Having just had the family and friends, all 37+ of them for Thanksgiving, I am sitting here praising God for family, food, fun, and a just God’s goodness! Anyway, I am jumping into this blog thing as it seems the easiest way to keep everyone up to date on the latest. For those of you that are just “logging” on for the first time, cheers! 

Wednesday evening, Valera and I were out shopping late for last minute things for Thanksgiving dinner. I can’t remember what exactly brought our conversation to this, but he said, “Mum, you know dis one mum, you know ven dey say dis one mum, ‘sticksa and stones a breaka my bones, but a vords can not kill me’, you know dis one mum? Dis not true mum, you know vhy? Because mum remember dis girl on bus say to a me, she say I’m look like chicken mcnugget? Mum dis hurt my feel mum,  dis hurt my heart. Dis not true mum, vords hurt mum.”  If you didn’t know he was from the Urkaine, you would think from his accent he was Italian, they end a lot of words with “a” but then there’s the ‘v’ sound for all his “w’s” sooo cute! Just want to squeeze him J

He just turned 8!!!!!! How he thought about this and put this all together I can’t imagine. He’s incredible! Then he began to tell me a few stories about his life in the Ukraine before he was taken to the orphanage. I’m not going to share them now, they aren’t very happy, he was given to a couple by his mother before she was killed, I can’t determine the timing on this, but she was killed shortly after. They were ….let’s say, not parent material by ANY stretch of the imagination. He was delivered to the orphanage following that which as he put it was his “rescue” from them. He tried to get away from them, but at 6 years old, how could he?

He LOVED Thanksgiving with his new family, all gazillion of them on Arlin’s side!! He and 8 out of 16 are around his age, they ran all over the place, between all 3 houses, as we, Arlin’s older sister and youngest brother all live up on the hill, Benner Lane… on the wooded part of the farm. Between the fort they built in the woods, real “make-shift” kind of thing, but it works… and the bikes, skateboards, scooters, 4-wheelers and golf carts, we couldn’t keep track of them. But of course, we were all blabbing, grazing (hate that overstuffed feeling!) laughing, and watching football the entire day and into the night. Last people left around 10pm…  I barely got my pajamas on. Amy and my sister and I were going to do wine and cheese to wind down, but we never made it there. We crawled into our respective beds after believe it or not, taking make-up off, can’t sleep in that, ages ya you know!  Ahhh… lights out, horizontal and sleep….

Valera went to one of his cousins a few acres across the way for the night. He packed his back-pack and got a wave in before bounding out the door into their van. Hhmmm, I’m not feeling the love somehow! J 

Well one less snorer in my room for the night.  Arlin’s went downstairs to finish watching a game, CeCe and I snuggled up in our bed with me… night night.