Friday, April 1, 2011

Hey! We're back in MN! April Fools! ...actually a bit of MN came to us in the form of the Boehr Family.  They flew in last night...all 6 of them...Jill and Bruce and their 4 children, Brian (11), Stephanie (10), Katie (7) and Olivia (5).  They're here to adopt a 10 year old boy...Ilya.

They hosted last summer and our Ukraine boys talked to each other quite a lot by phone over that time so it's great for us and the boys to have the connection. In fact, at the orphanage today, a lot of the boys including Sasha and Illya we're playing soccer.  Another good work out on a beautiful sunny and warm Spring day.  Thank you, God!

I had some business to attend to early this morning so Jeanne and Lucas made the trip alone.  A good trial run for Jeanne since she'll be doing it by herself on the last leg of this journey.  I came an 1 1/2 hours later with the lunch.  I was greeted by some hungry boys and their mom! 


We had some of the usual activities...greeting Jessie, a little wrestling, playing on the playground, bicycle, swing, cards and English learning time with mom and then, the big soccer game when the rest of the children returned home from school.

Jeanne went back to the apartment early today so Lucas and I took the bus-subway journey ourselves.  I asked him how he was doing being in Ukraine and away from home.  He said he missed Sadie, his friends and school.  He wasn’t overtly sad but you could tell it’s been a long time away in a strange country for a little guy.  I told him how proud mommy and I were of him.

On the subway home plans were made to take Boehr's to our favorite Kiev Pizza place...Solo Pizza.  Since it's hard to give directions when the signs are in the cyrillic alphabet I headed to their apartment across from the Opera House (awesome view) and escorted them to Solo's. The restaurant is next to the Subway and the underground mall Jeanne raves about and Bruce said reminded him of Rosedale.

 

We had a great time and our families meshed very well.  Lucas was excited about English speaking friends...so were we. We were placed in a large booth in a far corner that beckoned "for large group of loud Americans" and we loved it. Our waiter Sasha was a good sport and even knew some English. It was good pizza with salad for the adults and banana splits for the kids afterwards.  It was also the most English we spoke outside of immediate family since the other family went back to Connecticut.  Glad we haven't lost our language......