Beth's Trip to the Wilds

Hi Everyone!


This is Beth, and this is also my first time writing a blog post, so wish me luck!

There are one or two things my parents talked about being advantages of not going to Russia in September. One was soccer, and the other was I got to go to the WILDS. My class from School went to the Wilds in four different groups. (I don’t think the people at the WILDS would be very happy feeding,
teaching and providing Yurts for 140 kids or more at once) I went on the first group. In my Yurt (think big round tent, I believe it was from India, with lights, a fan, and a whole bunch of critters) were Laura, Sarah, and Kirsten. There were twelve people total in the yurt, and I’m not going to list them so I don’t accidentally forget anyone. I will tell you, Laura has
a really busy schedule (she goes to skating BEFORE school a few days a week and has other stuff after) so she goes to bed early. It was late when we went to our yurt, and she had brought snacks, so she told us if we all went straight to bed she would give us each a Ho-ho in the morning. That got everyone to go straight to bed! The teacher in the yurt, Mrs. McCormick, wished for Laura to be
there the rest of the days too. Everyone was really loud the other nights. (Mrs. McCormick is my math teacher; she doesn’t actually work at the Wilds.) We were in the Wolf yurt, and there was (for us at least) a mouse in the yurt (It’s name is Squeakers the second. A girl in the yurt
already had a mouse named Squeakers), two spiders outside the yurt (a daddy long legs named Papa, and another spider named Legs), and a moth named I think Peanut but I forget it’s name. Apparently another group had a bat in the same yurt! That was just around the “camp”.

We did many things at the Wilds. If you didn’t know, the Wilds is a conservation site in southern Ohio that used to be a strip mine. Now it is the home to many savannah creatures such as the bison and the giraffes and wild horses! We (of course) went on the
tour. But we did several other things too. For the next two things I’ll be talking about we were split into two different groups. First my group went canoeing. Laura was my partner and at the end we were zipping around the lake pretty quick. The other group split project was exploring the lake next to the Canoeing Lake. My group didn’t find that much stuff. Someone
caught a fish and a few tadpoles. I did somewhat fall in! About to my knees were soaked before I grabbed onto the rock I had been standing on and Laura helped me up. Then we all went back to the yurt and I changed. Our Groups got together and we went on a trail walk. We also learned about the different types of animals’ digestive systems. We did this by looking at their poop! We also went to the carnivore section. There we saw the cheetahs and the African Wild Dog. We also learned about the different types of teeth there. When we were leaving, the Dogs were being fed and we were able to go over and see them being fed! It was really cool.
Speaking of cool, at night, the Wilds are freezing! The food was ok; up at the Restaurant by the gift shop was the best. That is the Wilds for me.
(Side note: All pictures used in this post were ones I took with my camera, so you can see we got to see a LOT of animals. Mom wouldn't let me put them all up.)

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

I can not say it enough. Thank you. Tonight our church had an adoption shower for us. Thank You. A big thank you to everyone that made cookies for it. It would be wonderful, if you would share the recipes. (You could just post them on the comments, then everyone who enjoyed them can make them.) I didn't have any that weren't wonderful. I want to give an extra thank you to everyone that tried making a Russian recipe. They were great! (Sour Cream was really in some of them???) On the other hand, you can't go wrong with chocolate either, so thank you too. I guess what I am really just saying is Thank you to you all. Another HUGE thank you goes out to Jen, Rich and Pastor Bill for the set up and clean up. Thank you.
We can hardly believe the tremendously generous outpouring of support. God is so very good. Enough was given to fly one of us to Russia and back for our court appointment. (Now all we need is the date... Keep praying.) This was so much more than we ever expected. Thank You. Mostly I want to thank everyone for your emotional support through this whole process and your prayers, prayers, prayers. Thank you.
Your prayers are what is keeping this moving and giving us the streanth to keep going. I will say it one more time Thank You. ... or should we say спасибо

The Ides of November

We have some news about our travel date... sort of. You will recall that we were delayed because the court had trouble obtaining our kids' birthmothers' birth certificate. Well, they now have it. That's the good news.

