Circus Flora deal

Quick post to say...for those of you in the St Louis area, Groupon (one of those daily deal sites) has a great deal on Circus Flora tickets today. You get two tickets for $19, which basically means it's a B1G1 free deal. The tickets are on the mezzanine side, but if you've ever been to Circus Flora you know there are no bad seats. We took the boys to Circus Flora the first summer they were home and we've wanted to go again, but it just gets really expensive especially with 8(!) of us. I think this link should take you to the deal for Circus Flora:

Groupon for Circus Flora

I still have vivid memories of the boys' faces as they watched the circus and I can't wait to see them there again. :)

Loving the weather!

Saturday was a base ball game for Mark and it was a gorgeous day for it! The kids played all day and were so wiped out by the end.

Sunday was church and then Mark's work picnic. I completely forgot to take the camera (the kids actually reminded us after we were already there because they wanted pictures of their balloon animals) but it's probably just as well. There was a bounce house, balloon animals, sno-cones, and way too much barbecue to eat. :) The kids had a great time as did Mark and I. The bigger kids loved the bounce house but Emily was less-than-enthralled. She decided it was way more fun to watch from the outside than to be bumped into by her siblings (who, by the way, thought it was great that they could knock each other down and not get in trouble for it!).

I've been selling some of the kids' old clothes on Craigslist and finally got rid of the second tuxedo on Sunday. It feels so nice to get things out of the house, especially when it can bring some extra money in.

Thinking of money always makes me think of the dirty house. Mark is being way too modest in the pictures.

Every single piece of new wood you see in those pictures he has put in. By himself. In addition, several of the contractors have come through and praised him on his framing. I am so proud of him and how hard he has worked on this. Rough-in of all of the systems is now almost done (waiting on a couple of small things) and we expect to be able to start insulating this week. That tuxedo I just sold should provide enough to pay for all of the insulation supports for the ceilings! :)

Girls' day out

Yesterday Mark had another base ball game a couple of hours away. Since his brother was in town, I requested to stay at home with the girls so we could go shopping for school supplies and all of the boys could go play base ball. Mark was hesitant, but he finally agreed (he wasn't sure how well he could watch the boys while playing base ball, which is a valid concern).

The girls and I hit OfficeMax, Office Depot, Target, and Walgreens, with a McDonalds run for lunch. We had a great time and got a bunch of stuff on the kids' school supply lists. With three of them in school I need to hit all of the deals I can!

Danielle is super excited about school and when she got up today and put her dress on for church she asked if she was going to school. Then tonight when she was going to bed she asked me how many days until school. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't know the number "16" so she still doesn't know how long until school starts. LOL

It was especially good for me to get to spend some time with Danielle shopping on Saturday. I feel like I am not bonding as well to her as she kind of gets lost in the chaos. Emily has needed so much more attention simply because she is younger, so I'm really trying hard to develop my relationship with Danielle. It took several months for me to really feel bonded to the boys, and I've seen that bonding (on my end and theirs) continue to grow and deepen the longer they've been home. I see the same thing happening with Danielle, but it's hard to be patient and give our relationship time. This is nothing Danielle is doing or not doing; it is simply a matter of trying to develop a relationship with a person you've only known for a couple of months and that you have a hard time communicating with. :) It takes time and effort and a willingness to make connections and build the relationship.

I am nothing if not persistent

A few days ago we received a letter from Children's Hospital (where we go for therapy) stating that our insurance had been billed for a month's worth of services but had not paid.

So I called Children's to make sure that was still current, as the original letter had been sent to our old address and then forwarded. Yep, insurance still hadn't paid--and hadn't denied the claim either. AND has paid for the months since then. :)

I then checked online. No, it wasn't even showing up in my claims listing. I called the insurance company and found out they had submitted a letter to the hospital asking for progress reports from therapy the second week of June (the bill was for services from the month of April; why it takes them 6 weeks to decide to send a letter requesting documentation is beyond me). Then I called the hospital billing department. Yes, they had received the notice from the insurance company and had forwarded it on to the therapy department, but there wasn't any note on the account saying that billing had received the progress notes back from therapy to send on to insurance. She assured me she would follow up with therapy but that it wouldn't hurt if I did so as well.

