Update in pictures

Here's another quick update in pictures.  Most of them are from Tuesday night when we roasted marshmallows in our backyard.  This week is his first of two trips back to the dentist; 1 to get two cavities filled and 1 to get a baby tooth removed.  The second trip will be next week, so be sure to pray for those.

And now for the pictures!

Playing Jenga (thanks, Elizabeth!).  He is very good at it!

Enjoying Japanese food with King.  So much fun!

What a goof!

Just to let you know that he can be pure kid.

King and Dima made it out to watch a Charlotte Eagles soccer game and had a great time, even in the rain!

Even with damp clothes, he was all smiles at the end of the game!

Showing that he knows what to do when it comes to marshmallows and a camera!

First taste...

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm (and a little smoke from the fire)!

Do I have something on my face?

In case you needed to learn how its done.

I don't think I've seen a bigger grin on his face than in this picture.

Goin' for the straight-off-the-stick method...

Maybe not...

YUM!!!!

Week 2

Whew!  It's hard to believe that it's already been two weeks with our young visitor, and there's so much to tell!  Last weekend we traveled to Richmond, VA to visit with Casey's parents.  Friday night, Casey's parents hosted a get-together for their friends who have supported us in this endeavor.  All things considered, it went very well.  Not to our surprise, Dmitrijs was very quiet but was very willing to meet everyone.  We did provide an escape for him from potentially being overwhelmed by having the Wii set up so the kids could play while the adults chatted.  After the party was over and we went through our nightly routine, we learned that Dmitrijs actually prefers to be called "Dima" (the 'D' in this case sounds like the 'dg' in "edge," so if you say "Gima," you get close enough).  According to him, Dima is a shortened version of Dmitrijs, similar to Bob being a shortened version of Robert.  It has taken some effort to make the switch in our heads, but after a week of the "corrected" name, it has set in pretty well now.

Saturday Dima proved once again that sleeping is not a problem for him!  Thirteen hours after going to bed, he graced us with his presence around 11 AM!  We spent the rest of the morning and early part of the afternoon at home, but spent the rest of the afternoon at a local Putt-Putt, where he was able to play 2 rounds of Putt-Putt, drive a go-kart, and get COMPLETELY soaked on the bumper boats.  He had a blast and everyone came home very tired and hungry.  As a result, Dima got to show off his eating capabilities when he consumed a 1/2 pound hamburger, 2 hotdogs, and tater tots for dinner.  We clearly cannot be accused of starving this kid!

Dima enjoying Cheetos during a break from Putt-Putt.

Sunday we went to church where the sermon was on The Story.  Check it out at http://knowthestory.net/.  What an awesome sermon for Dima (and us!)!  Casey sat through the service with her phone trying to translate each of the points of the sermon.  He seemed to understand and later said he knew this story.  After church we had a great lunch at Outback.  As we've mentioned, we learned that Dima was not your typical Latvian boy since he LOVES spicy food.  However, the Bloomin' Onion didn't quite suite his taste buds!  All in all, Dima had a wonderful time getting to know Casey's parents and her brother, Kyle.  Just before we headed home Sunday, Kyle was able to display his guitar skills which greatly impressed Dima.  In fact, Dima was so impressed he later did an impression of Kyle while doing an "air guitar jump" at the pool.  Check out the video (he is saying "I am star, Kyle!").

On the way home we started singing "Dima, Dima, bo-bima, banana-fanna fo-fima...etc." and Dima was so amused!  He had never heard this name game song before and had us singing it slow and fast and taking turns and on and on!  He tried to follow us to learn it and eventually he just got ridiculously silly.  Check out those videos as well!

This week was Dima's first week being on our regular schedule with King heading to work M-F and Casey and Dima going to her nannying job.  He definitely did not like the requirement of getting up at 7 AM and did give Casey a little bit of whining in the process.  To counter this, we quickly made the adjustment of getting ready for bed earlier in the evening.  So far, Dima has spent many hours swimming (no disappointments there), watched a few movies (including Cars 2), and played games.  He enjoys spending time with the other two children and has really started teasing and playing with them more over the past two days. 

Casey took a daring step by taking all of the kids to Carowinds today.  They spent most of the day in the water park since Dima stated that he did not like roller coasters.  However, at the end of the day, Dima agreed to try riding one roller coaster.  Much to Casey's surprise, he chose Thunder Road, one of the wooden roller coasters at the park that is really rickety.  Despite his initial hesitation, Dima loved the ride and hopes to come back to ride more in the future.  In fact, at the end of the day he said that the roller coaster was the best part of his day!

