Pass it on after reading

Please take a moment and pass on the link to this post - today!  You can help to unite a child with their mother and father with a simple Facebook link, Twitter tweet, or email forward.  Something small like that was what lead us to our boys.  We know the kids in the pictures below - ask us about them!  The letter and details follow below...

Friends, Colleagues and Clients,

Last year I sent you an email about a group of Ukrainian orphans that were coming to Utah in hopes of finding their “forever” families. They arrived last summer on July 18^thand by the time they returned to their orphanage 21 days later 10 of the 11 kids who came had met families who were interested in adopting them, including three siblings who did not travel here!

Opportunity for More Miracles! – Kids Arriving in Late July!
We are bringing 15 more children from Ukraine to Utah this summer to find adoptive families on July 19. I am looking for volunteers to help with their visit. I am looking for potential adoptive families, host families, Russian translators and volunteers to help with their visit here in Utah.

If you know of a family who might be interested in adopting one of these kids, hosting one of these kids in their home, translating for these kids or volunteering during the visit, please forward this email to them TODAY and have them contact me via email (robjolley@msn.com) or call me at (801) 259-7034.

Better yet, please forward this email to your email contact list and Facebook friends. The more people who see this email the more likely that potential adoptive families will be contacted. Even if you don’t think one of your contacts would be interested, please send this email to them anyway. They may know someone who might be interested. You may be a link in the chain of a child finding a family!

More Details
We expect them to be arriving in Utah on July 19th and staying until the morning of August 12th.

Adoptive families do not need to live in Utah. Two of the families from last year were from other states.

The list of kids who will be traveling here includes children from the same Ukrainian orphanage as our daughter. Five boys and five girls, a brother and a sister, and two siblings groups whose youngest sibling is not old enough to travel: two sisters (older one is visiting), and two sisters with a little brother who is too young to travel. The ages of the kids traveling here range from 6 to 16. The majority are over twelve. Two files are attached which contains a list of the kids coming and their photos. The list also contains sibling groups who aren’t traveling but are also looking for families.

The Incentives for Action: Both Positive and Negative!
The benefit of this kind of hosting program is that the kids who are coming here have been hand-picked by our adoption facilitator in Ukraine and the orphanage directors as the children most likely to adapt and bond to an adoptive family. A prospective adoptive family gets to spend time with the child here in the US. in the comfort and convenience of their own home. All members of the family can participate in sharing their lives for a few days with their guest. Hosting a child is a unique way for a family to make an adoption decision!

While there is a wonderful cause for celebrating when a child finds their forever family, life continues to be a grim existence for most orphans. The statistics can remind us what can happen “when good people do nothing”. As I told you last year:

· Ukrainian orphans "graduate" from the orphanage system at the age of 16.

· Many of them, after they graduate, will become homeless and alone and lack the education necessary to provide for themselves.

· 10% commit suicide by their 18th birthday.

· 60% of the girls will end up in prostitution.

· 70% of the boys will enter a life of crime.

· Only 20% will find work.

· These are the kids that human traffickers target and exploit.

· Typically, after the age of 5, a Ukraine orphan only has a 20% chance of being adopted.

However, over 80% of the children who come to the U.S. on hosting programs like the one we did last summer meet families who adopt them!

As you can see from these statistics, the future of orphans is very bleak if they are not adopted. Please consider taking a few minutes to broadcast this opportunity to your network of friends! Just imagine the satisfaction you would feel to help a child meet their forever family!

But equally important, the families that adopt these children will have a life-changing impact upon their own lives as well. This has been the case for my wife, my family and me. We are so grateful that we found three of our children through similar hosting programs!

Thanks!

Rob Jolley

And Then There Were 16 . . .

Guest blogger Dana here. (Becky's sister). Becky has big guilt from not blogging but she also has 5 kids so I thought I would help her out. We just got back from our family trip to Bear Lake and Max and Sergei brought the grand kid count to 16! Becky and Kevin are great, patient, funny parents and the girls are FABULOUS. Here are some cute things about the boys:

-Max calls Sergei "Sir-la-gear". I am going with the phonetic spelling because I have no idea how to spell it correctly. It is one of those longer-than-the-real-name nicknames and it is cute coming out of Max's mouth. (Becky and Kevin do not think it is cute coming out of Max's mouth in the middle of the night when he is looking for his brother but I do :)

-Max does crack. Max is tall but SUPER skinny. He cannot keep a swimsuit pulled up to save his life.

