Sunday, June 28, 2009


I’ve been trying to get to a computer for the last week. I thought that I would let everyone know things have quieted down on the Harris front. We are in Alaska on vacation and I think this is the best thing we could have done with the kids. They are really enjoying themselves. I thought I would start with Tania and Sasha’s birthday though which was three days before we left for Alaska.


First, we took the kids to a car show at Ardell Brown’s. It was a fundraiser for a special needs park. Sasha and Matthew were fun to watch. Sasha has a love for Mustangs and there were quite a few Mustangs. Matthew just has a love for old cars. It was fun listening to Matthew tell us about the different cars. He could tell us what cars were really rare and how certain cars had been changed. The caretaker for the cars was there also and it was quite interesting to what he has to do to take care of the cars. Katelyn picked out what she thought would be David’s favorite car. Later we found out she was right. Just before we were ready to leave, one of the owners of the cars started his car. Sasha practically ran to see the car running. It had that low loud rumble the old cars that have some power have.


We also had a birthday party for them. We had some family come and some friends come. Anna, Shelby and Bailey came for Tania. Michael and Jake came for Sasha. Bailey, Michael and Jake all go to the same school as Tania and Sasha. We also had a friend of Katelyn’s come. Laura is almost our 3rd adopted child.


We had the kids open gifts after dinner. It was different from our older kid’s birthday. Katelyn and Matthew were always willing to show everybody their gifts. Tania and Sasha didn’t really show off what the received. They looked at their gifts and then put them aside. I must say we were tickled because Sasha would leave his friends for a few minutes and come back and look at his gifts. Once Michael and Jake left, he really spent some time looking everything over. We gave Tania a camera and she was excited. She giggled when I said that she really needed her own camera since she was always using mine.


After all the birthday celebrations were over, we had to start getting ready to leave for Alaska. Tania didn’t really get too excited about getting ready to go but Sasha was really concerned about how we were going to get there and about how all our luggage was going to fit on the plane. You see when we go to Alaska, it is not just a matter of packing clothes. Along with clothes and food, we always bring up something strange. This year it was rocks for our driveway and tile pieces that we were not able to order from Home Depot in Juneau. In years past we have brought up saws, electrical boxes, and stereo equipment just to name a few strange items.

We always take up the maximum amount of weight in each piece of luggage and with the airlines charging for each piece of luggage, we had to be even more careful. Of course Sasha did not understand why we were so worried about the weights and the pieces of luggage. But he thoroughly enjoyed helping pack everything. We packed our rocks in plastic totes. David started to weigh the totes but Sasha thought that was fun so he became the weight official. We always pack a cooler full of food and this year because of the number of people in our group we took even more food then we normally would have taken. This year we also tried ordering food from Costco in Juneau and sending it up to Gustavus so we didn’t have to buy as much food at the grocery store in Gustavus. (Half a gallon of milk in Gustavus is $5.25.) Since we needed use the maximum amount of weight we made the kids share suitcases. None of the kids wanted to share a suitcase with anybody else. We were rather surprised that it was an issue. I mean who cares if you had to share a suitcase, so we told the kids they would just have to deal with it.

Trying to explain our flight plans to Tania and Sasha was another interesting experience. I had to purchase the tickets four different ways in order for us to have the cheapest flights. We had sky miles with Delta Airlines, mileage with Alaska Airlines and a $50 companion fair ticket with Alaska Airlines. Even though Delta Airlines is partners with Alaska Airlines you cannot get tickets to fly into Gustavus. We can only get tickets to fly into Juneau. We could from there get ticket to fly into Gustavus on the Alaska Airlines jet or we could have them fly a little Cessna airplane from Juneau to Gustavus. We chose the Cessna. We also had the challenge of getting Katelyn and Tania home in time for girl’s camp. The whole point of this is when we all flew together from SLC to Seattle on Delta and then from Seattle to Juneau on Alaska Airlines. When we got to Juneau we split up. Tania, Matthew, Katelyn and I took the Alaska Airlines jet into Gustavus. It was a long flight of about 12 minutes. David, Michael (our nephew who came with us) and Sasha flew in the Cessna to Gustavus. These puddle jumpers only hold 6 people. We all arrived in Gustavus at the same time and I really wish that I could have seen Sasha. Apparently, he was all smiles during the flight over. They hit a little turbulence when they first took off and that scared Sasha little bit otherwise he was really excited.


