Vacation photos, part 1

Of course, as soon as I sit down to do this, the internet connection decides to be difficult. I'll just leave it, and see if it can upload while I do other things....

Yes! That worked. Now you can see some of the beauty we enjoyed during our four days away at the beginning of this month. We went over the river and stayed in a little house at a "base" over there. Each day we played in the water a whole lot, and enjoyed watching and catching various creatures. The house didn't have a kitchen, so Will cooked outside for us. It was such a treat!

Oh, remember that I said that we didn't tell our kids where we were going? On the way there it was so fun to listen to them guessing. They were taking votes about if we would be going on a bus or train. "Oh, we've passed the bus station. That means I was right!" "No, we're passing the train station, too. Where can we be going?!?" And then when we arrived at the waterfront their eyes got so big.

The base where we stayed

To be continued.

Happy

Our happy campers came home today. We missed them so much! (Well, Bogdan and our little neighbors and I missed them terribly. Will was still enjoying the strange quiet in our home.) They had a wonderful time. I think they are very tired, too. Asya says that she went and put herself to bed early last night, while everyone else was still playing, and she slept long and hard during quiet time when we got home.

A Polish team camp to help with camp, and they taught Polish language classes, too. I don't know yet how much the kids actually took in, but Raia is accidently saying certain words with a Polish accent.

I am sure there will be more photos online soon; these are a few that I took during "Parents' Day" today. I'm so happy to have them home again!

"Raja" and one of her new Polish friends

Asya in her tent

Brothers reunited

Sticks

My parents left a pack of popsicle sticks with us, and then Mom sent Jaan this link. Over the past few days he's been building all kinds of chain reactions, and this is his latest creation:

Sabbath

Starting last week, I switched my orphanage days from Saturdays to Fridays. I've been wanting to do that for a long time, and I think it's going to be just as good as I was hoping.

During the school year I was just worn out, because I would teach our children from Monday to Friday, which takes pretty much all of my energy. Then, as soon as I finished with them on Friday afternoon, I'd start planning my lesson and activities for the next day at the orphanage. I'd be up and out early Saturday morning, for a high energy day with the kids there. Saturday evenings are also often when we have social events. So, on many Sundays I felt like I could barely move. Will does a wonderful job of making Sundays easy for me. (We have traditions and habits to help with that.) But it was still too much. I felt like I could never catch my breath (or do laundry, or...). Plus, all our children are busy on Saturdays, so they couldn't regularly go on visits with me. Not to mention that the orphanage worker who is in charge of "our" groups on Saturdays is just hard to work with, and being with her all year long was draining.

So, last week I switched. It was so much better! The wonderful weekday caretaker was there; I've barely seen her all year. The older kids were happier and more relaxed. I was able to hold and feed the little guys without fighting for that.

(Recently I have been very upset by what seemed like a run of "you can't hold them, because they'll cry when you leave." That's a pretty standard orphanage line, and it's heartbreaking and wrong. But, happily, I don't hear it all the time here. However, lately it seemed to be pretty constant. Last week, when I switched days, I was so glad not to hear it. I got to hold the little ones, and actually explain to the nanny who was in one group that crying is a good sign. I told her that I'm sorry, and I do hope that my little friend won't cause trouble for her, but that crying when I leave shows that he has opinions and isn't afraid to express them. I think she understood that I'm not just a weirdo who likes make children cry... because I definitely don't! But silent children, lying in rows of cribs are the horror of the orphanage system. They don't cry, when they know that no one cares and no one will answer.)

If you pray for me on Saturdays for my visits, you can switch that to Friday now. Thanks! I hope to be able to keep this up, even in the fall when school starts again, but we'll have to see how everyone's schedules fit together then.

Oh, and next Friday will be the yearly, much beloved picnic for these kids. Happy! Please pray for good weather and that it all goes well.

Home again

We had such a wonderful time on our little vacation! There are tons of photos to sort through, but these are a few of my favorites.

On Wednesday we went kayaking, and that was probably the highlight of our time for all of us.

I'll write more about it and share more photos later.

Vacation

By the time you read this, we'll be gone for a few days. I set it to publish after we leave, because we've made a big mystery of where we're going, and our kids are threatening to read all my email and everything to figure out our destination.

