Bulgaria Trip 2-Day 5

Wednesday we had to go to the clinic, so they could check Rosie's TB.  

This is Banitsa, it's very famous in Bulgaria. 

 Rosie in the morning, after her shower Ready to eat her breakfast.

Our breakfast.

Rosie is goofing around :) 

Our facilitator took us to the museum. We liked it a lot. I

 There was no parking by the museum so we had to walk back. On our way we saw this beautiful church.

Rosie

At the clinic, waiting for a doctor. 

 We went to the MR.Pizza restaurant, and it was great. Their prices are very good, they speak English, and menu has pictures :)

Shopska

Our table

 It was a very good day. We are bonding with Rosie, and trying to learn details about each other.

Blessings

Bulgaria Trip 2-Day 4

We had simple breakfast in our apartment, cereal and milk. Rosie is getting more comfortable and always happy.

In the morning our facilitator came and we did our DS-260 online. After our facilitator left, we went to have a lunch at one of the restaurant, Schastlivica. 

Shopska Salad( our favorite)

Italian Pizza

Tarator

Then we walked around, and went to the local supermarket. We found a big supermarket but it's about 15 minutes walk from our apartment. We bought some food for our breakfasts and dinners, for lunch we are planning to eat out.

In the evening I stayed in the apartment, Sergey and Rosie went to the Paradise Mall. They had fun, and I worked a little bit in my computer.

It was a great day, and we are learning more and more about our new daughter.
So blessed  to be her parents.

Bulgaria Trip 2-day 3

Monday, December 14th, we woke up at 5 am and at 6am left our hotel in Varna. Around 8:30am we got to Silistra, but it was very early to go to the social services, so we decided to go eat breakfast. Hotel Danube, we stayed there during our first trip, has a restaurant, so we decided to go there.

Around 9:30am we got to the social services, and Rose was already there :) She greeted us with a huge smile :)smile emoticon She was all ready to go, no tears, no looking back and we had a happy, smily girl :)smile emoticon:) It was sad to watch her foster mom tears, but she is very strong, loving and just awesome lady. We are blessed to have a daughter, and foster mom worked a lot with Rose. We are so thankful for this brave women.

At 10am we left Silistra, and it took us about 5 hours to get to Sofia. We had only one bathroom stop.

In Sofia, we went straight to the clinic, to get Rose's TB test done, and check if she needed any shots.

We kept asking Rose if she is hungry, but I think she was way to excited, and didn't want to eat or drink anything.

In the clinic was a long line, and we end up waiting for almost 3 hours. We all were very hungry, but decided to eat after clinic.

When we went inside to see a doctor, Rose needed to have two extra shots, and TB skin test.

Doctor checked everything and gave Rose shots. It was time to go, and when Rose got up from doctor's chair, she fainted in our arms. This was so so scary. Doctor said that because Rose was hungry, tired , her blood pressure dropped after vaccines. She recovered very quickly, and we got her a sandwich to eat, as soon as we were able to get one.

Our facilitator took us to the apartment, and after that we went to have lunch/dinner at the Bulgarian restaurant.

Came to the apartment, took showers and crashed smile emoticon

We are in Bulgaria-1st and 2nd days

Yesterday, we safely landed in Varna. I was very tired, and didn't post. Thank you for your prayers! None of our flights were delayed, or had issues, everything was awesome!
We already had our breakfast, and now I have some time to reply to my -mails and post.

Yesterday our facilitator met us in the airport, and drove us to our hotel. We took our showers, and decided to go to Grant Mall to find some food, and watch a movie. We were just trying to get out of our hotel room, so we would not fell to sleep.

Got taxi, drove to the mall. Ate a little, and went to watch a movie. Watching a movie was a bad, bad idea. I don't remember a lot, it was hard to stay awake.
Drove back to hotel, and then went for a walk to stay awake.

We had a good night sleep. We made it till 10pm local time, and woke up only once, around 3:30 am, and went back to sleep. Second time we woke up are 7:30 am, and we feel great. It was an easy time change :)

Us, waiting for our flight

 Capital Hotel

This is our 3rd time staying in this hotel. We like it. 

Grand Mall. It is huge, and many things to see and do. 

Lunch in the mall

 Looks like we are the only one's on this hotel. We had to use menu to order breakfast. (last time they just had a lot of breakfast items to choose from on the counter). 

 Breakfast was very yummy. It was awesome that I didn't have to cook it :)

 We are planning to stay in the hotel for awhile. Maybe will go for a walk later but now I am planning to answer all my e-mails. Around 6 pm our facilitator will pick us up, and we will go for a dinner.

We have travel dates!

On Thanksgiving date we got our travel dates! We will be in Bulgaria Dec.12th-Dec.20 st.
We have little time to prepare everything, and there is still a lot of things that needs to be done before we leave.

We need to buy tickets
Find and reserve hotel in Varna
Find and reserve hotel in Sofia
I have to buy presents for foster family (4 people)
Buy presents for our facilitator/translator
Buy clothes and presents for Rose
Buy Christmas presents for all the kids ( we are doing small Christmas this year)
Clean our house
Make  Rose's bed, and finish preparing Rose's room
Reschedule piano lessons, speech therapy and etc.
Arrange airport drop off and pick up
Make menu for mom
Prepare my mo
Prepare school work for all the kids, so they have something to work on, while we are gone
Meet with our ES (Educational Specialist)
Find luggage
Buy some warm clothes for me and Sergey
Change bedding on all the beds
Do all the laundry
Buy foods for us while we stay in Bulgaria. Because we are staying in apartment, we will be cooking some meals. I am planning to take some oatmeal, cereal and maybe few other things.

