new blog

If you'd like to keep up with our family, we have started a new blog. 

http:/thenolteclan.blogspot.com

Please go there for further updates.

More pictures

OK, I am not sure what has happened to my pictures??  It is weird because on my computer and my husband's laptop, we cannot view the pics, but on my mom's computer, they are still on here.  Will you do me a favor and either comment on here or e-mail to let me know if you still see all of the pictures we posted while we were still in Ukraine?  If most of you can't I may change to blogspot.com soon.  If I change, I'll put a link to our new blog on this site. 

So, here are pictures that we had made a few weeks ago. 

I'll go ahead and write a little update while I am logged on.  The kids are doing so good!!!  They are learning English so fast.  Especially Brayden, He is even saying sentences sometimes!  That is great for only being home 1.5 months.  Abby is a little slower at learning English, but she'll catch on soon :)  They are both VERY smart and bright kids.  They started school a few weeks ago and love that a lot!  Brayden is excelling in Math (I guess because Math is pretty much Universal).  He is in 3rd grade where he is supposed to be for his age.  I figured they would have held him back to 1st or 2nd because of the language barrier and maybe maturity level, but he fit right in his 3rd grade class and is doing wonderfully!  Abby is in Kindergarten.  She just loves it and the teachers love her :)  Although Abby can be a little stubborn at times, her little grin will just melt your heart :)  She is definatesly my little fireball!! 

Abby and Brayden are so excited about Christmas.  Brayden keeps telling me "Christmas......too much days" Abby keeps saying when I tuck her in bed "Christmas......zaftra?" (tomorrow)  And I tell her "No, not tomorrow"  I need to make a red ane green construction paper chain like I did for Ukraine so they can get a better idea of when it is. 

Alyssa, well she thinks she is the "big sister" and likes to tell Abby and Brayden "how it is".  She is doing much better, but after the first week home, I think she realized that her brother and sister were really here to stay and then it wasn't all hunky dory anymore :(  She was VERY jealous and acted out in ways that were definately not in her nature.  We had a rough time for a few weeks, but she has calmed down A LOT and is starting to turn back into that sweet little angel that we used to know. 

Abby, Alyssa and Brayden are in gymnastics.  Abby and Brayden LOVE it!!!  I think Abby may have a natural talent at it.  She is so tiny and will attempt anything (which is scary).  SHe has little muscles in her legs and arms and lots of core stregnth which helps.  Brayden is taking it while waiting on baseball to start up.  He is so excited aout playing baseball.  I was sortof hoping he would play soccer, but he probably got sick of it in Ukraine since that was the ONLY thing he and the other boys got to do in thier spare time.  He calls soccer "Ukrainski football" and our football "Americanski football" which he is obsessed with as well.    Alyssa on the other hand seems to be getting really bored with gymnastics and wants to do dance or cheerleading.  The place that they take gymnastics at has a hip hop/jazz/ballet class, so i think I will put her in that.  SHe has tried just Ballet in the past adn didin't like it, but maybe since there is jazz and hip hop in it she will like it better.  I think she will do good at it because Alyssa can dance better than I could even think about dancing, she is just really shy and only lets her true dancing come out around us.  Maybe she'll get over that soon. 

Well, I've gotta go through my second carpool of the morning.  I have already taken Abby adn Brayden to school and now it is time to take Alyssa to Pre-K. 

I am glad I finally got the chance to update and I promise that I will try to more often.  I am getting a wireless card and a laptop for chrismas, so it will be much easier to get online without dial-up. 

Love to you all,

Chris, Julie, Brayden, Abby and Alyssa

Where are my pictures????

That is really weird!  All of my pictures on the entire blog are erased for some reason???  I'll have some more up in a few days with updates.   We have been VERY busy the past few weeks!! 

The children are adjusting wonderfully.  Such great kids adn we love them so much!

Love,

Chris, Julie, Abby, Alyssa, and Brayden

Here are some pictures.......It's about time huh?

Here are some more recent pics of the kiddos.  THey are of our last days in Ukraine and some are of us at home.  One pic is of the kid's first Mikey D's experience, some of the airplane, one is of Abby and a babushka and her daughter who were trying to get to America.  They really took to Abigail and talked to her for a while.  One is of Sveta saying goodbye to the kids.  We have LOTS more of the kids at home, but they have not been transferred to a CD yet, but we will work on that tonight and I will post them ASAP. 