I called and left a message with our therapist to give her a heads up that she was going to need to be giving somebody some progress notes, then called the therapy billing department (who know me by name). She told me she had just received the email from the hospital billing department and would be getting in touch with the therapists to get the progress notes back to hospital billing who will then send it on to insurance.

Wow.

There went 4 hours of my life. ;)

And in a week or so you can bet I'll be doing follow-up calls to make sure everything got where it was supposed to be going.

Our newest acquisition

If you've been reading our blog for awhile, you'll know we've been searching for a new vehicle for our family. In fact, we came home as a family of 6 and didn't have a vehicle that we could all legally ride in.

We've really been van searching for months but we hesitated to make a big purchase knowing we might need the funds for the adoption. We had hoped to find a van while we were back after court but didn't find the right one. We had found a used Toyota Sienna 8-passenger (for the 6 of us plus two grandparents, friends, etc.) that we both liked, but it just didn't sit well with me for some reason.

With all of the searching came a lot of discussion. What kind of car did we really need and/or want? What would we be using it for? Should we settle for something that will meet our needs now or plan for the future (not knowing what that might hold)? Along the way we came to a decision.

Eight is not enough.

And while I never in my entire life would have anticipated it, I am now the co-owner of a Ford Econoline 350 12-passenger van. We bought it today. It was beyond a great deal. Only one year old and a program car (meaning it was used by a dealership as a shuttle car or rental), still under factory warranty, and thousands of dollars cheaper than we were going to be able to get the Sienna for. It meets all of our qualifications minus the blue dashboard. It's sitting in front of our house and I just keep looking at Mark and saying "I can't believe we bought a 12-passenger van." Don't get me wrong--I have no regrets. I don't know how God plans to use this vehicle, but I am so excited about the possibilities.

Without further ado, here it is:

If you and a few (or more!) of your friends need a ride, let us know. ;)

A busy weekend

Saturday morning we all walked over to the local doughnut shop. It's maybe a mile from our house and quite a nice little walk. We all got doughnuts then sat outside on the curb eating them. It was fun and may be something we try to do regularly as a family.

We got so much done this weekend I hardly know where to start! I guess I should back up a little...several months ago (maybe even a year ago or more!) we picked up a dining room table off of Craigslist for $20. It didn't come with any chairs and could stand a good refinishing, but it could easily seat four or six, plus it has the mechanism to pull apart and put leaves in (the leaves were not included when we bought the table) to add another 30" to the length. We never used it in our old house because we didn't have space to set it up, so it stayed in our basement. Now we have a dining room, and room for a real table! Unfortunately, the chairs we had would not work for Emily as they are folding chairs and we couldn't safely put a booster seat on them for her. Thursday we found two wooden (non-folding) chairs on Craigslist for a great price which will work for Emily. Mark and Zhenya picked them up while Dima and I were at therapy.

Friday night Mark and I set the table up with the new chairs plus the folding chairs. Saturday we went to Walmart to pick up a booster seat for Emily. While we were there I decided we might as well get boosters for all of them as I though it would help the boys to be a little higher at the table too. Saturday night I put the boosters on the seats for the boys and they are great! I love the extra lift it gives the boys plus they can't slide back in their seats and slouch now. ;) The boosters do work with the folding chairs, but not in a way that could have been used for Danielle and Emily (I don't have the back strap around the back of the chair) but the boys are stable enough in their chairs that it's not a problem. The girls will be using the boosters in the new non-folding chairs.

