins came very close to shore.  A&M got incredibly close to them (within 10 feet) while R stayed back bit (maybe 20 feet).  The dolphins swam back and forth in front of the kids and about 100 other people for at least five minutes before heading back out to deeper water.  Even though I was just on the shore it was still an amazing thing to see.  After the trip to the beach we went back to Grammy's house for lunch then headed up to the pool.  We were all a little sun-sucked by the end of the day.

Today it rained all day so there was no beach or pool trip.  Instead we stayed home and made earrings with Grammy and two of her friends.  Alex' earrings turned out the best, of course!  I don't think there is anything she can't do well.  Afterward we went the the movie theater to see "Hop".  I wasn't exceptionally excited about it, but the kids were.  The kids all loved it, and I didn't hate it so I guess it was a win-win.

So far it has been a pretty good spring break.  We will head back to GA on Friday.  On Saturday my mom is hosting a "Welcome Home" party for my nephew who recently returned from Afghanistan.  VERY excited to see him!

Their one hour stint sitting together in the second row.

One of my favorite memories of Ukraine

This post really should be backdated to February 3, 2011.  That was the day that we were to see Alex for the first time in Ukraine to get her official consent to be adopted.  Originally we were supposed to be there on 2/2/11, but the Inspector had gone to Kyiv for the day so we had to postpone until 2/3/11.  We should have been able to see A that morning, but the Director had gone to Lugans'k that morning so our meeting time kept getting pushed back further into the day.  We were in Lutugino all day, just waiting and waiting.  Our friends, Kelly & Scott, were at the orphanage visiting their son and saw Alex throughout the day.  At one point A asked them where we were.  Kelly told her we were just having coffee at the 999 Cafe and we would be there soon.  As soon as A heard we were just down the street she excitedly told them she would go to us and she took off running.  Keep in mind we were not allowed to see her until after our meeting with the Director.  Jeff, our facilitator Sergei and I were enjoying our coffee when Little Miss Sassy Pants comes bursting in the front door.  Amazingly enough, I wasn't the least bit surprised to see our girl breaking all the rules.  I jumped up and gave her a big hug.  It took Jeff a moment to realize it was actually her standing in front of us trying to catch her breath from sprinting to the cafe.  Our poor facilitator went completely white, eyes shifting back and forth from us to the door with the fingers of his right hand furiously tapping out a nervous beat on the table.  Her being there was a huge "no-no" and Sergei was about to have heart palpitations.  After a few minutes I took mercy on Sergei and told Alex to go back to school to wait for us.  She left and Sergei regained some of his color but he was still a nervous wreck.  About ten minutes later our little trouble maker walked back in and said she got someone to cover for her.  We let her stay about ten minutes, then sent her back again.  It wasn't too much longer before we were called back to the school because the Director was on her way.  When we saw Kelly and Scott later on Kelly looked almost as panicked as Sergei had when Alex came to the cafe.  She said when she told Alex where we were A took off so fast Kelly didn't have time to do or say anything.  Poor Kelly was scared for the same reasons as Sergei.  But all was good.  If anyone found out about her "breakout" nobody said anything to us.

The reason I never posted about this while I was in Ukraine is because you never really know who is reading your blog.  I'm still slightly nervous to post it now simply because I really don't want to get our facilitator in hot water should he be working in Lutugino again.  But, this is just one of those memories from Ukraine that always brings a huge smile to my face and I wanted to share.

Russian? Spanish? English?

Alex' "tour" of the high school on Thursday wasn't  tour at all.  It was basically a field trip to see a concert which she was less than impressed with.  :)  Oh well, at least she had a fun day.  After the field trip her grade pretty much just goofed off and played games the rest of the day.  A seems to be doing well in school as far as adjusting, making friends and communicating with her teachers.  Jeff and I met with her ESOL teacher on Thursday morning.  While A's conversational skills are great, she simply can't read or write in English well at this point.  Her ESOL teacher has communicated this with A's teachers so she is working with modifications in her classes.  Her math and science teachers are giving her printed instructions in Spanish which is very helpful.