The kids are doing GREAT!!!!!  They are adjusting very well and seem to be very happy.  I think that I am having to adjust more than they are.  It is hard for me to get used to the "get up early, go to bed early" thing!  They are sure keeping me on my toes!  I have not yet figured out how to work in any "Mama" time yet.  Maybe when the kids start school next week, it'll be easier.  Yesterday I joined a gym to help me maintain the 15lbs I lost in Ukraine.  We went to church Sunday and Dr. Merritt talked about "Procrastination" I think my #1 flaw!!!!!  It really spoke to me and that is one reason I joined the gym!  :)  I always say, "one day I'll get fit and eat right".  Well,  if I don't do something about it TODAY, I'll be saying that when I am 80!  LOL!!  The kids really enjoyed church too!  Of course I had to go by and check on them in thier classes a few times, but everytime I checked on them, they were doing so good.  I think they are definately ready for school now.  They need it, and I need them to go too :)  Today, they are going to the Dr. and I will probably take them to their school tomorrow to see when we can get them tested to see where they need to be placed.  Also today, we are going to get our family portrait made.  I am excited about that!  I'll have to post that picture too. 

They had a blast on Halloween!  Brayden was Batman, Alyssa was a lion, and Abby was a fairy.  (will post pics of that later).   They figured out the "run to the door as fast as you can , grab as much candy as you can and beat the other kids to the next door" routine :)  Now we have enough candy to last us till next Halloween. 

I want to thank ALL of you for your precious e-mails and comments!!!  They meant theworld to us while in Ukraine and I am so sorry I couldn't respond to everyone. 

We will continue to update our blog with pictures and posts.  Please follow along if you want to know how our "post adoption" life is going. 

I would write more today, but I've got to go get the kids ready for the Dr.  now.  Note to self.........Getting up two hours before we have to leave to go somewhere it NOT enough time to get three kids ready.  Atleast 3 hours is required!!! ............Boy, has my life changed, but I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Love to you all,

Chris, Julie, Brayden, Abby and Alyssa

OK, that is weird.........I just signed on to update our blog and noticed that about 3/4's of this entry is missing, and this entry is supposed to be connected to the one before it.........hmmmmmmm, I don't have time to write it all again now, but I will in the morning hopefully.  I am soooooo tired!!!!!  The kiddos are keeping me very busy!  I am usually up at 5AM and zonked at 9PM.  Promise to update more VERY soon with recent pics.  Stay tuned..........

by the way, the kids are doing AWESOME!!!!!  We are having lots of fun! :)

Love you guys!!!!
Julie

 

 

We arrived at the Atlanta airport and were greeted by lots of family and friends.  It was 11:30pm, and were very suprised to see so many people there.  It was so awesome to see everyone and for them to meet our new family members.  There were lots of hugs, tears and laughs.  Brayden and Abby did so well with all of the "strangers" giving them hugs and kisses.  We "hung out" at the airport until about 12:30am and then went home.  It was so cool to see the kid's reactions when the got home.  First they saw Flip Flop, our outside dog, and played with her for a little bit. 

Well, here we are........we made it home "safe and sound" (Alyssa's favorite saying).  Sorry we haven't updated, our computer has been crashed until last night.  Lets see, hmmmmm.........what has gone on in our lives in the past 4 days............

First of all, let me say that we are having the time of our lives!!!!!  It has been SOOOOOOO much fun these past few days at home!!  Wow, how the Lord has blessed greatly and I wonder if life can be any better than this? 

OK, now that doesn't mean that our kids are perfect, because by all means they are NOT!!  Ha Ha!  :)  Brayden whines more than the girls do combined, Abby is as stubborn as a mule, and Alyssa, well.......she thinks she is the "big sister" because she can speak English and she LOVES to tattle on EVERY thing that they do!!! 

