Waiting For Monday

The highlight of our day is getting Alina. We usually spend most of the day in the apartment. It is freezing outside. We have to seriously bundle up when we go out. Good advice about the layers.


We have fun cooking together. Alina tells us her favorite foods and Lena and I do our best to cook it. Lena and Alina are best buds. Poor Sara. We worried this might happen.

Alina's favorite salad. It's actually pretty good.

Alina likes to help, but we have to teach her everything. She has never even used a cheese grater. I forgot how much I had to teach the girls. It is amazing how far they have come.
Sara and I trying to light our gas oven. Lena ran. She was afraid we were going to blow her up. Christy gave us advice via Skype. She stayed in this apartment before. Thanks Christy! It was a success.

The girls draw and paint. Alina loves to show me her art work. I tell her good job and give her a hug. I know when she wants a hug because she stands in front of me and smiles. She smiles even bigger when I realize and hug her.
This is for Mom R. That nasty smelling tube stuff. It smells even worse than I remember. Sara won't touch it now, but Alina and Lena love it.

Alina is always cold. We took her to buy gloves and a sweater or sweatshirt at the outside market. I thought she was like Lena and would pick out some fashionable sweater. Nope she picked out a pink dragon sweatshirt. It is pretty hilarious. She was so excited about it we couldn't resist. We had her pegged wrong.

For Brett

When Lena and Sara found out they were going back to Ukraine, their first request was to do something for their friends in their orphanage. Their cousin Brett heard about this and decided for his Eagle Project he would get stuff for the girls to take. He did an amazing job and made bags full of stuff for big boys, little boys, big girls and little girls.

Bags in our Ukraine apartment

Inside the bags.

The journey for the bags started at our house when we put them in three duffel bags. They each weighed around 50 pounds, or so we thought.
At the airport, we found out one bag weighed 57 and the other 43. Oops! Bad weighing job. We made a scene at check in and moved 7 pounds of stuff from one bag to the other. Jeff started cursing the bags. I assured him it would be worth it.
We weren't sure if they would make it to Ukraine, but they did. We were so happy when we saw all our bags. Kostya was there to pick us up in his small car. Jeff and I said no way they would fit, but they did. Barely!
Lena was a little squished.

We were on the fourth floor in our apartment in Kiev. No one wanted to use the tiny elevator, after Kostya told us he got stuck in it recently.

So Jeff and the girls carried the bags up the stairs and then back down again when we were ready to go. They were all cursing the bags. I kept telling them it would be worth it. Then came the train. We had to carrying the bags up and down many flights of stairs in the station. We had to pull them a half mile till we got to our train car.

Then we had to pull them down this narrow hall with angry, annoyed Ukrainians pushing us and muttering under their breath. The girls were whining by this point and even I was wondering about the bags.

We somehow crammed them all into our tiny compartment and back out again at 5 in the morning and off the train. By the time we had pulled them in freezing, I mean seriously freezing, and snowy weather to the train station and up and down more stairs, we all began to wonder if it would be worth. I tried to remind us that it would be.

And it was worth it, ever so worth it!

I don't know who was happier, my kids giving or the orphans receiving.

The little boys were afraid to take stuff out of their bags because every time they did, the big boys would try to take it from them. No worries, Jeff took care of that.

This little girl was so cute. It was her first week in the orphanage. Lena and Sara felt sorry for her, they made her bag extra special. When we left, she ran to Lena and gave her a big hug and told her thank you. Made Lena's day.
Sara wanted to put candy and extra stuff in two bags for her best friends. I couldn't wait to meet them.
When I saw her give these two boys the bags and gesture excitedly for me to come meet them, I started to cry. For all who know Sara, it will be no surprise. My sweet Sara who loves everyone, of course, these would be her best friends.
Cute Sasha still looks the same. We tried to Skype with his friend Alex back home but our connection wasn't so great. When he saw Alex's face he smiled excitedly and started yelling Alex's name and motioning for all the boys to come see.

Lena's best friends. They were very grateful and kept telling us thank you. Lena said they put all their stuff on the floor in their room and shared with the girls who weren't there when we handed it out.

As we drove away, we turned back to see them in the window eating the candy we brought. Jeff and the girls said, "You were right, it was worth it."

Thank you!

Thank you for all the prayers, emails and especially the love. Thank you to all of you who have given us info. on cystic fibrosis. Thank you Diana for your help and thoughts.

We feel so very grateful to all of you.

The Update

With the new laws in Ukraine, it is more difficult to separate siblings. Last time the inspectors separated Alina from her brother Oleg, they all got in trouble. A few got fired and others got their salary lowered. As a result, none of the local inspectors will agree to separate the kids. They don't even want to hear the name Babenko(their last name).

The head inspector for the region is out of the country and will be back next Mon. He will be the deciding factor on if we can separate them.

The only peace Jeff and I feel is when we are with Alina. We both agree that Alina is ours and there is no way we are leaving her. If they won't separate them, then I guess that makes our decision for us about Zhenya.

Jeff and I have had little peace since leaving Zhenya. We have decided we don't want to leave with regrets.

We are taking Zhenya to a specialist on Mon. to see how severe his condition is and if he really is dying or if medicine in the U.S. can help him. So we will just hang out the next four days and wait for Mon. The waiting is the worst, but at least we can spend time with Alina.

Zhenya

After a night's sleep my heart still aches for the little guy but I think I can talk about it now.

This is Yevgen or Zhenya for short. Alina's brother. His mom died when he was six months old, his father unknown. He was put in an orphanage and has been there ever since.


We played with him for an hour. He was the cutest little guy in the world.


He played ball with Jeff and laughed and laughed.


He made us all lay on the floor and told us a story. Sara translated, it was hilarious. He included animal sounds. Adorable.


If we moved he would tell us to go back to sleep, "Spat". We have the cutest videos.


His spirit is sweet and gentle. We played, laughed and completely fell in love.


This is him begging Sara to come play some more. We all thought for sure we would adopt him.

We then got his medical records and the difficult decision began.

Zhenya has cystic fibrosis. It is a lung disease, in Zhenya's case it has also affected his pancreas and heart. We couldn't tell he was sick at all, so when the director told us they thought he could die any day we were skeptical.

So we checked and double checked all of his medical records and his tests. We talked to his old doctor and his new doctor. We checked with the orphanage he was in before. It all confirmed what the Director had told us.

After prayerful consideration we decided we couldn't adopt him. Jeff was more willing, bless his tender heart, but I knew if I had a choice I could not watch that sweet boy suffer and die.

The girls were so sad, and Sara begged us to take him anyway. It broke all of our hearts but in the end we had to tell Zhenya good bye.

Yes, he is in a good orphanage, yes, he has a doctor on sight to help him, yes he has a cook that makes special food just for him. But he doesn't have a mom and dad who love him, who comfort and care. A mom to hold him when things are rough and a dad to play and make him laugh. It does not feel good to leave a kid like that.

I was crying as we left and the director told me it is better to cry for one day than for the rest of my life. Maybe that is true, but we will cry the rest of our lives every time we think of Alina's dear, sweet, sick little brother, that we thought for sure was going to be ours.