Perhaps the most exciting update is regarding Dima learning to pray.  So far we have introduced two steps of praying: thanking God and making requests.  He has gradually grown comfortable with these concepts and has prayed out loud with his four times (in English!!).  We plan to teach him about the qualities and names of God this coming week and introduce the concept of praising God and giving adoration during prayer. 

All in all we have been very busy, but we are having THE BEST TIME!  This has been nothing short of life changing and every day is filled with challenges and numerous joys!  Please continue to pray for and with us.  The next three weeks will continue to be a significant opportunity for us to minister to Dima and teach him about his Heavenly Father that has chosen him and loved him unconditionally despite his past experiences with family.  Pray that he will understand what we share with him and that he will believe it.  Additionally, pray for us as we continue to grow SO attached and know that we are unable to adopt Dima.  We pray each day that God give us peace about his future and wisdom about how to maintain a relationship with him when he returns to Latvia.  We are both committed to doing as much as we can for as long as we are able to continue to love and invest in Dima.  We appreciate the prayers and support.  Thank you!

Some pics and a video.

Okay, this post will be very brief, but hopefully you'll get a quick glimpse.  Hopefully we'll be able to put something with more detail soon.  For now, a brief summary since Saturday, a few pictures, and a video will have to do.

On Sunday afternoon, we spent a little time with Aija (pronounced, I-ya) one of the chaperones from Latvia.  Dmitrijs was able to speak some Russian and Aija ensured that she had everything that he needed.  After we dropped Aija off at her host family's house, we braved the grocery store and were able to learn some of his favorite foods (peppers are a BIG fav!).  For the 4th of July, we went to a different YMCA that has a waterpark.  Needless to say, he had a BLAST there, especially when King was able to teach him how to go down the waterslide faster by laying on his back.  For fireworks, we let him choose between the National Whitewater Center which had live music before the fireworks or Charlotte Motor Speedway for one of their Summer Shootout Series races.  He chose the Speedway and had a great time!

He went to the dentist today and did great!  They did find 2 cavities and a baby tooth that needs to be pulled, but he does not seem frightened about the process (though he certainly isn't excited about it).

Last night we started reading Bible stories with him.  Since we could not find Latvian materials earlier, Casey picked up some children's Bible story books, and we used Google Translate to get the stories in Latvian.  As we were getting started, Casey challenged him to read the first English paragraph out loud (which he did rather well!), and then said she would read the second English paragraph.  However, she got a bit more than she bargained for.  After she read the second paragraph and we moved to the Latvian paragraph, Dmitrijs pointed to the paragraph, then Casey and said, "You read."  This has produced many, MANY laughs (see the video below)!

Okay, so that was longer than what we originally intended it to be, but here are the pictures and video!

Dmitrijs playing with Merlin on his first day.

Jumping into the pool (also on the first day)

Fireworks from the Speedway on the 4th

We told you we've seen his grin big smile since he's been here!

King and Dmitrijs at the Speedway

Day One

The start of the first day was full of nervous energy!  To start, Dmitrijs (the true spelling of his name) slept almost 13 hours.  We were worried about when to wake him up, how much to let him sleep, and whether he was just sitting in his room waiting for someone to tell him it was time to come out!  Eventually, he did come out on his own and came down for a pancake breakfast.  He enjoyed the pancakes and really liked the syrup!  After breakfast we headed to a farmer's market  to attempt to find out what foods he likes.  This was probably not the best idea.  The farmer's market was PACKED yesterday and we think it overwhelmed him.  It was also painfully hot!  So, after picking up a few things here and there, including some sunglasses for Dmitrijs, we headed back to the house.

Back at the house we introduced him to the Wii.  He chose to try Mario Kart (one of our favorites), but it can be a little frustrating when you're just learning the remote and all of the special symbols and things.  Plus, it is really difficult to explain when you don't speak the same language.  We kept pausing the game to try to explain things, but Dmitrijs was just interested in figuring it out.  For instance, in the hallway we have nightlights that turn on and off automatically depending on how much they sense sunlight.  During the day the nightlights are usually off even though there are no windows in the hall.  However, when you walk by them they frequently turn on.  When Dmitrijs noticed this he experimented walking back and forth in front of the light and then trying to take giant steps over the light and even jump around it!!  It was hysterical to watch and loads of fun!  Plus, we learned that he is a quick learner.