Thursday night..........We started packing up all of our stuff for the flight home.  The kids were extremely hyper, running around, jumping on beds, doing flips, etc.  After telling them to settle down about 137 times, we decided to just let them burn ouit their energy :)  Well, that wasn't a bright idea, because we soon heard a loud crash and glass shattering.  (Keep in mind that we were staying an an old lady's apartment <she was staying with a friend> and this old lady was really protective over her stuff, she told us before we left to pretty much not touch anything.  There was even a giant stuffed chipmunk that the kids were playing with while she was still there and she said "Nyet, Nyet, Ne Nada" and put the thing away where they could not reach it.)  Back to the crash........when we heard it we both ran into the living room and sure enough, a HUGE lamp that was the ONLY lamp in the room was shattered inot a gazillion pieces.  My first reaction was to of course yell and ask who in the world did it, but when I saw the loook on little Abby's face, I knew she was the culprit.  Poor thing was terrified!!!  I asked Alyssa what happened and turns out she was involved too.  The were jumping on the bed/couch and Alyssa "accidentally" knocked into Abby and she fell and knocked the lamp over.  Since Abby was so mortified and was shaking pretty badly, we dicided to comfort her instead of what we wanted to do :)  I told her that it was OK and tat accidents happen, but tried to expain to her that she and Alyssa should have listened to us and stopped horsing around and because they didn't listen, the lamp got broken.  I think she understood.  We told her and Alyssa both that they had to tell the babushka (oold lady) that they were sorry in the morning.  They were both really worried about doing that.  Even the next morning when they first got up, we could hear Abby talking about the babushka.  Well, the Babushka came, we told her what happened, gave her $50, and made the girls tell them they were sorry.  It seemed like she was OK with it.  Whe our driver arrived to take us to the airport, we lugged all of our stuff down the 5 flights of stairs and were all ready to go until I realized that we left our travel alarm clock in the room.  I ran back pu to get it, rang th doorbell, and the babushka answered with a stern look on her face.  I tried to explain to her that we left something in the apartment and she decided to drag me into the bathroom and was pointing to the toilet seat and was almost yelling at me in Russian.  Aparently, the toilet seat lid was broken???  I told her that I didn't know why it was broken (the lid was about 2 mm. thick made of plastic, it could probably break if you shut it hard enough) We did not even have the lid down the entire time that I know of.  I felt bad for her, but decided to make a run for it, besides, we had already have her $50.  I ran into the living room, grabbed the alarm clock and ran right past her saying "Spaceiba, Dasvidanya" (Thank you, goodbye), all while she was still shouting things in Russian.  :) 

The airport, well, that was an experience also!!!  To get the kids out of the country, you have to have all of the necessary paperwork to do so.  We knew we had all of it, so thought we were good to go!  An official was thumbing through all of our documents and then asked for the court decree.  We had a copy of it, but he said we had to have to original.  We had 2 originals, but they were sealed up the the documents for when we land in the US (these documents are not allowed to be opened).  He would not let us go and told us we needed the original.  OK, that is when my anxiety started to kick in.  We called Sveta and told her the situation.  She started to panic to and said she would call us back.  Int he mean time the official was calling several people over to ask them if we could get through without the original.  Sveta called back and told us that Leo, our driver, was on the way with the original after he picked it up from her apartment.  Well, the airport is 30 min. from her apartment.  About 10 minutes later, they finally let us through with the copy.  We called Sveta to tell her and she said that she had just gotten off the phone with the US Embassy, and they told her that a copy is all that is required and the man obviouly didn't know what he was doing.  WHEW, big releif!  As soon as a turn around, a lady stopped me to search my carry on.  Of course I had liquids on it.  I was for some reason thinking that they lifted the liquid ban, um...........nope............they took all my liquids out (luckily we still had our check on bags with us at that point so we put them in those).  I did have some hand sanitizer and lotion stashed in a pocket in the bag that she didn't see though :)  It was funny, because in Alyssa's carry on, there was a mesh pocket on the outside that had a ziplock with toothpaste in it and the lady didn't catch that. 

On the plane..........Brayden and Abby were beyond excited to be on the Samoliyot "airplane".  We let Brayden sit next to the window.  I sat next to him and Alyssa sat in the seat across the isle from me then Chis and Abby.  It was so sweet because Alyssa knows I don't like to fly, so she grabbed my hand on take off and said "Mommy, I'll hold your hand, it's OK, you are all "safe and sound" with me"  Awe, how sweet was that??  Take off is the absolute most terrifying part for me!!!!  As we took off I think I squeezed Alyssa and Brayden's hand so hard that it had to hurt them.  Once we got up and settled, I was fine, and the kids were having a ball.  After we ate, I really wanted the kids to sleep, so I gave them benadryll, but it didn't work, so a little later I gave them more, still, the didn't budge.  Well, Brayden did finally sleep for maybe 1 hour and Alyssa and Abby maybe 30 minutes.  Chris and I didn't sleep at all.  On our leg from JFK to ATL, I was sitting in the very back with Abby and Alyssa, both zonked out from the time we first sat down until after we landed.  Brayden was up front with Chris and was playing the Game Boy the entire way home while Chris slept.  Remember me saying the take on the way out of NY to Ukraine was very bumpy and scary?  Well, the take off out of NY to ATL was just dandy, but once in the air, it was 200 times scarrier than that take off to Ukrane.  The weather was bad, so the plane was bouncing around all over the place.  It wasn't like normal turbulence, this plane was on a rollercoaster ride!!!!!  It would drop and then shake and then dip down to the left and then drop some more and then dip down to the right!!!  AHHHH!!  I was mortified, and all I cold do was sit there with each girl layin on my lap asleep praying to God not to take us now!!  It is kindof compical now that I am thinking back on it, but at the time...............Oh no, not comical in the least bit!!!!  I was thinking of poor Brayden up in the front all alone while Chris was somehow managing to sleep through all of this.  The reason I knew it was bad is because the flight attendents all were trying to make it back to thier seats and could barely walk to them.  They even looked a little scared!  Oh, and Alyssa's tray was down with 3 cups of water on it and when we dropped one of the times, the waters bounced off and and landed right on her.  Poor thing was so tired she didn't even wake up.  But, as you can see, we landed all "safe and sound" :) 

