Hanging out with the kids.....

Brayden is out of the hospital!!!!!!!!!!!  Finally, but he has still not had a bath :(  If he doesn't get one by today, we are going to say something to the caregivers about it.  We give him a wet wipe and let him wipe himself down whenever we see him, but to not have a bath and to still be in the same clothes for over a week???? YUCK!  We have more good news though............today, they are going to let us take Brayden to Abby's orphanage!!!  So, we'll have all 3 children together for the first time :)  I am curious to see how they all interact.  We are hoping for only 5 more days or less of visiting them and we'll have them with us full time. Please pray for us to be able to get them for the10 day wait, it is all up to the orphanage director. 

The children in both kids groupa's are so sweet! It was so sad yesterday because one little girl in Abby's group told me that she wanted to come to America too :(  I told her that her Mama and Papa would come one day. I didn't know what else to say. In Brayden's groupa there are 7 yr. old twins that are just great boys :) We had fun with them too yesterday.  Their names are Vova and Sasha and they are adorable :)  A 14 yr.old boy, Sergey, walked up to us and I noticed that he had a shirt on that said "The Least of These".  It is a christian organization ran by Rich Richmond and his wife.  They take a team a few times each year to Kerch and a few other cities in Ukraine to spread the gospel to the children.  www.theleastofthese.org  Well, Sergey pulled out a bible that he was given, I am guessing, from this organization. He was so proud of his bible.  I asked him if I could see it, and Chris and I looked through it. It is written in Russian, and this kid had obviously been reading it because it had markings all in it along with lots of pieces of torn paper bookmarking different passages. It really touched our hearts. What the Richmond's and their teams are doing is working, God Bless them!!!

While it is fun hanging out with all of the kids, we really do need our time to bond with our kids.  And that is really hard to do when all of the other kids are around.  Maybe today we'll try to take them to a place more private so we can interract with just them for a little bit, and then at the end of our visit we can play with all of the children. 

Yesterday, while visiting with Abby, we let her listen to music with headphones.  At first she was grinning from ear to ear, and then she started to sing really loud :)  The songs are children's songs that are in Russian and English. She sang the Russian part well and actually did pretty good on the English part.  I think she is going to learn English pretty fast :) I guess we'll see :) 

The mesquitos are very bad here at night. We have been keeping our balcony doors open while we are sleeping because it gets hot.  Well, it is not worth the 10+ bugbites we have the next morning.  I would spray with bug spray, but it would be gross to get it all over our sheets.

Last night I cooked the best meal yet! I stirfried chicken with bellbeppers, garlic and onions in butter, oil, and an AWESOME spice packet that I bought. I have no idea what is in the spice packet, except I do taste ginger in it.  Chris told me to buy aboiut 20 of these packets to take home:)  I also cooked my MIL, Caroline's famous frenchfries:)  I cut up potatoes very thin and cooked them in oil on a high temp for about an hour. They were so crispy and chewy! YUMMY!! Oh, and I made some crab salad with crabmeat, seashell pasta, peas and mayonaise. I think we will probably just cook in the room everynight, it is much easier, and cheaper than going out to eat. And the food is much better too :)

Well, I better go for now. I haven't read the comments or e-mails yet, but will in a minute! Again, thanks for them, we look forward to reading them :)

Oh, and I have had a few people ask me about the toilet pictures!! Don't worry, they are NOT the toilets in our apartment.  The latest is of a public toilet in Kyiv, and the toilet on the overnight train.  Trust me, the pictures do the toilets no justice. Imagine what you see in the picture accompanied by a smell so bad that you could not imagine. But just so you know, the toilets are NOT like this everywhere, only a few of them we have been in are like this, and there are some that are worse too :) 

It is hard for me to explain the pictures on our blog since I am never sure which ones are going to make it to our blog.  A couple of the pics from a few entries ago, you saw a lady with each of the children. This lady is Irina, the angel who was "looking out" for our kids for us until we could get there.  It was so great to meet her in person.  She is a wonderful Christian lady who truly cares for children.  The pictures you will see next (maybe in a day or two) are of our trip to Yolichka (Alyssa's orphanage) One she is standing in the bathroom of her old groupa and the other one is when one of her caretaker's saw her :) The others are of Brayden and Abigail, and one is of me and Alyssa with the Black Sea in the background. We are less than a minute walk from the ocean, but since Kerch is a port city, there is no beach, just a wall.  It is still neat to walk by the sea though, just to feel the breeze from the water and to watch fish and jelly fish swimming by.  When we get the kids with us, we are going to get a taxi to take us to the nearest beach.

Yeah, I know, I said I had to go............so I am really going now.

Love to you all,

Chris, Julie, Brayden, Abigail, and Alyssa