Summer Vacation

See that girl up there at the top of the blog, the one with the yearning look on her face? Well, she's coming home for the summer! Ten weeks to be exact. Another miracle has happened. Z (Zina, Lizzie, depends on which family member you ask) will get a taste of family life in the Rogé house and an idea of things to come. No one in our family but Heidi, Rimma and me has met her and the reverse is true for her. Family & friends are invited to come out and meet her as well as the rest of our family. She will be here June 19th through August 31st.

We are so happy and grateful to have her this summer. We had been trying to get both she and Rimma home for the summer for the past two years, to no avail. Prayer and persistence worked! That and her inconsolable state after Rimma and I left a couple of months back. This will be good for Z and will help break up the wait she has to endure. It will have been four months since we left her behind, she will be here for two-and-a-half months, and she will have another four months to wait until we get there...hopefully sometime mid January, when she becomes eligible.

In other family news, all the other kids are eagerly awaiting the end of the school year. I don't know why they are sweating out the last two-and-a-half weeks, though? It seems like every time I turn around, I'm writing a check for some field trip, field day, school movie, concert, pool day, potato sack race, you name it. Everyone has gone somewhere and done something while Mom and I are still slugging it out at work. Geeze, next year I might take off the last two weeks too and join 'em. That Body Works exhibit that first Nadia, then Julia attended is something I really have been wanting to see. It is at the Denver Museum of Science right now. I wrote two checks for it already and haven't seen it yet! Kole is doing some Water exhibit thingy today. Last night he had a school potluck and awards ceremony that the family attended.

In addition to all this, Kole is still playing rec soccer, Julia still goes to her horse riding therapy on Saturdays, Nadia is interviewing for a summer youth work program and Rimma started cheerleader tumbling and gymnastics at the local gymnastics center. I do a boot camp exercise program three days a week and a running program six days a week. We have a few camps lined up for the kids this summer and I will take them to the pool over lunch hours a couple of times a week when they are not in camps.

Z is included in all of this, but I don't know what to do with the chaperon Victoria. She will be accompanying Z and Vika. Vika will go to the Carman's home and hopefully we can split the ten weeks of housing Victoria with them. Victoria has already offered to be the "Alice" of our "Brady Bunch", so it will be a welcome relief to come home to a clean house and cooked meals, albeit Ukrainian style food. The trend of late has been not getting dinner until 6:30 to 7:30 due to everyone's schedules!

Whew! Most days I go to work because I need the rest!

~ Felix ~