The Holiday Season Part I: The 25 Days of Christmas and 25 Reasons Why I Love my In-laws

This is a statement of fact: I have the best in-laws ever! For Christmas they surprised us with the 25 days of Christmas. Let me explain. For the first 11 days, my in-laws took turns writing happy encouraging emails, including several that had pictures of our 2 year old niece. That's like instant happiness! On the 12th of December, we received a big box. Inside we found tons of gifts all wrapped up and each one had note with a day on it! So I lined up all the gifts in numerical order along the windowsill.

December was a difficult month. We were so busy, I was really sick for 2 weeks, and we had just moved and so everything was a mess, and then we were so far away from family. But having a little gift to open each morning was so exciting and beautiful! There was something to look forward to on a daily basis (and a reason to get up in the morning), and every day we had a reminder that we were loved!

Some of the gifts included:
Plastic snowflake confetti that we had lots of fun with!

Peanut butter cookie mix for Janna the baker!

Minty stuff. I think they're saying we have bad breath.

Medicine (from my mother-in-law who is a nurse of course)!

Twizzlers (a Ross family favorite)!

A puzzle (for Daniel who does a puzzle every Christmas)!
New Hats!

I wanna be a gangster!

Aww! Isn't he cute!

A new DVD!

The Night Before Christmas book with a built in recording of them reading it out loud, including a page where my niece "reads!"

Many of you asked me how Christmas was, if I was sad and homesick. I was to some extent, but really, how could I be sad when I have such amazing in-laws? I am so blessed. God provided exactly what I needed! Love you Don, Brenda, Eric, Shae, and Avory!

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Christmas in Ukraine Part VI: Nat and Tiffy come to Ukraine

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of hosting two sisters here in Kiev, Tiffany and Natalie. When they came to Ukraine from America, they brought 280 blankets to give out to children in need! The blankets were awesome! Natalie and Tiffany go to Liberty College, and they had decided to do something for kids in Ukraine. They chose to make blankets. With the help of many prayer groups at Liberty, they came up with 280 beautiful, colorful, warm and fuzzy blankets, and each one had cards inside with Bible verses and notes from the people who made them. What a wonderful idea! We spent three days going around to different places to hand out the blankets, and it was precious! First we went to our orphanage, Komarivka. The majority of the kids had gone home for the holidays, but about 30 kids remained. You should have seen their faces! Such big smiles all around! One of my favorite pictures ever of two giggling girls, Luda and Vita! Some of the older girls, Larissa, Natasha, J...

The power of a hug

Three weeks ago at church, Masha sat next to me. Masha is ten, has Downs Syndrome and is a fantastic hugger. She just loves hugging. So I try to always stop and hug her back. During the service, she came in and sat between me and her dad, for a while she loved on her dad and then she leaned her head on my shoulder, so I leaned my head over onto hers, and she looked up at me with this big smile. She reached around and gave me a shoulder hug, and then patted my head, and then rubbed my back for a few minutes. I didn’t move the entire time because it just felt so good. It was just simple, innocent affection, and it sent tingles up my spine. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you need more hugs and back scratches. Human contact is so important. That’s why I try and hug the kids when we go up to the orphanage. These are just a few stories of some of the hugs I’ve given and gotten this past month, and why hugs are so imp...

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain: Why shopping is a pain in Ukraine.

I used to like shopping. I thought it was fun. I love closure, and so nothing was more satisfying than crossing items off a list. I enjoyed the experience of checking out new stuff, looking for bargains, and of course everyone knows that buying stuff feels good. That was then. This is now. Shopping here is a pain. Let me explain (hey, I’m a poet and I don’t even realize it)! First, we don’t have a car. That means we are at the mercy of public transportation, and so we have to keep that in mind when choosing what store to go to. Is it close to a bus or metro stop? Do we have to transfer metro lines? When we lived in the city center, we were really close to two metro lines. We like this store called MegaMarket, and it was only a few stops away on the metro. So, we would grab our backpacks, walk a block to the metro, go down a ridiculously long escalator, then hop on a metro and ride a couple stops down. Then we would walk a few blocks and there it was..…Megamarket! Second re...

The Voices of Ukrainians

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