We also went to Lowes and picked up stair treads for Mark to make leaves for the table and snagged a great deal on a dishwasher. Energy Star appliances were 10% off this weekend and had no state sales tax, plus we had an additional 10% coupon for our entire purchase. We also bought a manual lawnmower (you know, the ones without a motor? :)) and a medicine chest for the upstairs bathroom since Mark's been shaving without a mirror for a few weeks now. ;)

Today Mark installed the dishwasher (his first time doing that--and it works!! Isn't my hubby awesome?!?), mowed part of the lawn, and hung the medicine chest. I helped where I could but mainly did laundry, vacuuming, and other necessary cleaning. :)

It was a busy weekend but we got so much done and a lot of the little "to-dos" off of our list. Tomorrow Mark's going to be demolishing a wall in the downstairs bathroom so that he will hopefully be able to put in the toilet and sink this week. I really want that toilet in before we get the girls home--I'm thinking potty training while having to run the girls upstairs will be no fun! LOL

The search for a van

With the addition of two more little ones, we have officially run out of room in our car (or will, as soon as they're home). In the decision for what type of vehicle to get next, it was decided that our best bet was a minivan. While some of the SUVs seat 6 (4 of whom are in carseats!), most of them do not then have any room for the 2 dogs that travel with us on many of our road trips.

Thus, the minivan search began.

We (really, Mark) researched several different vans, test-drove a few, and decided our top choice is a Toyota Sienna, with seating for 8 (just in case, you never know ;)). Since our decision, we've been hounding dealerships and Craigslist looking for our new van (which will not actually be new, but new to us). We've found a couple of good candidates (one of which sold yesterday and we were supposed to go look at it tonight! :( ) but have yet to find the one.

If we can find an older one at a good price, we can buy it before we go back to get the girls. If we have to buy a newer one (2007 or 2008) we'll need to wait until we get back since we're not willing to shell out the cash before our second trip. While we're pretty sure we know about how much money we'll need for the upcoming second trip, it would be horrible to get to Ukraine and find that we are a few thousand short because we bought a car!

We're not completely limited to the Toyota Sienna, but it meets our needs, plus it has a few bonus features, one of which I'm in love with. :)

It has blue dashlights.

What?!? I can hear all of you saying that, by the way. See, the problem is that I've gotten a little attached to the Volkswagens which have blue dashlights. Now I'm a little too partial to that feature, and since I look at the dash quite regularly when I'm driving I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to another color of dash lights. But hey, if it drives and it fits our family, I'll adjust.

I have been highly amused by some of my calls to the dealerships regarding postings on Craigslist. I called two different dealerships yesterday to find out if the vans they had were 7 or 8 passenger. Both of them had the same response:

"How can you tell if it's 7 or 8 passenger?"

In general, you can count the seats. ;)

Today

Today...we all way overslept. Mark was the first one up at 9am, and I dragged myself out of bed at 10:30am. Thus, we missed our morning visit with the girls. Instead, we wandered around in the rain (it is raining and cold at the moment, but it has been nice and sunny most recently. If you're coming soon, bring a few light layers and an UMBRELLA.) and visited an outdoor market and then stopped in to warm up and have lunch at a Ukrainian cafeteria. We are eating a lot for very little money here--lunch for 5 of us today was less than $10 and that included desserts. This was the first meal we've eaten out since we got here. We've just been buying food in the stores and eating in our apartment or hotel, which has saved us a lot of money.

This afternoon, we left the boys with my mom and went to visit the girls. We were a little more prepared for Eve this time and were able to really interact with her. We played with both girls for about an hour, and it went really well. Both girls seem to have good attention spans and good motor skills. Dana is amazing with her ability to repeat English words--she can repeat new words better than our boys can. Dana loves to scribble and color and Eve's favorite activity today was mimicking Mark when he made faces--she's really good at it! Size-wise, Dana is about a 5T both top and bottom and Eve is about a 3T.

Eve getting ready to come play!