Our friends picked the boys up first, so they rode over to they rode over to the Alaska Airlines terminal in the back of our friend’s truck. Sasha and Michael thought that was great fun.

Since then, we have been fishing. Tania was quite excited to catch a fish off of the boat dock. All the kids have caught several double ugly fish. I don’t know what they are really called but they are ugly fish. One fishing trip Sasha caught 52 fish. He also caught an eel. Of course they haven’t brought home any fish that we can eat yet.


On Thursday, we started to clean up our lean to. We got four feet of snow in one day last winter. The poles apparently had disintegrated at the base and the whole lean to fell over. There were a lot of exposed nails in the broken boards so David told Sasha that we need to pound the nails down in each of the boards. We did not want anyone stepping on any nails. As the other kids came out to help, Sasha told them to give him any boards that had nails because he was in charge of taking care of the nails. He was having fun cleaning up the mess and he felt important to have specific job.


Yesterday, we had 7 yards of rock delivered to our house. It is much cheaper to use rock for your driveway instead of cement. Unfortunately, the driver didn’t spread the rocks out very well so we had to do it by ourselves. David and I were quite surprised because Sasha and Matthew were excited to move all the rock around. We asked them if they wanted to return some borrowed items to our friends, it would have been much easier but they both turned us down. Distributing the rock was much more fun than returning borrowed items. Today Matthew and I, at least, are sore from working so hard.


Today we hiked to the plane wreck. It was a large military plane that crashed back in the 1950’s. We have hiked to the plane wreck many times in years past. When we first started going there much of the cockpit was around. People have since taken bits and pieces of the plane. Most of the cockpit is now gone. The boys and Katelyn really enjoyed climbing over the plane. It really did my heart good though when we heard Sasha yell out “be careful Katelyn”. We couldn’t see what they were doing but it was so nice to hear the kids have concern for each other.


We then went to the lodge. As soon as we got there we saw a whale in the bay. We hurried down to the boat dock and just watched. We think that there were probably two whales but we are not sure. While we were on the boat dock, Sasha found a watch.

From the boat dock we walked down a trail and saw a small black bear. We had to laugh at Sasha though. Sasha was more interested in his newly found watch then the bear.

We also hiked along the trail another and David got the boys started scarring each other along the trail. Katelyn got a good video of Brady scarring Tanya. I will post these pictures below.


July 1, 2009


David told me I had to write about Sasha’s fire. We have two ways to heat our house. We have a wood stove and we have a propane gas heater that they use in the large RV’s. We mostly use the wood burning stove because wood is in abundance here and therefore, cheap. Anyway yesterday, Sasha brought in 7 pieces of 2X4’s. He literally stacked them one on top of the other with a few pages of an old Field and Stream magazine laying flat in between each of the boards. David said it looked like a layered cake. David saw this and about had us all in stitches. He took the boards out and proceeded to teach Sasha how to build a “happy fire”. David’s words not mine. He also told Sasha that a fire needs oxygen to be a happy fire. To get oxygen into the fire you wad the paper into a ball, then put card board over the paper and then put little sticks over the cardboard and then put larger pieces of wood over the little sticks. We must place everything with air holes so that air can flow through the fire and then we will have a happy fire.

We also burn our garbage outside of the house. We had steak last night and Sasha put his fat scraps in a box and went outside to burn it. I think he took some wood from our big burn pile and started a fire. He was being so diligent with his fire. He decided it was much more important and exciting then to come in to eat chocolate pie. He was quite serious about his work.


July 13, 2009



As a final note, Tania did call me “Mom” to my face while we were in Alaska. It really did make my heart jump. Tania has called us mom and dad to other people but not to our faces. Sasha just calls us “huh”. I think it is hard for them to realize that we are truly their parents. Tania does keep in touch with her biological father and Sasha keeps in touch with the couple who hosted them in France. I think that it is confusing to them as to who are really their true parents. As time goes on, I believe that they will understand that we have really taken on that responsibility and their biological parents were just unable to take care of them.

It has been harder for the kids since we didn’t know the kids before we adopted them. I watch the blogs of the Keller and the Lawrence’s and I can understand some of the turmoil that they have gone through. Sometimes, I really wish that we had been able to host Tania and Sasha before we adopted them. I think that they would have been more ready to be a part of our family if they would have had something to look forward to in Ukraine.