Excited for what is to come!

We haven't really posted much about the hosting on this blog because we just started it. A week from today Vitalik will have to leave us and head back to the Ukriane. We really wish he could stay and I'm trying to block out everything for next weekend because I really wish it wouldn't happen. I wish he could just stay! Why do we have to send him back? haha. Unfortunately we had to sign our life away that we would send him back at the end of hosting. The first night that Vitalik was here was very awkward (not gunna lie). The language barrier is HUGE!!!! We had so much we wanted to share with him and so many things we wanted to ask him. He doesn’t know English AT ALL. Little did we know that it would be 100 times better in the week to come and the use of charades would be the way we communicate. We have a translation app on our phone to help if we needed it and we used it when we had to communicate long sentences or tell Vitalik important things. He fit right in with our family. He is caring, fun loving, active, computer loving, wii playing, soccer kicking, football throwing, and golf cart riding young man! Everything they prepared us for in the training before hosting, Vitalik was the complete opposite. They had warned us that the children would not want to bathe, flush the toilet, use toilet paper, not want to eat, not want to communicate or flick us the bird finger every once in a while. Vitalik did none of those things. In fact he was the complete opposite and had very nice manners. Saying "shank you" (thank you) for everything and always making sure his room was clean and the bed was made. What a gentleman. Hannah is at our house every other weekend and Tripp everyday but they all have gotten along great. Hannah enjoyed taking him for a ride in the golf cart and Tripp enjoyed fist bumping and crawling all over "V". Vitalik is definitely a great big brother for both of them. He would even get down on the floor and play with Tripp and his toys. He would pick him up when he was crying to console him or just tickle him to make him laugh. We had a birthday party to celebrate Vitalik when he was here. He said they don't make a big to-do about his birthday in his country, so we told him about American traditions and made sure he had a cool birthday party here. Some videos and pictures will follow when we make a video slideshow of our experience. "V" is the nickname we have given him. It was a little hard for us to say Vitalik when he first arrived let alone Tripp would never be able to say it. His name is pronounced (Vee-TALL-uk). We have enjoyed him teaching us words in Ukrainian as well as us teaching him words in English. He agrees that English is a LOT easier to learn versus Ukraine. We sound really funny when we try to pronounce things because the roll their "r's" and I can NOT seem to do this. Oh well. We have shown Vitalik what the true meaning of family is. He has really enjoyed just spending time alone with our family at home. He hasn't been too big of a fan of going out into public where too many "English" things are to intimidate him. Even though he has warmed up a little more this last week he is with us. He shared some of his past with us and that his mother and father are both alcoholics and his mother actual has died from the "vodka" as he explains it. He has been at his orphanage for the past 3 years. That's all we basically know. We do know that he has an aunt that check in on him from time to time at the orphanage, but that’s the only family that seems to care. What a great young man with such a sad story. :( This experience is so humbling for Jerry and I because we have such great families. It just goes to show us that we take so much for granted. The little stuff to us is the BIG stuff to him. We are excited to announce that we will be pursuing adoption of Vitalik and we will be posting on this blog everything that we experience during the adoption. This will be a long process but it will SO worth it in the end. We really aren't sure how we are going to get $20,000 dollars either. We will start praying about this and we would love for those who are reading to pray for us as well. We will soon have a paypal account set up for anyone who is willing to donate to us. Until next time, Kendall