-Sergei has a little obsession with BMWs. Whenever we see one he points and says, "Sergei's car." Whenever he sees a junky old car he points and says, "Dana's car." He thinks it is hilarious.

-Even more hilarious to Sergei than pairing you with an ugly car is pointing at your shirt and saying "ketchup" and then getting you in the chin when you look down. This was also the most hilarious thing to his mom Becky until she was like 30 years old - the apple does not fall from the tree.

-Max LOVES pop-its. If you want to win him over bring him a box of pop-its. Best 39 cents I ever spent.

-Somewhere in the Ukraine there is a tall, skinny teenage boy that took good care of Max. Sergei is always Max's favorite but a close second is any tall teenage cousin. We have a lot of teenage boys in the family but he is especially drawn to my oldest son, Harrison, who is 6'4". When he couldn't have Harrison he was very happy to have my girlfriend's son Chris, who is about 6'3". If neither of them were around he would settle for Caden or Carter, who measure less than 6' but he was happiest when he could find his "bolshoi cousin" (big cousin). This is a lot of pressure for a family where the average height is 5'2".

-We had a pull up contest at the cabin. Sergei won. He killed it. He can also do flips off of a picnic bench. It makes me want to throw up.

-Every time we left to go somewhere Sergei would say, "My mom is slow." Already annoyed by his mom - :)

-I was telling Suzy and Pearl a story in their bunk bed one night when Max climbed onto the bed. He stared Suzy down and said, "Hi Suzy". This was not a friendly hi. It was a brotherly challenge. Suzy just stared back. Max upped the ante. Teeth clenched, "Hi Suzy." I turned to Suzy and whispered , "Just say hi." She stared him down again and finally said, "Hi Max." It was hilarious! Sibling rivalry knows no language barrier!

-Our friends, the Baughs, let Sergei drive their jet ski (with me on it). Sergei LOVED it. He told Kevin he didn't like "Salt Lake", he liked "Bear Lake".

-Sergei and I were on a bike ride and I thought it was a great time to work on his English. Every time we passed an animal I would ask him the animal's name in Russian. He would tell me and I would then tell him the English word. We were working with a limited number of animals but since repetition is the mother of all learning I would do this every time we passed a horse, cow, dead frog etc. I would also do the animal sounds. After the third time of me pointing and saying "cow", Sergei looked at me and said, "I know!" That is the universal teenage language for "shut up" (which Sergei is not allowed to say :)

-I am training Sergei to say I am his number one aunt. At the lake he said my uncle Mike was his "number one aunt." My uncle gave him a dollar for that little betrayal and did not punish him for making him into an aunt. I will probably end up buying him a BMW just to win this position - my aunt greed knows no bounds - watch out Mike!

We love our new nephews, cousins, grandsons and we are grateful to everyone who helped get them here.

Boys are boys!

I again apologize for not posting sooner....for every parent who has had a colicky baby or a child that needs less sleep than the parents....you are my heroes! We are fine tuning our sleep schedules and feel confident will get it down soon. Maksym LOVES his big brother and struggles being away from him even for the moments his eyelids are closed. Sergei loves him right back but I think he is ready to be the big brother and not the Dad any more. Now if we can just convince Max!

We are having a lot of fun over here. The kids all love each other and play great together. Charlotte is wondering why we waited so long for brothers...she loves to wrestle and chase! Max and Charlotte are perfect match-up for wrestling....Charlotte age 20 months weighs: 32 lbs and Maksym age 6 weighs: 36 lbs. He is very gentle and careful with the girls...Charlotte, our little rough-neck, not so much!

We had our first doctor appointment for the overall check-up and I couldn't find the boys weight on the chart Dr. Lindgren had printed for me....he pointed that it was marked but was almost off the page because they are so thin! These boys need to gain some weight but other than that have a pretty good bill of health.

We are getting settled and the boys and girls are realizing this is forever...we are so happy to be together. I will share a very personal and touching moment...Sergei has started me calling me "Mom". He has always called me Becki and just a few days ago he called for me, "MOM!" I try not to grin ear to ear and buy him a pony on the spot but it is pretty hard. It is pretty awesome to say the least. He is a good boy...14 for sure but still a good boy. My vacuum smells like maybe he cleaned up milk with it and he did wash my car with my kitchen mop but again, he is 14. Before you think I have him slaving away over here, he is trying to earn money so he can buy video games!