We had planned that our older three would be at camp at the sea this week, and that maybe we would all go down there, so that Bogdan could swim, too. But then we were too late in signing up, and there wasn't room for them. Plus, we've been missing having a dacha and a close place to swim. So, we rented a "dacha for those who don't have dachas" on the other side of the river. It's only accessible by boat, and it's right on the water. We'll be there Monday-Thursday, and we're really excited for this chance to get away.

(And our kids will still get to go to their beloved church camp. That will be at the end of July. This year it's Polish camp. A team is coming from Poland, and they'll be teaching Polish language classes, among other things. It should be fun and interesting!)

Art classes

This year the art school our children attend has kept a few groups going on into the summer. Raia and I have been attending the oil painting lessons for adults and older children. The two weeks that my mother was here with us, she got to go, too. She just sent me her photos from that, to pass on to the art teacher. I'm going to share those here, too:

Photos from The Visit

Dad posted at least a few photos on Facebook almost every day that they were here. Before I lose track of those, here are links:

• June 6: text and Will's photo
• June 7: part 1 and part 2
• June 8 (and video)
• June 9 (Will that link work? The privacy settings are interesting for this group of photos.)
• June 10
• June 11: part 1 and part 2
• (English camp photos from someone else)
• June 13
• June 14
• June 16: part 1, part 2, and part 3
• June 17
• June 18: part 1 and part 2
• June 19

We didn't have our camera out much at all, but here are a few of our photos from Raia's birthday and then from the day we did some sightseeing:

Recovery

Yesterday was a sad day. My parents left.  But that was after a whole wonderful two weeks together.

This week is set aside for recovering after the whole month and a half of serious busyness that we're just finishing up. As a start to catching up, I'm just storing some photos here from June 4, when Raia and Asya went with their church children's choir to the zoo in Nikolaev. It was their end of the year treat for lots of hard work. Asya's little group was with a friend of mine, so I got photos from her. I don't know that anyone in Raia's group took photos.

The power of families

I have been really enjoying photos and videos of one little girl who I knew in the orphanage here and who was adopted by an American family. She's been home with her family for less than a year, and the changes in her are dramatic. I love seeing how she's running barefoot in lovely green grass. (She only got to the point of taking a few steps here; she couldn't walk.) After five years in a crib here, now she's out going to school, ice skating, riding at an amusement park, swimming in her family's new pool, and so much more. She is loved!

There's another girl who had her six month anniversary of coming home a little while ago. I got permission from her mom to repost some photos and stats here. Please read and enjoy that beautiful smiling face:

Some photo links

• Missionary day at Tavriski Christian Institute (There are two great photos of Asya and the alligator on page 4.)
• Art school Last Bell (Also, lots of photos!)
• Just one of Bogdan with his art class
• Agape School graduation photo archive

And the photographer at graduation took these photos for us, with our camera:

English camp

I sat down to write a blog post, and the electricity went out. But! I have an iPad now. So, I can write anyway.

This past week we've been helping with an English day camp at a local orphanage. Will and Jaan are in a 5th-6th grade group, with a wonderful visiting English teacher, who happens to be here to adopt. Raia is helping in a group of little ones, and Asya, Bogdan, and I are in a different class, also with younger children.

It's been really good to do this with our whole family. Monday through Wednesday we were there at the orphanage, and I could see that it was hard for our younger two to share me with a whole class and to put up with all the busyness. However, they try hard, and they've made some good friends. Thursday was different, because these camp kids and many, many others were bussed to our church for a Children's Day program. So, I stayed home with our two younger children, to let them rest a bit. They really needed that. They were all keyed up at the beginning, but I watched them relax and settle back into their usual selves as our day at home went on. Today, when we were getting ready to go, Bogdan told me that he didn't want to, but then he agreed that he wanted to see his friends. He did really well and had fun, even though he did get shoved around, more than he has been on the other days.

Our older two are a different story. They are loving every minute of it. The camp continues next week, and they're planning to go help even when we can't. (We have special guests coming, so we aren't planning to be there every day. ) Today they made sure that they know the bus route, so that they can get there and back by themselves. On Thursday the special program included another showing of the Easter play that Jaan was in, and kids from "our" orphanage in Tsyurupinsk also came to see it. He and Raia were especially thrilled to see their friends from there, plus new friends from this week; I think Raia was almost flying afterwards, even though she's been exhausted from all the excitement.

I'll try to add a few photos here, photos that I have stolen from other people. There should be professional photos later on the Agape Facebook pages and maybe here, too.