Solomiyka playing on her activity mat borrowed from cousin Sophia (also wearing Sophia's clothes :)




Playing on Tato's lap




Close-up shot



In the apple orchard



  

1st car ride



Solomiya's coming out debut and other serious thoughts.

Weeds Orchard

Enjoyed taking Miss Solomika out for an apple picking adventure! She enjoyed the 'honey crisp' aisle the most.
As you can see, she is getting so big! Soon she will begin her Russian lessons with Mama.



Solomika's rattle. Called "blabla". Seriously. http://www.blablakids.com/Online-Shopping/Rattles/Girl-Cat-Rattle

Thoughts of the day...
Trusting God to provide for our needs in Ukraine.
Believing God is sending us there.
Believing God can use us to change the world.
Not wanting to live an ordinary life.
If God is for us, who can be against us.

Matthew 6
²⁵ “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
²⁸ “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; ²⁹ and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
³¹ “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

The Art of Macramé

These past 2 weeks have mainly been spent getting to know Solomiya and figuring out her language, which has been challenging at times- but I think we are getting better. (She definitely does not like ice cream- this we have found out...) She enjoys looking at bright lights and appears to understand Mike when he speaks Ukrainian to her.

Baby don't like this...

We have her birth certificate and Mike is getting her social security number today. The passport application is all filled out (except the ss#) and we are planning on getting her picture taken on Wednesday, after she visits the midwives for her newborn screening. Then, we must both accompany her to the passport office so she can apply. Maybe we will do this on Saturday...
So far, all of the paperwork stuff is going smoothly!

Since sending out our August newsletter, we have heard back from quite a few people who want to support us! This has been very encouraging and we are so happy that people are interested and want to be a part of what we are doing!
We cannot believe it is already September! God willing, we will be moving in just 4 months! We are so excited and looking forward to serving the people of Transcarpathia! We have been praying, talking about and preparing for this for the past 6 years. Thanks to everyone for your encouragement : )

Estimated date of departure: January 10th


-a

BABY!!!

Solomiya Rose on Tato's lap!
Born Wednesday, August 31 at 10:47am at home!
7.6lbs and 21 inches long

Awesome midwives: Susanrachel Condon, CNM, LM and Susan Rannestad CPM, CM, LM  http://www.riverandmountain.net/index.shtml

Post-August 12 Updates

1. Mike's safety audit at work went VERY well and they received the highest rating possible!
2. I (annie) passed my NBCOT exam!!!

3. Finished Newsletter #2 and hopefully mailing it out early next week.

4. Mike was registered for the online 'Teaching English as a Second Language' course.

5. Have baby stuff all ready; expected arrival = now through September 15th. It's inevitable.

So, right now Mike is continuing at work until mid-December. He and his bosses are working on a variety of different options regarding his replacement. Once that is all figured out, Mike will probably focus on training the new person and preparing the safety division at the plant for his departure.

I (annie) am currently sorting through all of my books/notes regarding occupational therapy and deciding what will be most beneficial and most needed in Ukraine.

After this is done, I will focus on packing for Ukraine: 1. Items to ship over ahead of time that we will not need here; 2. Items that will be put into storage; and 3. Items that we will need right up until we leave (to be placed in open boxes for easy access).

We will hopefully send our boxes to Ukraine through 'Ukraine Express'. It takes about 4 weeks for packages to arrive to their destination, so we can only send things that we really, really will not need right away.

I am also really looking forward to spending time with my baby. And I know Mike is looking forward to washing the cloth diapers :)

*On a side note- this is one way we are hoping to save mucho dinero (aka a lot of money) in Ukraine by using cloth diapers and cloth wipes. I am also looking into making my own laundry soap... I'll keep thinking about that one.

-a



Brief Update

The past few weeks have been VERY busy for both Mike and I! Mike is spending a lot of time at work preparing for a huge safety audit to take place and I am studying night and day for my NBCOT exam. We are going to celebrate August 12, because on that day Mike's audit will be finished and my test will have been taken.
Lovely blogs to follow after the 12th...

-a

Goodbye, old friend

  Those of you who know me (Mike) well, know that I have a "thing" for cars, especially old ones. I suppose that I have my father to blame - I mean, thank, as he always ensured that I had a steady supply of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars from the very youngest age. My favourite book as a small child was "Go Dog Go", simply because I was fascinated with the drawings of all those dogs in their cool sportscars, riding around everywhere. Of course, my dad also regaled me with stories of his first new car - a 1950 MG "TD", his 1952 Jaguar XC 120MC and all of the various Studebakers (and a second MG) which came and went before I was even born. By the time I was in elementary school, I considered myself an expert car spotter, being able to easily tell a Karmann Ghia from an MGBGT or, more importantly to my Dad, an MG "TD" from an MG "TF". My father always included me in his car repairs and VERY patiently tried to explain how cars worked, so that someday I'd be able to enjoy them as much as he did.
  Well anyway, somewhere along the line - about 20 years ago - I got it in my head that I had to have a 1968 Plymouth Fury. And it couldn't be just any 1968 Plymouth Fury; it had to be a "Fury I" police pursuit package car with a 440 cubic inch (that's 7.2 litres to our Ukrainian friends), 375 horsepower "Super Commando" V-8 engine. Finding such a car was no easy task here in the northeastern US, where most cars of '60s vintage were already pretty rusty by the time they were only 10 years old. (No matter how nostalgic people are for '60s cars, they often seem to forget how much more rust-prone they were than today's cars!). In 2004, I found my dream car sitting in a quonsett hut in the Texas panhandle town of Canyon. It was a former Texas Highway Patrol car, which had sat in a shed since 1975. In 1971, it had been the gift of a truck driver to his truck stop waitress sweetheart, shortly after they married. Eventually, they divorced (I was told that she had actually put out a "contract" on him at some point!) and the car became the property of the truck driver, who promptly put it in storage. By the time I found it, a friend of the trucker had finally wrested it from him and began working on it. He soon realized that he didn't have the skills to bring it back to roadworthiness and that's when he put it up for sale.
  I spent a fair amount of money and time bringing the old girl back to life and what a car she was. I was able to appreciate why the officers who drove these cars had such affection for them...or at least for their power. There's nothing to explain what it feels like to put your foot to the floor at 60 miles per hour and feel that massive, 4000 pound car take off like a rocket!
  Fast forward to 2010 and I finally realized that the Fury would have to go if Annie and I were moving to Ukraine. Long-term storage was not an option, as cars - like people - do not take well to long periods of idleness, and need to be out doing what they were made for. Well, it took until this past Saturday to find the right new owner (with the right amount of cash). I'm very happy to say that the car will soon be restored to its former glory as a fully-marked Texas Highway Patrol car. And more importantly, the money I received from the sale will cover a good portion of the cost of a fine Eastern European car, for our mission travels around Transcarpathia!
  I highly doubt that I'll find another car like it again or even have the inclination or time to hunt one down. Amazingly, I'm not being flooded by any weepy nostalgia, but am simply grateful to God for seven years of enjoying such a great car, and grateful to have found a new owner for it, who gave me a fair payment. People often say, "Boy, I wish I had never sold my... (fill in the blank with their first/favourite/now-worth-a-ton-of-money car)". I know that my dad wished that he could have held onto his Jag, or one of the MGs. But he - like me - had to put family before "toys" at some point. ~ Sigh ~ Does that mean I'm growing up?!! Naaah. It just means that I've finally realized that God has given me something more exciting than cars to chase after - namely, Him and His crazy plans for my future. That being said, I can't wait for my first Sunday at the "avtomobilnyj bazaar" in Uzhhorod...hehehe ;-)