What we've been doing

On Friday, William got to meet his new cousin Drew. He was born last Monday and he is adorable! William also had fun hanging out with Anna & Alli, and swimming in their pool.





By the time William got around to holding him, Drew was zonked out with a full belly - but isn't he precious?!?! Congrats to Joey & Kristy on their beautiful baby boy (and also to big sisters Anna & Alli)!


William lost his first tooth! It's been loose for a while, and we told him to only work on it when we were all 3 together. (We missed out on all the baby teeth; neither of us wanted to miss out on this.) Well on Sunday after church he was telling us how he wasn't able to pull it, and about that time, it popped out! So he placed his tooth in his special pillow (it was Zack's when he was little) and had a visit from the tooth fairy Sunday night!



Monday he started swim lessons. He goes 4 nights a week for 2 weeks. Parents get to watch the last 5 minutes, and we were amazed at how well he's doing already. There are 6 kids in his group, and he swam the farthest of all of them! He's very excited to go back tonight.

The Dark Knight

So we promised William he could see the new batman movie... before we knew what it was rated. Rookie mistake, I know! But the damage was done, so we took him with us last Saturday morning. We figured the 10 AM showing was our best bet, because if he did get scared he'd have all day to get his mind off of it.


Well he didn't get scared at all. And honestly I've seen PG movies that were a lot worse. While there was definitely a good bit of violence, they typically cut to a different shot or the next scene without showing any gory stuff.


In the future we'll prescreen before committing, but I think we came out okay this time. I imagine kids that are sensitive to scary things might not do so well, but our boy did fine.

Eight Months Legal

Eight months ago today, he legally became our son!

(We still had the 10 days to wait out, so we don't consider it Gotcha Day since we didn't actually get him then)

Here are some pictures of court day (all of these were before court).

Top Ukrainian Cities

I found this link on another adoptive family's website (they're in-country right now, in their 10-day wait, adopting from William's orphanage). The list ranks the best cities in Ukraine, based on various criteria like schools, hospitals, shopping, services available, crime, unemployment rates, and tourism.

The Top 55 Cities in Ukraine

1 Chernivtsi
2 Kyiv
3 Yalta
4 Chernihiv
5 Ivano-Frankivsk
6 Mukachevo
7 Truskavets
8 Illichivsk
9 Lviv
10 Lutsk
11 Irpin
12 Sevastopol
13 Kam’yanets-Podilskyi
14 Kolomya
15 Khmelnytskyi
16 Simferopol
17 Uzhhorod
18 Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi
19 Poltava
20 Odesa
21 Ternopil
22 Svalyava
23 Myrhorod
24 Kirovohrad
25 BilaTserkva
26 Feodosia
27 Mykolaiv
28 Uman
29 Ostroh
30 Netyshyn
31 Sumy
32 Cherkasy
33 Zhytomyr
34 Pivdennoukrainsk
35 Alushta
36 Rivne
37 Vinnytsya
38 Enerhodar
39 Boryspil
40 Kherson
41 Sudak
42 Vushhorod
43 Pavlohrad
44 Dnipropetrovsk
45 Mariupol
46 Donetsk
47 Kerch
48 Kremenchuh
49 Brovary
50 Kharkiv
51 Berdyansk
52 Artemivsk
53 Yevpatoria
54 Luhansk
55 Zaporizhzhya

William's hometown came in at #45 - pretty amazing that they could get past the metalurgical gases to conduct a study there!
Fellow adopters, how did your child's city do?

Mimi

Please keep Zack and his family in your prayers. His grandmother passed away on Wednesday, and the funeral will be this afternoon.

Mimi was a kind and generous woman, with a servant's heart. We all miss her so much, but find comfort in the fact that she is now with Jesus. We look forward to the day when we will see her again in heaven.

Zack is delivering the eulogy/sermon, and his brother will be singing. Pray for both of them as they pay tribute to their grandmother, tasks that will be difficult but tasks that they will complete because it is what Mimi requested. And please keep their dad & his sister in your prayers, as they lay their mother to rest.

