The new year has begun...2010

I can not believe how fast the year went by. It has been exactly one year since we came back home with our sons. We are a big and happy family of seven!!!!


We had a great year and the boys have adjusted so well to their life here in America. They love it here! Aleks is now 15 and in 9th grade in high school and brings home straight A's. His teachers are always saying how smart he is to do so well in school while he has only been here one year. He is learning to drive and loves every minute he can spend at the wheel. He wants to be an architect and I am planning to enroll him in some summer classes at Portland State University.
Dmitri has changed so much during the time he was with us. From being a very shy and not expressive boy, to a confident, loving young man. He will turn 14 soon. He is doing great in 8th grade and improving his grades constantly. He is very good in math and enjoys playing soccer at his school. He wants to be a cartoon animator.


Katie is almost 17!!! I cant believe that she came to us when she was only 11... She is such big help to me. She is attending 11th grade and is also enrolled in Center for Advance Learning, taking medical classes. She wants to be a doctor. Katie is very friendly and outgoing and very strong in her faith and beliefs. When she grows up and has a family of her own, she wants to adopt. We are very proud of her. Katie is also getting ready to go on a mission trip to Mexico this year to help build a house for a poor family.


Ilianna is in 3rd grade and is 9 years old. She loves to play with her little sister and she absolutely loves school! She is a sweet girl who writes me letters almost everyday of how much she loves me. When we go to parent/teacher conferences and the teacher shows me her journals: all she writes is about me and how much she wants to be like me. She has such a loving heart and she wants to be a massage therapist.


Isabella is 3 and is our little princess. She loves playing with her brothers and sisters and always waits for them to come home from school. She loves horses and ponies and dreams of having a horse of her own. She learned how to ski this winter and really loved it.





We spent many fun moments together this past year including, going to Hawaii, Mt. Bachelor (where kids learned how to ski and had so much fun together) and the Oregon coast.
We are blessed to have such a wonderful family and always pray for the orphans still in Ukraine. I still get emails from kids that really want to be adopted asking if there is a family for them.
If you know of anyone that wants to adopt or is in the process, I can always share about kids in the Kiev orphanage.
We are looking to many fun and memorable memories ahead in 2010!
Happy New Year!~
Blessings
Inna

Update

Hello All,
We are all doing great! The boys started school when we got home and are doing very well. Aleks started 8th grade and Dmitri started 7th. I am surprised at how fast they are both learning English. They are so bright and the teachers can't say enough good things about them. They are both in ESL class and Aleks has been moved up to a hight lever just after being in the country for 2 months!!! They are both on the Honor Society and bring home Awards for their studies. We are really proud of them. It was Dmitri's 13th Birthday and we celebrated it here with his new friends...He has a blast!!!
All the kids get along well between each other and are very used to each other now. Katie, who we adoted from disruption about 5 years ago is finishing up 10th grade this year with all Honors and AP classes. She was accepted to the Center for Advanced Learning for the next two years and will be completing her high school diploma as well as getting her medical 2-year certificate for the next two years. She is very excited.
Ilianna is finishin 2nd grade and will be in 3rd next year. She is doing well in school.
Our baby, Isabella, who is now 3 years old...is just as always making us laught and loves all her brothers and sisters...and they love her...
It was also our 9th year marriage anniversary on the 27th of May...
Blessings to everyone...and hopefully I will post more often and add pictures soon...
Inna

SUMMER 2009 HOSTING

Hello everyone,
Now that we are back home settled in and the boys are in school, we are planning our next hosting trip for this summer. Approximate dates are June 15, 2009 until July 20, 2009. We are inviting kids from Father's House, a Christian orphanage in Kiev, Ukraine. If anyone is interested, please email me and I can tell you more about kids that are coming and email you pictures. Please spread the word. My email is maranatha220033@yahoo.com
Please pray for this trip, so that every child will have a family and a great vacation in USA.
Blessings

Home Sweet Home...

