A Week in Photos | Wide Awake Family

A Week in Photos: March 8th

Posted on March 8, 2015 by kimnjed

Oh my goooooodness! What an awesome week we had! It was go go go and packed with amazingness.

Jed was in America for 12 days and just got home last Thursday. He had an awesome time of connecting with supporters and churches. He went with the purpose of building a Wide Awake Medical Advisory Team and made lots of great contacts toward that end. It will be exciting to see what comes of it. We realize that we are at the far limits of our own personal knowledge for how to best help the boys at Romaniv. It’s time to pull in the big guns. The people Jed met with were so gracious and excited to help. Our Boys are loved by so many!

These past few days we had an extra special treat. You see Wide Awake gets to partner with some pretty special people, and two of them visited this past week. Suzy and Lois visited from Hands of Hope Adoption and Orphan Care and we had a super great time. We got to talk about how we can best work together and how we, along with Mission to Ukraine, can best join forces to care for our Boys. It was incredible!!! We didn’t want them to leave! Talk about kindred spirits… I’ll share more about that later. Now for the pics!

On Tuesday we celebrated Valera’s 30th birthday! He was over the moon excited!

That pink box was his only birthday wish 🙂

Suzy, Lois, and Romaniv Directors. All four, so precious to us

Baking, baking, baking in preparation for a BIG party for Romaniv nannies!

Four handsome MEN- all ready for their special performances

Addy and Ez came along to help with the party. They were so happy to see their Romaniv buddies!!!

Sweet nannies. We love them.

Stasik welcoming everyone to the special party!

Hands of Hope gave each nanny their own multicooker! They are all the rage here and cost almost a full month’s salary! The nannies were just a tad bit excited.

Meanwhile, the boys were busy being adorable…

Maxim’s first selfie 🙂

Our Friday afternoon team is back in action!

All in all it was a fabulous week. Good things are happening left and right. We are so blessed to partner with MTU and Hands of Hope.

On another note, our fam is battling some sickness and just all around exhaustion, so we would appreciate your prayer. We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. Ain’t nobody got time for that! 😉

Till next time! Say yes to Jesus this week, okay?

A Couple Weeks in Photos: February 23rd

Posted on February 23, 2015 by kimnjed

Hi! How are ya? We are just fine and dandy. Many good things are happening- in our family and in Wide Awake. I wish I had the time to just sit down with each of you and give you all the details, but alas, a blog post of pics will have to do.

We are deep in the throes of homeschool and language lessons and Romaniv trips and Young Adult nights and Legos and orphan advocacy and Barbies and parenting and all kinds of other stuff. No day is like the one before. It’s not all glamorous, in fact I wouldn’t classify any of it as “glamorous”, but it is our life and we wouldn’t trade it for the world. (except some days when the copious amounts of unglamorous snot, saliva, and poop threaten to overwhelm…)

Hehe…anywayssss…time for pics!

*There are a couple of boys in this post that are available for adoption. I gave them aliases to protect their identity. FYI. Mommy and Daddy, are you out there??? 🙂

A playground in our neighborhood

It’s the little things. 🙂

We found an ice road!!!

Hava decided maybe she COULD write some letters! I’m glad I didn’t push her earlier.

I can’t resist. My baby is so cute!!!! Yep, he’ll always be my baby.

This is “Micah”! He is available for adoption and I can’t wait to write a post all about him and find his family!!! I’m just waiting for confirmation on his diagnosis. Pure sweetness.

“Stephen”!! Stephen needs a family too. He is blind and needs so much sensory input. Running him in the halls is the best. He can walk, but sometimes he likes a ride. 😉

Please keep praying for our sweet one. Little love needs a miracle.

Hava Rudy the Cutie

Sweet loves with Tanya, a most amazing volunteer. She loves the boys so much.

Seriozha. He loves to say “Beep beep!” He is normally silent, so when he perks up with a loud “beep beep!” it makes us laugh so hard!

Ez Pez Dominez

Still can’t resist.

Addy Maddy Baddy

Seffer Boy-o

Luckiest mom evah! Right here.

Yaroslav. I can’t even explain to you how much I love this boy. The smile, the squinty eyes, the thumb-sucking. Too.Much.

Micah! Someone see this boy. He is beyond precious. I have video and more pics. I’ll write more soon. But let me just tell you that our whole team is in love with this boy.

A Week in Photos: February 10th

Posted on February 10, 2015 by kimnjed

Hi Friends! Time to unload my phone again. Every time I go to make a picture post I have to first delete like 50 or 60 pictures of Seth. He’s a selfie-aholic. Really. We may have a problem. 🙂

Life here has been quite a ride lately. Good times, hard times, happy times, scary times. Mostly I just can’t believe this is my life. I am the most blessed girl. Not every day is easy- but sometimes it just hits me that the life I’m living is basically the life I’ve dreamed of since I was a tiny girl. Wow.

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Our dear friends Andryi and Olya got married! Hava was the flower girl. It was such a fun party!!! We danced and ate and danced and ate. It was awesome. We are so happy for them!

Addy and Nastya at the reception

The bride and groom’s table.