The less than good news is that it had one of the infamous "10-day holds" on it that seem to be so common in Russian legal affairs. We learned that the 10-day hold expired on... you guessed it... October 1st. This is the same day that the judge in Stavropol left for vacation... for the entire month of October. The judge did not receive the document before leaving.

So.... we are not yet on the court schedule. One better... we will not be placed onto the court schedule until the judge returns to work... in NOVEMBER. Our caseworker said that our in-country rep learned from the court clerk that we will most likely be scheduled for sometime between November 17 - 20. It looks like we aren't going anywhere until the Ides of November at the very soonest. Hopefully the Ides of November will be better for us than the Ides of March were for Julius Casesar! The way things are going, I'm starting to wonder. In any case, we are STILL awaiting an "official" date because all we have so far is someone's best guess.

The weather in Stavropol for our potential travel keeps getting colder and colder. This will be an issue because we have VERY limited baggage weight restrictions. Trying to take warm clothing for us and for the new kids and still be within the weight restriction is going to be a challenge.

Keep us in your prayers.

Trying to look on the Positive

Well as you might guess we are all heart broken about September coming to an end and still no court date. I don't know when we will get it but I know that it is in God's timing and not mine. (Although if I have any say I ask "God can you hurry up?") While we continue to wait for the phone to ring, I am trying to look at some of the positives of going later.

One: Beth and Luke got to start the school year off with their classmates and understand what their teachers expect of them now before we go. They also got to go to the first night of AWANA and Youth Group for this year. (Although that was delayed a week because of no power at the church from Hurricane Ike.)



Two: Beth got to go on her 7th grade over night field trip to The Wilds. She had been really disappointed when she though she wasn't going to be able to go. (I am encouraging her to write a post about the trip.) Look for it to come soon.



Three: We have gotten A LOT of construction done around the house. This is also a full post that I haven't got up yet. I have all these great ideas that just don't get done. It's coming.

Four: The kids will both be able to complete their soccer seasons. We had told the coaches at the beginning of the season not to expect them all season but we were wrong and since I actually remembered my camera at the last set of games here is a peek at soccer:

Soccer Season:

This season has been an interesting one for both of the kids this year.

Beth moved up to the Middle School Rec Travel league. This means that rather than just playing different Gahana teams, here at our local fields, She is playing against teams from all around Columbus (and at fields all around Columbus.) Taking the top of rec teams to make a team and going from being the oldest on the team to the youngest has really upped the level of play and the speed at which shots are coming in at. She was very worried at the beginning of the season if she would be able to claim her favorite spot between the pipes but she has been her teams starting Keeper all season. One thing she has
really enjoyed this season is one of her friends from church is on the same team. We have done some car pooling with them and have had more time to talk. This has been very useful to me, in that their family has completed three international adoptions. I am trying to learn as much as I can about what worked and what didn't work for them. Their blog has more about their "Big Crazy Family".


After years of watching his sister play keeper, Luke decided to give it a try this year. We already had the jersey and gloves so why not and besides keeper is one of the few positions on the field that I now understand (at least a little.) The first couple games were rough as he was figuring out the position but he has really been improving the last couple of games. He has a very nice punt (He can usually make mid field on the fly.)and has a goal kick to make his sister jealous. He is still developing his attacks for stopping a shot but that has come a long way form the first game and it takes time.

Rockets

During the summer I was spending a lot of time processing adoption paperwork (and I still have some more to do) but I tried hard to do some fun things with Beth and Luke as well.

One of which was Mark and Luke built a rocket kit that Grandma and Grandpa had given him last Christmas. We then got together with some friends from church who are actively into model rocket building. We had lunch together then an afternoon of launching. It was nice to spend the time with friends. We did learn that Bandit wants nothing to do with the smell or sound of rockets being launched.

















