Russian and Playhouse

Been listening to Russian I tapes. I had listened through Lesson 10 about 2 years ago, but lapsed. Started over again, and have re-listened to Lesson 10. That actually helped as hearing it a second time, it is sinking in more. A long way to go though.

Was listening to Russian while making repairs to our playhouse. We put up an 8' x 10' playhouse with a little porch about 7-8 years ago. But it has been unused for a while, and the floor had rotted out. I thought this would be a good afternoon project to repair.

So far, I am up to 3 full days of effort. Like most home projects, the more work I did, the more problems I found..

I found that the rot had gotten to the front wall, so I took that out. Then I found the front porch deck was rotten, as well as the rails. Then I found out it wasn't just a 2 foot section of the floor that was rotten, but about 1/2 of the floor. The problem was that the builder let the front porch slope toward the playhouse, this let water run under the door and onto the floor.

What a mess.

The demolition took about 2 days because I had to keep as much as possible, and remove the sections carefully so I could add the new repaired material. I began the construction today using pressure treated lumber.

I decided to add some flashing to minimize the water incursion. As I was installing the aluminum flashing, I noticed it said "Not for use on pressure treated wood". Thought maybe I should look that one up on the internet.

I knew PT lumber had arsenic in it. Well, it used to. I didn't know it had changed. Nor did I know that it also contained copper. So, that would cause a dissimilar metal problem, and basically would cause the aluminum to rust.

That got me thinking about the bright common nails I had used in buildings the joists and stud wall. Oops. That is a no-no as well. Fortunately, according to an old hand at Lowes, I can just add stainless steel nails (which are ok for PT wood) and I do not have to remove the others I had used. Just be prepared for them to rust.

Anyway, not exactly an adoption story, but it is a part of our preparation for our new child. Well worth it.

Logistics and Language

Logistics are a bit of a wrinkle. We have arranged for the kids to come with us to Ukraine for the entire time. Essentially, we will home-school them for a month, but will follow the chapters they would be covering in school. We can keep up with homework by using email. I'm sure it won't work out as easily as we hope, but the school is being very flexible. That's another advantage of a small Christian school.

We have yet to nail down when Claire (and perhaps Colin) will return to Charlotte. They might come home early, or may stay the whole time. I guess that means we will need to get them tickets with adoption fares (so their return date can be flexible).

We need to nail these dates down soon though, as tomorrow is 30 days from our departure date....

I really have to get going on my Russian. I waffled for several months as to whether to try to learn some Russian or Ukrainian. Ukrainian is the national language but from what I understand Russian is more predominate, especially in the eastern portion of the country.

I finally decided to try to learn some Russian as it might be more useful. I have volumes I, II, and III of the Pimsleur Russian program. We'll see how that goes.

Weather Widget

Well, I'm kind of psyched. I got the weather widget working (after several hours of trying). Just a tip. If you click on the links in the widget, it will try to open the link in that tiny window. Instead, you should right-click on it and select "Open Link in New Tab" (Firefox) or "Open in New Tab" (Internet Explorer).

Another odd thing is that sometimes the weather map shows up (bottom half of the widget) and sometimes it does not.

I still would prefer to widen the panel so the entire widget would be visible.

Oh well. In time.

Kicking it off...

Nancy and Nick are in our mid-40s and have two children, Colin (14) and Claire (13, as of tomorrow). We are a Christian family living in Charlotte, NC.

This past spring, we decided to begin the process to adopt a child from Ukraine. We are looking for a child between 4-10 years old (more on that later....).

We completed our dossier in September and were expecting to travel to Ukraine around February, 2009.

Well, big surprise to us. We heard last week that we are now schedule to meet with the SDA in Kiev (henceforeth "Kyiv", the preferred spelling) on December 17th. So we are in catch up mode.

In this blog, we will describe the process of adopting as a future record for our family as well as a guideline for other families considering adoption.

Like many other families, we are just beginning our blog shortly before our travel. But I know from our experience that info on the process so far would be helpful. In some of the future posts, we will fill in some of the detail on the process to date.