And this is a short list of things that I can remember :) My head is spinning and I know there is a lot more that needs to be done before we leave in 10 days.

2015-2016 Homeschooling year

This is our second year of homeschooling. If I will say that this is easy, I will lie. It did get easier in some areas, but we still trying to find our system. We love homeschooling, and something major needs to happen for us to got back to public school. We have good days and bad days, and overall it is going good.

This  year, the hardest time I have, it is with my older boys. They don't want to study, and if I let them, they will do nothing all day long. Usually they will sit and "do" their work, but nothing gets done by the end of the day.

I am lost, and have no idea how to motivate them. Nothing works, really, nothing...

We are trying to do as much as possible before we bring Rose home. I know that once Rose is home, we will need to find our new normal, and we just might take few weeks off from schooling.

Our kids currently are in 8th, 7th, 5th, 5th, 2nd, 2nd and K grades.

We have 2 in speech and 5 taking piano classes. Also we will start tutoring for all our children in the next two weeks.
I enjoy to have all our kids home, and watch them grow and mature.

I will try to post more updates, but I don't want to promise anything. :) Life is very busy around here.

We have a new daughter!

Meet Rose Ann Mironyuk

God is good! He always keeps His promises!

Court Date

On November 9th we found out that we have a court! We have a court on November 17th!

Can't wait to bring our daughter home but first we need to hear good news about our court date!

We have a little hope that we might be able bring her home before Christmas.
 Please pray for our judge, and all the paperwork to be sign as soon as possible, so we can bring Rose home.

When we traveled to Bulgaria in August, we took this picture. This is a court building in Sofia.

September-October updates

There is always something going one around here. Lately I have no time for blog, or anything else.
Here is a little update.
September:

Celebrated my birthday
Got new concrete around our house, and on our backyard for our future patio.
Painted one wall in our living room.
Sold our couches
Got another set of couches from my parents

Got I-800 approval on September 15

Filed DS-260 on September 18

Had visa appointment in Bulgaria on September 30 (Bulgarian representative was taking care of that) 

Got our Article 5 letter October 1st

Celebrated Dimcho's Birthday. Can't believe my little "monkey" is already 8. He is getting tall and strong. 

Sergey and all the kids went to Lake Tahoe for 3 days, and I was home alone ( did a lot of cleaning) 

updated our FBI clearances
updated our medicals
all needed documents for our adoption are updated, and in Bulgaria

We all can't wait to bring our daughter home. The wait is very hard on all of us. Our new daughter can't wait to come home. 

We are blessed to be able to talk to her via Facebook almost everyday, and to see her via skype  almost anytime.

There is a lot going on with kids, homeschooling, house and many other things. Will post more when have time!

Blog post from 9/14/15
What we been up to:

Our school testing is done, we have only few kids that we are retesting. We do have CELDT test next week, and I will have to take all the kids to the test site.
We have 5 in piano this year! God help me smile emoticon I really believe that all those lesson will help their development.

We are blessed to have a wonderful piano teacher. One day a week I take two kids to her place, and one time a week she comes to our house to work with the rest of the kids.
Two boys have speech therapy weekly, and I am trying to get IEP for two more boys.
In the next 2-3 month we need to have about 10 doctor appointments (kids only).
We have 3 bigger projects that needs to be done around our house.
Sergey is doing everything to fix his car. And there is a lot more that is going on...Life is busy...

Today we mailed I-800 and all needed documents to USCIS to receive provisional approval to adopt a specific child, Rose smile emoticon 
We also need to obtain updated medical reports and FBI clearances in the next few months. Once we have an approved I-800, you will file the DS-260 (Immigrant Visa application) and Bulgarian legal team will get a  court date to finalize our adoption. Once the adoption is finalized, and we receive an ok, we will travel for our second trip to pick up our daughter! Can't wait...! 

San Francisco Trip 9/6/15

My birthday is coming up, and Sergey knows how much I like to go to San Francisco, decided to take us there today. 

It was peaceful and very relaxing day. We enjoyed our drive and endless ocean view. The sand was warm! The weather was awesome! Ocean was so so beautiful, and we just enjoyed God's beautiful creation! We really missed our Rose today, can't wait till she comes home, and we all can have family trips together. 

Here is few pictures from our day! 

On our way to San Francisco!

Dimcho loves loves water!

My beautiful princess! 

 The water was too cold for swimming, but kids enjoyed running away from waves! They all got wet by the time we were ready to leave :) 

 My Bulgarian handsome sons! 

Tried to do a jumping picture :) not to bad for a first time. Dimcho just can't jump, we are still working on his leg-muscles. 

Building castles! 

Just a view....

Just goofing around..

They all played soccer....

 My beautiful kids

Every time we visit San Francisco, we stop by Russian Bakery for some Russian "pirozhki" , "chebureki" and pastries. All of us were so hungry, and I just forgot to take a picture of our meal :) 

 And on our way home we were blessed by a beautiful sunset! God is good!

All these pictures missing one little, special, and beautiful little girl!