We had to take a jaunt to the Embassy. It felt really strange to be there. I realized it was the first time in 16 months that I didn’t feel guilty for speaking English in public. Wow.

We need help. Professional help.

My cousin Hannah is teaching English in western Ukraine this year. She came to Kyiv for a visit and then to our house! We ended up being in Kyiv on the same day. Super special!

Last Tuesday our boy was doing really well. He definitely isn’t declining anymore. Now we just need to pray for more improvement in his health.

Hannah and Addy. I love my family.

Helping our boy keep his body safe.

Seriozha and his accordion. I can’t even tell you what a blessing he is to the Boys- and to us! Ilya obviously likes it! 🙂

Some friends from church came over to give us girls a “Beauty Night”. They did nails and cut hair and let my girls put makeup on them. It was so special.

No boys allowed!

A Week and a 1/2 in Photos- January 29th

Posted on January 29, 2015 by kimnjed

It’s Thursday! Can you even believe it? So, yeah, I missed my phone-pic-emptying-post on Sunday. Oops! But it’s because I felt so strongly that I just had to tell you about one of our sweet boys who desperately needs a family.
*check out the end of the post for an update.

So here’s some pics to catch you up on the everyday shenanigans around these here parts!

My kitchen reality.

A few of our loves. Seriozha loved that little baby doll. Hava wanted to give it to one of “her Romaniv Boys”.

This is what happens when the road is blocked on the way to Romaniv. Snowball fight! Nice shot Roma 😉

Arrrrrrrr! (Not sure why the eye-poking one, but he insisted on it)

Just another night of Just Dance on the Wii. 🙂

I am the CHAMPION!!! No one can ever beat me, except that one time that shall not be mentioned when I’m pretty sure I had a malfunctioning remote…

After FIFTEEN MONTHS of emptiness, the tooth is finally emerging! We thought this day would never come!

In the meantime Hava is losing hers. 🙂

Addy and her friend Nastya at a benefit concert for MTU! Addy loves Nastya. I really need to work harder on getting them together.

Valerchik!

A little Boris lovin’

Seriozha loves Masha. We do too.

Play is the work of children. 🙂

Speaking of sweet babies needing families, who will step up for this one? Contact me for more details. 🙂

Stop the cuteness!

Our bus stop. Perty eh? Haha

On the bus. I think Addy took this one…

Off to the market to do some flower girl shopping! We have a wedding this weekend!

More dancing…did I mention I’m the champion???

Loveliness

For all who are wondering about our sweet boy who is failing, please continue to share him and his story. We have had a couple serious inquiries, so that is encouraging. Thousands of people now know of him and hundreds, maybe thousands are praying. Maybe his family is in those thousands? I pray it is so. We saw him on Tuesday and he looked worse. I got to just sit and hold him for a couple hours and he was at peace during that time. Some donations have come in (THANK YOU!) to provide him with extra care, so after we meet with the staff and make a plan we will implement it as quickly as possible. Nothing happens quickly here, and as much as we want to snap my fingers and get a quick fix, it just doesn’t work like that. But please know that we are doing all we can to help him as quickly as possible.

A Week in Photos- January 18th

Posted on January 18, 2015 by kimnjed

Happy Sunday my friends!

Lately I’ve been getting some requests to show more of our daily life here on the blog. Thank you for asking! It’s hard for me to know what people like/want to see here in this space, so I love suggestions and requests! Keep them coming please!

Due to popular demand (hehe) I decided to try something new here. Every Sunday I will unload the pictures from my phone on to the blog. That way you can see what seems noteworthy on a daily basis. You can see what we’re up to and just the daily living that goes on around here. If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram (@kimandjed) some of these pictures won’t be new to you, but I know a lot of you only follow us here on the blog. So, here ya go!

Our friend Vadya came for tea. We love him. Our kids love him. The end.

For Youth Night we had a masquerade! Tanya, one of our awesome volunteers, made these masks!

I absolutely adore this life my kids are living + Kostya is an awesome MC. 🙂

This is the amazing team from Chudniv (a town not far from us). They work at Romaniv with us on Tuesdays and Fridays. Amazing people.

Our home church in Oregon sent us a Christmas box and it arrived on Thursday!!! We are so spoiled and loved. Thank you Salem Vineyard!!! We love you!

Late night preparation of gifts for Romaniv Nannies.

Irakli!!! This sweetest boy needs a family. Could it be you?? He is such a joy.

On Friday we had a party to thank the nannies for all their hard work. Their job is not easy and they need to be seen and honored. We had a team of 16 volunteers from 3 different churches who came to serve the boys and serve the nannies. It was BEAUTIFUL.

This is Misha. On Friday Misha walked in to our gathering ON HIS OWN. He chose people over isolation. He chose chaos and noise over rocking back and forth in his bed. This has never happened before. He is changing. Miracles are happening. Praise God.

My babies.

Ezra tried to avoid the camera on the bus. I won.

I always feel bad for this store in our mall. Poor little guy. Hehe

Ezra got a hold of my camera…and this happened.

My Dima. I love this boy something fierce.

PS: If you want to see something specific here on the blog, please tell me! What’s become normal to us might be interesting to you. Special requests are welcome!