After Wii, we all went to the YMCA to enjoy the pool.  Dmitrijs is an excellent swimmer and was open to some feedback on his skills and willing to learn new things, too!  By the end of the day we had played several rounds of monkey in the middle, dived for numerous diving sticks and torpedoes, sprayed each other with noodles and water guns, and even practiced jumping and diving in the deep end (something he said he "didn't like to do" at the beginning)!  While at the pool Dmitrijs was excited to show us his flips underwater.  Casey started counting how many he could do and when he came up after four she made a big deal about how great it was that he could do that many in a row.  His response was his first English sentence to us, "My record is 12."  We were told by the chaperone that he knows some English and is continuing to learn it, but that full sentence was amazing!  We teased him about knowing more English than he's letting on, but he keeps insisting that he really doesn't know much.  We think he understands much more than he says and that as he gets more comfortable that he will try to use his language skills more often.  We also learned that he prefers Russian to Latvian, which differs from information we were previously given, but is somewhat of a blessing.  It is MUCH easier to find Russian resources than Latvian!

Anyway, after the pool, we came home and showered.  Then we had some dinner, spaghetti, which he enjoyed and said he'd never eaten before.  Then we played Wii Sports Resort.  He LOVED fencing!  Giggled the whole time and sighed when he got "knocked off the platform."  He also enjoyed the table tennis game.

Then it was time for ice cream and a round of Yikers, which he won multiple times--without us letting him win!  Then we played a round of Spot It and he taught us some Latvian and Russian words and we had him practice some English words.

After the game we came upstairs and played with Merlin (our youngest and funniest cat!) who has really taken a liking to Dmitrijs.  They enjoy each other while Dmitrijs waves a cat toy with the feather on the end all around his room and Merlin flops and jumps around trying to attack it.  It is great fun, loads of laughs, and an excellent ice breaker.

Before bed we all wrote in a journal about our day.  In Dmitrijs' journal he said that he felt happy and good.  He said that his favorite parts of the day were playing games and going to the pool and that he would like to do them again.  We wrote pretty much the same thing!  After journal, we showed him the Latvian Bible (generously sent to us by an anonymous source that we still haven't discovered!) and the children's Bible story books that we have translated to Latvian.  He said he was tired and didn't want to read tonight, so we said that was OK, but we would read tomorrow.  He nodded in understanding.  Before bed we prayed together.  He is getting used to this routine, but it is obviously foreign to him.  We are looking for advice on how to better include Dmitrijs in our prayer times, as this is one place when the language barrier seems to be more of an issue.  Comments are appreciated with suggestions on how to do this better!

All in all, our first day was AMAZING.  We are excited about the next five weeks and are hoping that he will continue to gain trust in us and open up.  Thank you for praying for and encouraging us!  If you live in the area and are interested in getting together send us a message.  We know we won't be able to see everyone, but we will certainly try to do what we can, based of course on how he is feeling.  Anyway, we are looking forward to day 2!  Updates again soon!!

Heeeeerrrrreeeee's Dimitry!!!!

He's finally here!  Dimitry arrived yesterday around 6:45 and was completely exhausted!  Now, many of you may be thinking, "Wasn't he supposed to get here close to midnight Thursday?"  Yes he was.  Dimitry (and MANY other host children) were delayed in Poland due to some mechanical issues on the plane.  Once they fixed the problem, the plan left 5 hours after its scheduled departure.  As a result, families around Denver, Chicago, D.C., and Charlotte had to wait one more day for their host child.

The picture above was taken shortly after he met us, so I'm sure he was more than a little overwhelmed at the time.  He was very quiet on the way home, despite our best intentions to engage him.  We've also quickly seen how imperfect Google Translator is as we've shown him a translated sentence or question, only to get a quizzical stare as a reply.  Fortunately, we have seen him smile a few times.  Once we got home, we showed him around and introduced him to Luna and Merlin.  This produced smile number 1!  He enjoyed petting them, and we're pretty sure he'll like playing with Merlin.  Once we showed him his room (which produced another small grin), we had an ice cream sundae celebration!  This brought another big smile!

While we were having ice cream, we played Yikers, a game we picked up to play with him.  Basically, you have 10 magnets and the goal is to play all of your magnets first.  The tricky part is that if the magnets come together, you have to pick them up and place them back in your hand.  Dimitry picked up the concept pretty quickly, but we're not sure how much he likes it.

After ice cream, Dimitry was ready to get cleaned up and rest after all his travels.  King gave him a brief orientation of American bathroom procedures and how to work the shower.  Once he got cleaned up, he was ready for bed.  We prayed with him and said goodnight at around 9 PM.

We're not completely sure what's in store for today, but we are planning on going to the farmer's market and possibly a park with his soccer ball!

Please keep praying; one of our concerns at the moment is that we don't have other children to engage him.  Kids have a way of getting other kids to let their guards down when they are otherwise intimidated by adults.  Also, because we don't have other kids all attention is on him.  We're working on not putting him on the spot too much, but aren't sure we're succeeding.  We have been praying about this (and trying not to stress about it).   If you are in the area with children and would like to meet up, let us know!  =)

Thanks for praying.