We are home!
We had a great flight and kids did well. They were so excited to finally be at home. We arrived home at 12AM. My mom prepared food, the house was clean with flowers and candles. It was so nice.
The boys loved their new room and ran to unpack their things right away. The girls were so happy to see us and their brothers and sister. It was a great reunion!
Even though this adoption journey was so long, we could definately see God's hand in every step.

WE ARE GOING HOME...

We are finally coming home tomorrow. We are flying out on the 29th and will soon see our daughters and other family members and friends!
We got our visas today. We submitted all necessary paperwork and our visas were done same day in about 20 minutes. Praise the Lord!
Last Monday, the orphanage had a going away party for the boys and it went great! Almost all employees and children came and there were many people. The man who started this orphanage spoke first and it was quite emotional. He talked about his memories of Aleks and Dmitri when they first came to the orphanage 8 years ago. He shared some funny stories about them and said that the kids were trully a blessing and good example to others in the orphanage. He spoke with tears in his eyes, but they were happy tears that these kids finally have a forever family that they prayed so long for. Then one by one, kids stood up and wished the boys blessing in their lives and others talked about happy memories that they had with the boys. It was such a great time that we spent together. The orphanage director gave the boys Ukrainian Bibles as gifts and gave us a large clock that has the map of the world on there.
Today we went with our sons to gransma Luda's house to say goodbye. It was good for them to see their grandma once more. Their bio mom was also there. We sat and talked about happy times and grandma gave the boys some gifts. We talked for couple of hours and then hugged and said goodbye. Their bio mom hugged me and we stood there for a while...she had tears in her eyes, but did not want the boys to see her crying. I am so glad that we were able to have this meeting and the boys had some closure in their lives and can now move on to their new life in our new family. They are very excited to go home to America.
Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us throughout this journey! God is good and we are so happy and blessed that we are His children!
Please pray for our safe flight home tomorrow!
Blessings to you all!

We now have passports!!!!

Praise the Lord! Something happened in this whole adoption process, before it actually was supposed to happen... Everything is delayed in Ukraine, but we actually got the boys' passports before we were supposed to get them... strange for Ukraine...
We applied for passports and did not want to pay the fee for passports to expedite them, so we just prayed.. we were told when we applied that if we paid the fee, then we would get the passports or Thursday or Friday...but we decided not to pay... and we still received the passports last Friday! What a great surprise!!! So Monday we are going to take the boys to get their medicals done and then to US Embassy to get their visas... we are almost home..
Yesterday, one of the girls from the orphanage celebrated her birthday here, so she asked me to help her prepare her birthday fiest...it was fun to teach them how to cook and spend time with other kids.. We had a blast!
Tomorrow the orphanage is having a goodbye party for the boys and everyone is invited!
We already have our suitcases almost packed and ready to go...
We definately have a wonderful attorney who helped us thorough this rough journey... We would reccomend her to anyone who needs help with adoption in Ukraine, but most importantly we have a wonderful God who loves us and cares for us and leads us though all tough roads of life..
Blessings to all!

Delayed....again

Once again we are delayed in the process. We are still waiting for our sons' passports. We are hoping that they will be done on Monday and we can have medicals and visas on Tuesday. We changed our flight once more for the 29th of January now. This is the 3rd time changing our tickets while we are here in Ukraine. There was a lot of "paperwork" that was needed to apply for the passport at the "ovir" and also it took a while to unregister the kids from their place of registry. Even though our sons lived at the orphanage for 8 years now, they still were registered in the apartment where their gransmother lives. Since the orphanage and that apartment belong to different counties, they were giving us a hard time when boys had to be unregistered... It seems like most people here just like to complicate things and no one really thinks about whats best for the kids... Oh well, we are enjoying our last week here ( and I really hope this is the last week in Ukriane for us)!
Thanks again for all your prayers...this has been a very long adoption process...