Right now the plan is for us to come home during our 10-day wait, if we can find flights home. From doing some checking on Delta it looks like we should be fine, but I will be calling them on Monday to see what we can make happen.

The little things

Slowly but surely things are getting done and checked off of the list(s)...in fact, some things are getting done which hadn't even made it on to the list yet.

One of the (many) things we were needing to get set up for the girls was their beds. Mark plans to make their beds, but now we're a little worried that we won't be coming home in between trips and we're going to lose out on a little preparation time. This has meant a little scrambling around here as we try to make sure everything is set up, ready to go for the girls, before we leave.

Yesterday Mark went and bought some of the lumber he will need for the girls' beds. But regardless, we still didn't have mattresses for them. I've been perusing Craig's List for awhile, looking for twin mattresses, but most people were only selling sets of mattresses with box springs...for way more than we wanted to pay.

Until this week.

Yesterday, I found a set of TWO twin mattresses (no box springs) for sale for $25 each. We drove out last night and picked them up from a parsonage. They've had minimal use and are practically new Serta mattresses. Now even if the bed frames don't get finished, at least the girls will have a place to sleep! :)

A week of so many ups

This week just keeps getting better. :)

Last night, we figured out how to get the video on our camera to work.

I almost started crying...tears of joy that we can take video again, and tears of sadness at all of the things I wanted to video this year and didn't.

I don't know if you remember our camera saga, but we bought one shortly after we returned home with the boys. We really liked it, it was great, it took video and good pictures. But for some inexplicable reason, it couldn't hold a charge in the batteries. Literally, we could take 6 pictures and then need to recharge the batteries. We finally took it back and got a newer model (same brand). Also great pictures, really great optical zoom (10x, which is great for when Mark is playing outfield with his vintage base ball team), and it was supposed to take video. Which it did. Except the audio and video didn't match up, and the whole video was choppy. We talked about taking it back, but couldn't decide on another camera we wanted and we were really happy with the camera other than not having video. Yeah, I know, we could have just gone and gotten a camcorder, but we aren't big spenders and it seemed like an unnecessary expense given how much we would be likely to (not) use it.

Then, yesterday, I was looking at our blog archives for someone else. And I came across this:

Zhenya

I almost started crying watching it. Can this really be the same little boy in my house, one year later, who doesn't know a word of Russian and can talk for HOURS about everything under the sun? Who knows all of his colors, letters, shapes (he told me yesterday a stop sign is an octagon!), and is at the beginning stages of reading sight words?

We don't have pictures or video of their first steps, their first words, their first birthdays. And we never will. But we have such a precious gift in video of them before they learned English, to watch that transition--such an important part of their history.

And so yesterday I vowed that if I could not get our camera to take video that we would get something that would take video before we brought the girls home.

Last night Mark and I were looking online at camera options, and I noticed that one of them mentioned something about a video setting that I'd never heard of. Thinking that maybe something was just set wrong on our camera, I got it out and looked at the video settings. It was set for the largest, highest resolution video. I switched it down to the next lowest one and videotaped Mark talking to me. It worked. We have video again. :)

Gum

Today the boys had a short school day, but because of the way it worked out the school offered care for the students until the time they would normally be let out of school. As a result, the boys spent hours playing basketball--and they loved it. Also in the process, Dima managed to sit in some gum. I am happy to report that hot vinegar and a toothbrush worked and his pants are as good as new. Well, as good as they were before he sat in the gum. They certainly didn't look new. ;)

Working outside keeps us warm, right?

Yesterday, cold as it was, we spent a few hours at the new house. The important thing to understand with this is that we have no heat--and we won't have heat until the plumbing is replaced. All of the heating in the house is with radiators, and without plumbing we can't turn the water on...thus, no heat.