Our little Max can melt you with his face and smile. He likes to play and is active and strong. He is a good little helper and will eat ice cream after breakfast, lunch and dinner (usually I would say no but the kid weighs 36 lbs!)  Suzy, Pearl and Max are like peas in a pod....nice having them so close in age because they all like to do the same things. Park, bike rides, ice cream breaks and pool.  We are living it up the summer of 2012! We are playing and working out a few tantrums (less and less as time goes by) while Kevin works and works and works leaving just enough time to help put all 5 of the kids to bed. Mom...I will never figure out how you did it....I LOVE YOU!!!

I know many of you are praying and thinking of us daily, thank you. We need it! We are settling in and feel your prayers wrap around our little family like a huge hug at the end of each day. We love you all so, so much. Still pretty surreal having all of children under one roof....God is great!

This is right...

We have been home for six days as a family. Every night I say I am going to update the blog but it just doesn't happened, sorry for the wait! We are so happy...happy isn't even the right word to describe it. Joy, complete, whole, peaceful, right. My heart feels right. We are all together. We belong. We fit. it took so long but here we are together reading bedtime stories, going to the park as a family, leaving notes and pictures under each others pillows and finding the word "Femeli" aka: "Family" written on scrap pieces of paper around the house...this is right.

We have our uphill challenges for sure but just being together makes everything else seem easy. Our sweet Sergei gets shy and lonely for Ukraine. It is hard not to talk to him in Russian, I know he misses hearing his own language, his friends, his culture. I went into his room late one night and he was sleep talking in Russian...I would have killed to understand what he was saying! He has been the father to Maksym his whole life, we have two Papas at our house right now, Papa Kevin and Papa Sergei. We will be slowly reestablishing roles for everyone. Maksym emotionally has been put through so much during his 6 years of life. He is adjusting but has 2-3 tantrums a day lasting about an hour which Sergei feels pressure to calm him down. It is hard for them both. It is Maksym's way of saying "What the .... just happened to my my life people and why is this lady always talking funny to me?!" I hear Sergei getting up several times in the night to check on his brother...Papa Sergei. Sergei is one good kid. He has a great friend Alex who lives in Provo, Utah who he knows from the orphanage. It is a gift having the Gardnier family in our life...WE LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

We got home and started introducing the kids to one family each day. For those who do not know us, we have a HUGE family. That seemed to be too much for the boys and we really needed to focus on our little family. We needed to show Max that families are special and that this little group of people will always be here, always. We stopped taking calls and emails (SORRY) I just could not make it to my computer or phone fast enough! Every night someone falls asleep after me and Kevin and every morning someone wakes up before us, with a few night wakings in-between. We are pooped but so, so happy.

Suzy, Pearl and Charlotte have been kind, loving, patient and overall just great sisters. They love their brothers who often times drive them crazy. The kids are getting along and they really do love each other. Kevin was back to work Monday, we have our family pool pass, annual aquarium pass and bikes for everyone so we are keeping busy...Kev and I are the only ones who seemed utterly exhausted at the end of the day.

Our sweet neighbors/ward have had hot dinners at our house every night...enough for 50 kids instead of 5! We are so grateful. Each meal is made with love...we know it. The recipes are family favorites and they have been wonderful to put it lightly.

As we focus on bonding with Maksym and establishing family roles you might not see too much of us but slowly we will get out to see everyone. We know you are all DYING to meet these boys...you brought them to us and they are just perfect. Perfect to us...even if we do not have any doorknobs left in six-months. Boys ARE different...Dana and my friends with boys have been saying it for years and they are right. Different but great!

I am letting Sergei decorate his own room....call me crazy but he deserves it. I was trying to talk him into his name above his bed....I of course got two thumbs WAY down for that one. Hey a Mom can try right!?

More in a few days...five kids in the backyard waiting for some fun!

There are no words...

My sweet and wonderful brother-in-law captured our moment. To all of you who made this miracle happen, there are no words...

Well crap...THEY ARE EARLY!

7PM, 7PM,7PM,7PM

They are on the plane!

Just recieved word from Kevin....THEY ARE ON THE PLANE! No false alarms this time! They will be landing in SLC on Delta flight #2333 at 7:21PM

For all your prayers, love, cheers, donations, tear of happiness, tears of heartache...thank you, thank you., thank you. I cannot count the number of miracles we have seen since we started this adventure. Each and everyone of you have made this happen, thank you.