River of Thoughts

Adopting Masha, in 500 words or less.  Hmm.  Do compound words count?  Uh oh.  I’m up to 19 already. Here we go…. We received our clearance to travel the day of my mother’s wake. We travelled on Mother’s Day. We survived jet lag with pharmaceutical help. We saw a monkey dressed like a child. We met with the Ukrainian State Department of Adoption (the official referral) on our 9th anniversary. We watched a Ukrainian dogfight. We boarded an overnight train to southern Ukraine. We were reunited with Masha! We learned to shower in a bathtub. We visited a beach adjacent […]

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One of the blogs I read regularly is Stuff Christians Like. I think I was the last person on earth to find it, so I don’t have to tell you about it, right? Anyway, recently, Jon posted a very thoughtful “Serious Wednesday” post about the silence of God and what we can learn through it. It got me thinking. I am emerging from one of those seasons….YEARS of silence about my “higher purpose,” slogging along in corporate America, killing myself over copiers. I kept waiting for God to drop a project plan in my lap with a clearly defined scope […]

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What would you do with 153 million? Of course, 153 million dollars is easy.  You could buy a Starbucks coffee every day for a year…for every person in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Or you could buy a couple of loaded Gulfstream jets. But what is 153 million, really? 153 million jelly beans?  They’d fill a pretty big swimming pool.  Or you could eat them.  Of course, you’d gain 180 thousand pounds.  Which is the weight of 938 people.  So maybe you couldn’t eat them. 153 million songs?  You’d be listening for a thousand years. 153 million words?  You’d have to read 1,500 […]

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To lay the groundwork for 2012, I’m resurrecting and revising some of the key posts from the past that tell our story. This is a summary of the three weeks in August 2006 when we hosted Masha. The group of host families gathered anxiously at about 11:45 PM in the hotel lobby to wait for the travelers. A unique combination of excitement, exhaustion, and nerves filled the room, as families practiced their greetings in Russian and clutched floppy stuffed animals. Right at 12:00, the call came out…”They’re HERE!” as the minivan pulled into the parking lot. The next three weeks […]

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Borsch. I know most of you immediately think of that jar of watery, vinegary pink broth with floating hunks of slimy ex-cabbage.  That stuff should be outlawed.  No self-respecting Ukrainian would even try to call that Borsch. No, real Borsch comes in as many forms as there are Russian cooks.  Each one makes their Borsch a little differently, and as an honorary Russian/Ukrainian (by the grace of my children), I am no different. My borsch is an amalgamation of at least three different recipes, taking ingredients and techniques from each, and getting a little better each time. The latest improvement: […]

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