*****Luke with his Rocket ************************* Ready for Launch*****














********** Watching the launch ************************** It flys********


Beth even got into it and launched a couple of rockets. A good time was had by all. In fact I think Santa might just have to have four new rockets in his sack this Christmas (one for each of the kids.) Interested in another launching get together next summer?

Not the Call We Hoped For

I've been wondering how to write this post. I've been thinking about it for a couple days now. You see, we received a phone call from our case worker on Thursday, and it wasn't the call we wanted to hear.

We've been jumping at every ring of the telephone for 3 weeks or so, hoping it would be our case worker telling us of our court date in Stavropol. Our materials have been in for over a month and we were getting antsy.

She called... she said that the court had our paperwork and that our paperwork is all approved (so far so good...). She then said that the court had trouble locating a birth certificate for our kids' biological mother and that it took them a while to get it. As a result, our case was delayed (not so good).

We will not be able to have our court date in September. Also, the judge is taking vacation for the entire month of October. We should expect a court date in early NOVEMBER. At least it might be early November if they are able to put together the schedule before the judge's vacation. There is a chance that they won't create the November schedule until the judge returns from vacation. If so, we'd be going in mid to late November at the earliest. We might not get the kids home before the end of the year if things go slowly at that point. For those of you who keep track of such things, we will have several documents that expire in the first week of November. It looks like we'll have more time and expense to renew them.

Letters to Russia - finding the orphanage's address

It's amazing what you can do with the internet. Really. I can remember when, as a college student, I heard of this new thing called the web that made the internet a lot easier and more interesting to use that just doing ARCHIE and VERONICA searches. I even got a copy of this new program called Mosaic so I could surf... on a 2400 baud modem... blazing fast (or not). That was back before Netscape, before internet explorer and way before broadband... I'm showing my age. Even so, I am still amazed at the things you can do online these days.

We wanted to be able to write and send cards to our kids in Russia. The translator told us that the address of the orphanage was on the adoption agreement... but he never showed us where or told us what it was. The agreement is in Russian. We're trying to learn some Russian, but it's a little tough. There just aren't enough similarities between slavic languagues like Russian and germanic languages like English to make it easy. Needless to say, reading the adoption agreement to find the orphanage address isn't something we could do anytime soon. And than in comes the internet to save the day.

I can read enough Russian to recognize a few words, so I found a part of the adoption agreement that I thought was a good candidate for the address. I went to an online translation site and was able to type (using the Cyrillic alphabet via a Russian keyboard emulator that is on the website) the part of the form I suspected.

It translated to something along the lines of Special Childrens Home for abandoned children and children of parents who do not support them. Obviously the translation was a little awkward, but it was enough. I had the the right part and it included the street name and building number. I was on my way to sending mail to детский дом 12 (children's Home 12) in Stavropol Russia.

Next, I needed to learn how to write an address for mail going to Russia. I found a couple of resources. The first was actually the Russian Postal Service and it was in English. The other was the US Postal Service's international addressing tips page.

I also learned that I needed the postal code (think zipcode). The Russian Postal Service has a page for finding these, but it's not all that user friendly... it's in Russian only. Still, I managed to find the codes for Stavropol. The "Main" post office in Stavropol is 355000. Finding the correct post office for the orphanage was tougher and involved some divine intervention. We were able to decipher from our internet translated adoption agreement that the orphanage was on Trunova Street (ул. Трунова, д.71). It turns out that one of the local post offices is also on Trunova Street. Digging out our map of Stavropol that we bought over there in July, we saw that it wasn't a very big street. Looks like we found the right post office! The Russian postal site even has photos of the post-office branches, so we've included the one for "our" post office above. It's Ставрополь 7 and there are more photos if you follow the link. The postal code is 355007.

So far we've sent post cards and a letter. The rate is 94 cents for a typical letter in case you are wondering.