Still, we had a great time taking down the back fence and deck. The fence was falling down anyway, but it needed to come out so that the roofer can get a dumpster in the backyard. After the roof is finished Mark will rebuild the back fence. I worked on taking the deck out, and I got a good portion of it out before Mark had to come in with a bit more muscle. ;) The boys helped here and there, carrying tools around and collecting nails, screws, and bolts for Mark. The rest of the time they spent playing with the HUGE tree in the backyard.

We worked inside for a little while as well, replacing door locks, putting some new smoke detectors in, and replacing outlet and switch covers. There's a lot to be done, but almost all of it needs to wait until we have heat--i.e., we can't paint or repair cracks until the house is warmer than freezing. ;) I'm impatient and I want to get started on that now, but I know anything we do with it this cold would just need to be redone later. I have no desire to do the work twice, so I'm (im)patiently waiting.

We also bought a washer today. This has been quite the search for us. We were given a very nice, very expensive dryer by a church friend over a year ago. Since it is a very nice dryer, we wanted to get the matching washer, but it was so expensive it just wasn't practical. We've scoured craigslist and every time we go to Lowe's we check their clearance washers, but they've never had the right one. Until yesterday. It was about $300 cheaper than buying it new, and it is the exact washer we've been looking for. It was a customer return due to it not working in the area they had planned, so it's supposed to work perfectly. We'll be moving it later today after we borrow a friend's truck.

There's a hole in the bucket basement

Sunday morning Ike came through with some pretty heavy rain. The only reason I was really unhappy about this was because it was our company "Day at the Zoo" and the boys knew we were supposed to be going after church. I was still hopeful that Ike would move on and we could hit the zoo in the afternoon when I went downstairs to get something from the basement. We have a floor drain in the basement, and when the AC's been working hard it drains condensation into the floor drain. I noticed that the carpet squares around the drain looked a little damp, so I looked for a place I could move them to to allow them to dry out. And then I yelled up the stairs...

"Mark, the basement's leaking..." and said a prayer of thanksgiving that our house is a rental. :) :)

Mark got various things moved around and discovered the source of the leak--a small crack in the wall that gets progressively bigger as it goes towards the floor and ends in a hole. The water was, well, not gushing, but it certainly wasn't trickling in either. Thankfully, Mark moved the carpet squares out of the way and the water ran straight into the floor drain. Our basement has smelled a little damp the past few days but seems to be drying out nicely. We put in a call to our landlord and hopefully they'll be able to get the crack sealed up before any more rain.

And we did make it to the zoo on Sunday. Since the weather had been so bad, they had canceled our company day, but since the zoo itself had shut down several of their "attractions" (the train, the carousel, anything outside that required electricity), they made everything else free! So we saw the sea lion show, watched the bear feedings, toured the dinosaur exhibit, and visited a few other animals that the boys like. It turned out to be a great day to be at the zoo since the weather was really cool and there were not very many other people there. And they're rescheduling the company day at the zoo so we get to go again! :)

TDIClub

When Mark and I were in the market for a new car in 2000, we test drove several. I was adamant about getting a new car--we had been doing repairs on his Subaru for a year and I was tired of it. I wanted a new car with a warranty. We really liked the Prius, but it was the first year they were here in the States and they didn't have cruise control--a huge issue to me since we travel so much. The other car Mark really liked was the VW Jetta. I liked it just fine, but I wasn't about to pay that kind of money for a car that got worse gas mileage than his old Subaru. Then, while reading through the dealership literature, we came across a note that said the Jetta was also available in a diesel engine. Sold! We bought our first Jetta TDI sedan in 2000, and then sold that and bought a Jetta TDI station wagon in 2002.

In the process of trying to sell our sedan, I came across the TDIClub website. Lo and behold, I found family. People who were just as passionate about their fuel efficiency (most of the time) and their VWs as we were. Michigan had a fantastic group of TDIers. They had regular get-togethers (GTGs) and we made a lot of new friends. Even better, many of the people in the TDIClub love to work on TDIs, and they love to share their knowledge. Glen (aka MOGolf) actually changed our timing belt for our first Jetta and our second Jetta. We trust many of these people more than we would a dealership, as they've been working on diesels for decades and they know these engines inside-out, and can literally take them apart and put them back together (I've watched them!).

