Happy Easter

It didn't feel like Easter. They don't celebrate Easter until next week. The wards here are watching conference this week so we'll have to go next time. We spent the day at the orphanage with the kids. Wendy and I made lunch and took it with us. We tried to have a little church, we sang some songs and prayed.

This is Julia, Lena & Alex watching a movie on the laptop. They laughed throughout the movie even though they did not understand a word.



I love being with the kids, it is the highlight of my days. Wendy gets to take Alex out of the orphanage on Tuesday. I am so excited for them. I can't wait for that day. To actually give the girls a bath, put them in clean clothes, and never have to send them back again.

We had to come up with names for our girls today and Wendy helped us with middle names. I'll always tell them Wendy that you thought of their middle names. Our attorney said we had to let her know in twenty minutes so we came up with names over dessert. Lena's name in Ukrainian is Helen and she was adamant that she wanted to have that as her name, we will still call her Lena which in Ukrainian is short for Helen. We tried to think of all the middle names of people in the family Melba Ellen, Carol Kay - Nothing really seemed to fit with Helen. Wendy mentioned naming her after Mary who is coming over. We thought of Helen Mary and decided it sounded a little Hail Maryish. Then Wendy came up with Marie. Jeff and I both liked it and it was close enough to Mary for me. I'll tell Lena that my awesome friend Wendy came up with and I liked it because it reminds me of sweet Mary. I think Mary and Lena have the same disposition and if my Lena grows up to be anything like Mary I will be one happy mother. Mary I know you will be a second mom to her and love her so much.

Svetlana is Sveta's real name. Jeff wanted to call her Lana. Lana and Lena hmmm... a little too much for me. We decided to give her an American name but to give her a first name with an S and a middle name with a V. This was Wendy's brilliant idea. We decided on Sarah because it sounds like Sveta and when I was a little girl my favorite book was "A Little Princess", Sarah Crew was the orphan girl in that book and she was my hero. Amy G. you are just going to have to love it o.k. Jeff and I both liked the middle name Wendy came up with - Victoria. We found out, it is Russian for victory which made me love it even more. Someday she will rise above the difficult circumstances from which she started and become a great woman. I love Victoria for that reason.

So our girls will be Helen Marie Rast and Sarah Victoria Rast. At least they will have a couple names to choose from if they decide they hate one of them. Lena wanted Helen but she wanted me to pick her middle name and Sveta didn't care at all. We told Sveta her new name was Sarah and we tried all day to call her Sarah. She suprisingly answered to it right away even though we kept messing up. What a crazy thing.

We spent about 7 hours in this room today. We brought a bunch of treats and snacks for the kids, and of course a ton of banana's, which were gone by the end of the day. This is us playing some games with the kids.


Jeff and I sitting on the couch wondering how we ended up in a Ukrainian Orphanage? The magnitude of this will probably become real once we return home.