July 4th

Celebrating the holiday with I & A was lots of fun! Our neighborhood does a firework display each year, so we spent the afternoon at the pool and then headed to the club for dinner and the fireworks. These two boys love to eat!! As long as it isn't spicy, they will try it and usually eat it and then ask for more! They both enjoyed the fireworks and once we got home we had another breakthrough - - they both changed out of their dirty clothes and brought them to the laundry room to be washed, instead of hiding them under their pillows - HUGE accomplishment!

The boys brought a recipe with them from Ukraine that they had been wanting to make us - homemade ice cream. Anatoliy got up early, got Ryan to help him find paper and pencil, then translated the whole recipe from Russian to English using his dictionary - he (and I) were very proud! So with the translation we headed to the grocery store. The grocery store was a super fun experience! It didn't take them long to realize that if they said "yes, I like" that it went into the cart. They picked up so many things, smelled them, wondered what they were - it was fun for all of us.
Once back home, they made us ice cream and a friend stopped by with her two girls, so we all sampled the ice cream and gave them lots of praise. It was actually very good, just not as thick and frozen as our ice cream.
The boys are slowly learning English, Anatoliy tries much harder than Ivan to learn the language. But yet Ivan has started to really participate with our family and help much more with meals and cleaning up. Honestly Ivan would be totally content to ride a bike or play soccer all day long:)

Lisa & Matt