When we moved to St. Louis, I really missed (and continue to) our TDI group up there. There doesn't seem to be a strong group in St. Louis, although there are GTGs held every year down in Poplar Bluff and we have made it down there. The MI group got together every couple of months for just fellowship, tinkering, maintenance, and sometimes major repairs, and I miss that. Point being, I've been a little out of the TDIClub loop lately, which is why it took me a bit to think of that on Sunday night. Once I did, though, the TDIers came through like I knew they would.

I posted on the forum what was happening with our car, and as mentioned, within an hour Brian called to check on us. He's been working on diesels forever and we are so happy to have him as our mechanic here in St. Louis. We are incredibly picky about who we let work on our car as diesels are significantly different than gasoline cars (one mechanic told a TDIer he needed new spark plugs...diesels don't have spark plugs). Brian is amazing (as is everyone else at Car-Doc!) and takes great care of our car. But he didn't have any tools with him in Cincinnati, so while he was willing to come up and take a look at the car, he thought it was best to call in Glen.

Glen drove over at 7:30am on Monday just to take a look at our car. It's about a half hour drive for him each way. He spent about an hour with Mark, and took him to get a new battery, and then installed it. What a guy! Thanks to Glen, the only schedules that were disrupted that weekend were the two guys who stayed an extra day to help us (they crashed in our hotel room that night--ask Paul about that adventure sometime ;)) and his.

I love my TDI, and I love my TDI family. :)

I can can!

And I dance well, too! Oh, I jest. :)

In all seriousness, for the first time ever I decided to try canning. I've always pictured canning as this long, arduous ordeal that involved boiling things for hours and getting very sticky and messy. But after picking 20 lbs of peaches, as well as blackberries, I had to do something--was I ever surprised!

I've had to improvise a bit since I don't have, um, any canning equipment. Mark bought some quart jars and pectin, but when he got them home I realized that I didn't have a pot big enough to process the jars once they were full. So back the jars went and we got some pint jars. I still didn't have a pot big enough, but I improvised. I haven't used my crockpot in awhile so...it's now a canner. LOL

Since I'm improvising with most of the equipment (I do have recipes), I've been doing very small batches--usually 2-4 jars at a time, so it goes really fast. I've now put up 2 jars of peach jam, 2 jars of blackberry jam, and 4 jars of canned peaches. We've tried both of the jams and they're both good, although the peach seems really sweet to me. I made the canned peaches in a very light sugar syrup, so I'm hoping they won't be as sweet.

This is fun! I need more jars... ;)

Great sale on ways to save money!

For a few months, I've been a big fan of MoneySavingMom Crystal Paine. She's helped me save a lot of money on household goods and food through her blog, and her personal blog is a great encouragement to me as well!

TODAY ONLY you can get an incredible ebook package from MoneySavingMom--over $100 worth of money-saving ebooks, homemaking helps, and encouragement for only $5.97! I can't believe she's offering such a great price and I'd highly recommend you run over here and check it out. What makes this deal so good is that this ebook package includes the ecourse Supermarket Savings 101--this course alone is worth much more than $5.97 and will teach you how to drastically reduce your grocery bill. You'll learn how to cut your grocery bill by up to 50% or more and have fun saving money at the same time!Go here to read more about this huge sale! Hurry, though, the price goes up tomorrow by $3 and then another $3 on Friday. After Friday at midnight all of the ebooks will be their regular prices again. Don't miss this!

For those of you who may not know, an ebook is a book that you download instantly to your computer, so there are no shipping fees and no long wait for your book to arrive. After your quick and easy download, you can then print out your ebook or read or listen to it on your computer.