Tattoos, Bunkbeds & New Friends

Hey Everyone! What a weekend it was! We met our goals for the weekend of taking down Christmas decorations (finally!), setting up big boys beds and getting a number of things organized. As I (Joel) was going through some of my stuff, I found some "Pirates of the Caribbean" tattoos that I had stashed away. The boys saw them and of course had to try them out. Thankfully the boys didn't have any kind of skin reactions or irritations (something we thought of after the fact...what newbies we still are at parenting!).


Since Sergei did so well sleeping in a big boy bed at Joel's parents' house during the Christmas holidays, we decided to set up the bunkbeds that we've had down in our basement for the last year or so. The boys were very excited. We did not have the beds stacked downstairs, so when I showed them a picture of what they would look like stacked, the couldn't wait to have the bunkbeds in their room. It took a couple of hours. We had to disassemble the crib and toddler bed and store them away. Then we had to take apart the beds downstairs and reassemble and stack them in their room. We were pooped afterwards, but it was really worth it. The boys love their new beds!


This was also a big weekend for us because we made plans to get together with our friends the Pitmans, who have been home for a couple of weeks now with their three little ones from Vladivostok. We have been looking forward to meeting the children for quite some time. The Pitmans were just a few months behind us as we waited to be bring our children home. We have so enjoyed their friendship throughout the last year or so of our adoption journey. Now that both of our families are complete, our children can enjoy that friendship as well.


Eric and Becky and family are doing great! They are experiencing many of the same things that we (and many of you who have your children home) experienced in the first few weeks of being home. We have no doubt that things will progress as well as they did with us. Their children are beautiful. We were disappointed (but not surprised) that neither of our boys made attempts to speak Russian to Max, Olivia or AJ. We would love for Slav and Sergei to maintain the knowledge and use of their native language, but that is probably a challenge that we won't be able to meet. We still do our best to keep them connected to Russian culture as we look at souvenirs and pictures from our trip as well as Russian books and videos. Someday when the boys are older we hope to make it back to Vlad for a visit. We enjoyed watching The Pitmans' videos and reliving much of our own experience from just a few months ago. The Pitmans only live less than an hour away from us, so we hope for many more get-togethers to come!


God's blessings to all of you who are still waiting for referrals and/or court dates. It may seem like a long time now, but as everyone told us, once you bring your children home time really starts to fly. I can't believe that we're already preparing for our first post-placement report which is due next month. Wow! It's yet another opportunity for us to reflect on the Lord's tremendous grace and goodness to us these past few months especially!

Love,

Joel, Clarion, Slav & Sergei