Wow, it’s hard to believe we have been home for 11 weeks. Sometimes it feels like it’s only been a couple of weeks and sometimes it feels live Lugansk was years ago.

The first few weeks at home were crazy. We had been gone for a total of 8 weeks and it felt like there was a million things to do. We needed to get the kids settled, get clothes for them and school supplies. Try shopping for school supplies a month before Christmas….not the ideal time. I am sure when we got home Nadia and Stasik thought that all we did was go out to parties. Because it was so close to Christmas there was so much going on. They we surprised when we were no going somewhere.

Nadia and Stasik started school on Monday December 4th at a local school that has a Ukrainian/English bilingual program. Half day is taught in English (math, science and language arts) and the other half-day in Ukrainian (social studies, art, health, etc.) Music, gym, library and computers are English. They also have one day in the six-day cycle where all the Ukrainian classes (K-9) have Ukrainian choir. They kids have really been enjoying school. They seem to be getting along well with the other students. The classes are smaller, Nadia has 18 and Stasik has 17, so that is really nice. I we driving them to school every day, about 15 minutes each was but on January 25th the started taking the bus, and believe it or not, they like the bus, crazy kids!!! Brad took the bus to school as he grew up in the country, just down the road from us….but I am a city girl…born and raised in Winnipeg and can’t stand the thought of taking the bus! Because there school is not our school they actually have to take two buses, and spend about 55 minutes each way on the bus….hopefully they will continue to enjoy the bus as they have years and years ahead of bus rides ahead of them.

They both stared taking swimming lessons after Christmas; they both seem to be enjoying it so far. Nadia started gymnastics after Christmas and goes every Wednesday night and loves it. She absolutely refused to take Ukrainian dancing, but now says that she wants to taking dancing, but not Ukrainian, so I guess we will look into it next fall. Not sure what she wants to take….tap, jazz, hip hop, ballet, not even sure if she knows. Stasik started Ukrainian dancing after Christmas and goes Monday evenings to the local club. He is in a class with his cousin Kaelan and our friend’s son Alex. He gets along great with both boys and is soooo excited to go to class. We went to a family fun night school fundraiser a couple of weeks ago for B & S kids school (our friends who were in Ukraine the same time as us) and Stasik was dancing up a storm to the Ukrainian polka band music. Even Nadia got up and started dancing…. that’s when she decided she wants to take dance lessons.

Christmas was a very busy time for us, we had 18 for supper and then another 13 joined us later in the evening for desert and to visit. Yes, I did it pot luck….there was no way I was cooking for all those people. They kids did really well, they had meet less then half of the people before then….guess all those parties came in handy!!

The kids English is coming along really, really well. They fight like crazy sometimes. One night they had a fight before supper and at supper time Nadia announced to us that she was not going to speak to Stasik in Ukrainian or Russian anymore, only English!!! She seems to have forgotten about that. They do speak to each other in Russian a lot, but we are finding more and more that they are speaking English to each other.