COMING HOME....................

I know, I know, I haven't updated in a while.  We have literally had NO time to get to a computer in the past few days.  I do not have much time today either, but I have very good news.......WE ARE IN KYIV!!!!  And even better..............WE ARE COMING HOME TOMORROW!!!!!! 

The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity going from Kerch to Brayden's hometown of Sudak to get his birth certificate.  By the way, Brayden supposedly lived there until he was 6 and he remembers A LOT from this town.  He remembered great detail about his birthfamily and what they would do together.  So far only good memories and I hope it stays that way.  Sudak was absolutely georgeous!!!!  It had to be the most beautiful city I have ever seen in my life!!!!  To get to the city, you drive up winding mountians, very tall mountians.  All of the trees were stunning with bright yellow and orange leaves.  We then ended up in a very cozy little town that was set up on the beach.  The beach was black, but the water was clear and there was a spectacular view of the mountians all around.  There was also a huge castle on top of one of the mountains.  OK, I better stop before I sound like a boring book.  I'll send pics when get home and settled. 

After Sudak, we then went to Simferopol for Abigail's birth certificate.  We had to stay there overnight and we just arrived in Kyiv via overnight train late yesterday afternoon.  THe train ride was a hit for the first ummm...............15 minutes..........after that, it got old real quick.  I'll have to admit that all of my children are troopers now.  Imagine keeping 3 children couped up in a van for 2 days, and then in a train station for FIVE HOURS and then an overnight train until the next afternoon.  Poor things, they had nowhere to burn thier energy, and needless to say, they took all the energy that I had left.  Last night I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open during dinner.  Luckily Chris gave the kids baths, but I had to wash clothes BY HAND after baths.   We were all asleep by 10pm and we had to be up and ready by 7am this morning.  We went to the medical center to get Abby and Brayden checkups (this is required for their US VISA) and then we had an appointment at the US Embassy at 11am.  We got done with that at 12:30 and went to eat lunch at the Potato House and now I am sitting here typing this while Brayden is beside me playing the GameBoy and Chris took the girls for a walk around the city for a few minutes. 

AHHHH...........see what I mean by a whirlwind of activity???  It has been so crazy!!!!  We have to go pick up the children's passports from the Embassy at 4pm (hopefully) if they are not ready, we'll get them in the morning at 8am and we will be on our way to the US at 12pm!!!!!  Our flight lands in NY at 3 something and leaves at 7:45pm for Atlanta, which puts us in ATL around 10 something of Friday evening.  For those of you who want to meet us at the airport, I am sorry it is so late and completely understand if you cannot make it.  For those of you still coming, get in touch with my mother, she will know the exact time we land because we will call her fom NY to let her know.  For some reason the arrival time is not on our itinerary.

That is all I will write for now since I am in a hurry.  Except for this.............We wnet to McDonalds in Simferopol!!  You should've seen the look on Abby's face when she bit into a chicken nugget dipped in Sweet n Sour sauce...........the girl absolutely LOVED it.  Brayden got a hamburger, although he ate it all, he didn't have much to say about it.  He did try a bite of Chris's nugget and didn't like it. 

OK, good bye for now, and next time I update will be in the good ole' US!  Thank you all for your prayers and please pray for us a safe return home. 

Love to you all,

Chris, Julie, Alyssa, Abigail and Brayden

 

OK, I just checked online and our flight arrives in ATL at 10:09PM on Friday.