Final post about vacation

It took me forever, but here is the last installment of our vacation journal...

WEDNESDAY
We drove down to Ocean Boulevard, where the Pavilion amusement park used to be. We played some games in the arcade, and walked around some shops. William got the obligatory air brushed t-shirt, in his chosen soccer theme. Then we stopped by Ocean Front Café for foot long hot dogs & a beautiful ocean view.
We were back on the beach shortly after lunch and relaxed & played for a while. We drove back to Broadway at the Beach and had dinner at Senor Frogs. The food wasn't great, but the décor was cute! William’s main goal was to find a pirate eye patch, so we were in and out of stores for a while. Finally, we came to a crab-themed store that had a pirate section in the back… and we got the last eye patch in the place! After that, we went to the new section, Pavilion Nostalgia Park. We talked William into riding the big Pirate Ship with us (like the old Six Flags Flying Dutchman). Take a look at his expression – obviously this was not his favorite! He got off & told us how brave he was… but was not interested in a repeat trip :) He rode the caterpillar with me and loved it, though, so I might just have a ride companion now!! He also had fun on several kiddie rides.

THURSDAY
We spent the afternoon at the beach once again. Then we had an early dinner at Original Benjamin’s (we go there anytime we visit Myrtle Beach). William got to have his picture made with a pirate at the restaurant, which he thought was very cool. Then we played a round of mini golf (William got a hole-in-one!), and bought some fireworks. We had been scheduled for family photos but our photographer had to cancel last minute. So we walked down to the beach and William had fun flying a kite he’d gotten for his birthday. We looked for shells, then let William swim for a while.

FRIDAY
We went to Barefoot Landing again for some final souvenirs. William had his picture made at one of those ‘olde tyme” photo places – he was the cutest bad guy I’ve ever seen! At his request we had lunch at McDonalds, then went to the beach one more time. We had a great time playing in the surf and finding some really cool shells. The sky got really dark so we decided to head in to get cleaned up. The rain began to pour, and we decided that was a perfect time to say farewell. We finished packing and hit the road. We had a nice leisurely drive back and pulled into the garage shortly before midnight. We all slept well – it was a wonderful first vacation but we were of course glad to be home!

Fourth of July

We had a fun time at the lake last weekend. We spent lots of time swimming and playing on the lake.

William went tubing for the first time, and he really liked it.

His fear of the water has virtually vanished. This is huge progress, remembering back to how terribly scared he was on Memorial Day. We made some real progress, enough so that we now feel confident about signing him up for swim lessons. Had we done it a few weeks ago, I think it would have been way too traumatic. As it is now, we can get him to take off his water wings & "swim" back and forth to us (a few feet) under water - a big step in the right direction!

Remember this?

(Schoolwork is finished - and we're heading to the lake this afternooon!!)

Every 4th of July, I think of July 4, 1985... the Braves faced the Mets in one of the longest baseballs game ever - 19 innings and two rain delays.

And I was there! Well, not for the 4 AM fireworks mind you, but I got to be a part of Braves history, and watch some Braves 'greats'... Dale Murphy ~ Glenn Hubbard ~ Rafael Ramirez ~ Bob Horner ~ Bruce Benedict ~ Chris Chambliss
Plus a few Mets notables... Lenny Dykstra ~ Darryl Strawberry ~ Keith Hernandez

Our children's minister (a former Braves player himself) had decided it would be fun to take some of the church kids to a game. Funny, I don't remember him EVER choosing this outing again!

Hiatus

We're still here, but this week is C-R-A-Z-Y! In addition to work & regular stuff, I have a 20+ page paper and 4 other small papers due this week for school, and it's a short week due to the holiday. We're hoping to leave for the lake on Thursday afternoon so I need to get movin'!

I'll be back soon with the rest of our beach journal, plus hopefully some fun 4th pics!