After A got home from school this afternoon one of our neighbors and her 7 year old daughter came over the meet Alex.  Our neighbor is from Ukraine but has been in America for 19 years.  She is fluent in Russian and has taught her daughter the Russian language as well.  She brought with her something to make for Alex.  It was similar to porridge and Alex said she would have it with dinner every night in Ukraine.  I thought it was really good, too.  She also told us about a Russian food store nearby that we can check out and see if there is anything that A would like.  Can't wait to go!

We had our first post placement visit with our social worker tonight so that she could make sure Alex was adjusting to family life well.  The visit was about an hour and I was very proud of how engaged and engaging Alex was.  The visit is just part of the paperwork process of the adoption.  Not everyone has to do this, but it was part of the agreement we had with the adoption agency we used.  We will have another visit in a month.

Alex told us she wanted to get a summer job!  Considering the fact we won't even be around most of the summer I don't think it would work out, but it really surprised me she wanted to go to work.  I'm not sure why, other than the fact that her friend, C, is job hunting now.  Perhaps next summer she can look, but in the meantime maybe she can find a few families that would let her babysit.

Tomorrow is Saturday...the day she gets to call two of her friends in Ukraine.  She is truly happy to be here, but she really, really misses her friends.  To be honest, I miss her friends, too, and I was only there for a month!  It must be so hard for her, but she is holding together remarkably well.  There is actually a boy from A's school in Ukraine that was adopted along with his younger brother by a family in North Carolina.  He has been home since last fall.  They talk to each other a few times a week which I think is great.  While learning more and more English is really important, I want her to retain her Russian and speaking to friends on the phone helps her with that.  She is getting to the point that she sometimes can't figure out if a word she is about to say is Russian, Spanish or English.

Next week is the last week of school before Spring Break.  We are *all* in need of a break.  And then after Spring Break there is only seven weeks of school before summer vacation!  My, how quickly time is flying!

 

 

 

High School already?

Alex came home from school today and told me that on Thursday her grade will go over to the high school for a tour.  So cool that A gets to experience that when everyone else does.  While I'm sure some of the kids from her grade have already been in the building, it will be the first official tour for everyone.  Also on Thursday is my first parent/teacher conference for Alex.  I will be meeting with her ESOL teacher to discuss the score A received on her placement test for English as a second language.  She scored pretty low, which is fine by me because it affords her more assistance on the upcoming standardized tests that she will have to take.  Her conversational English speaking skills are quite good, but her reading comprehension and spelling skills aren't up to par.

On Sunday our friends had a "Grand Opening" event for their new store, Fido's Market (www.FidosMarket.com).  As a family we helped out with the event.  Alex had fun running all over the place and as she *loves* dogs she was in heaven getting to play with so many different ones.  We even got to see a very cool K9 demonstration which I think helped change Alex' opinion of police officers for the better.  Let's just say the police in Ukraine are a bit different that the police in America.

The Fabulous Miss A was a little tired and cranky this morning.  She didn't want to go to school and as a result dragged her feet long enough getting out the door that she almost missed the bus.  She had only gotten a few feet away from the house when the bus pulled up about 130 yards away.  She just stopped. Jeff yelled to her to RUN!  She started to run, made it about halfway and stopped again.  Jeff yelled to her to RUN! again.  She made the bus, and it's a good thing.  It would have been one thing if she had an actual reason for missing the bus, but to miss it because she simply didn't *want* to catch it just isn't going to fly with me.  A is a very good girl, but *S*T*U*B*B*O*R*N*.  I'm pretty sure that she thought maybe, just maybe, if she missed the bus she wouldn't have to go to school.

Spring break is coming up in less than two weeks.  I plan to put the three kids in the car and drive down to Grammy's house in FL.  Jeff won't be able to make it, but we should have fun anyway.  And when we come back we will be able to attend a family gathering at my mom's house for my nephew, John, who just returned from Afghanistan.  Can't wait to squish him!  :)

School Day #2

Today was a much better day for A.  She is still not able to figure out how to open her locker without asking another student for help, but that was her only issue that she told me about.  She only had math homework to do tonight and she whipped through that in about 10 minutes.  She rode the bus home and even seemed okay with that.  It was great to see her in good spirits this afternoon.  After homework her friend, C, came over and the girls walked to the park and then came back home to ride bikes.  C's mom was kind enough to have A and our 8 year old over for dinner while I took our 6 year old to Acro class.  What a great evening for all my kids.  :)