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Here are a few shots of our trip to Seaworld

By the way, did I mention that this was OU Texas weekend? Sharon and I celebrated with new Crocs.

Scott won some wonderful prizes. He gave the frog to Aric.

Last weekend, we took the kids to Sea World in San Antonio. We all expected to have fun, and we did. Aside from the standard child bickering as the day draws to a close and everyone is exhausted, things went quite well. We had a chance to interact as a whole family, which is rare these days. Usually, one parent goes one way and one parent goes the other, with kids strewn willy nilly, here and there. But for Sunday, we all got a full dose of each other.

First, a little bit about what happened at the park. Scott and Aric had been several times before, so it just isn’t as cool to see Shamu anymore. But this was Vera’s first time to go to the big show.

The first thing she wanted to do was to ride the Steel Eel, a perfectly competent and scary roller coaster that travels over 65 MPH and gives you plenty of positive and negative Gees. We checked the height requirements. Have to be 48 inches tall. Vera is a full 49 inches. So she rode with Scott the first time. Came off just glowing with excitement. It was fun to see how excited she was. Did we mention that this girl is afraid of nothing?

Then we went to see the Killer whale show. WOW! Her eyes got as big as platters to see a whale do a full 360 in the air. If you have never been, please do youself a favor and go see it. It is remarkable and way better then seeing a movie clip. Scott and I rode the Great White rollercoaster (which Vera is a couple years away from being able to ride) while Vera got her face painted as a clown. Next, Vera, Aric and I rode the Rio Loco, a water ride where the goal is to get wet. We go right under a big waterfall and all got drenched. Aric just loved it so much! Vera was upset that her face paint ran all over. She liked the getting wet part, but hated the being wet and the dripping paint… We were very sad for her. We decided to dry her off (we were all in quick dri clothes, knowing that cotton is just horrible for such situations) and so Vera and I rode Steel Eel again. She kept telling me “Vera not scary!” But she clung to that safety bar like chrome to a trailer hitch.

After the ride, we located Scott and Aric at the arcade, where Scott was about to waste five of my hard earned dollars on a game of luck and chance, knocking three milk bottles off of a pedestal with a single throw. Scott wound up, and got all three. The crowd went wild, and the attendent girls face just had the utter look of disbelief. I looked up to see what the prize was. He won this GIANT 3 foot tall frog. Then, he gave it to Aric. Aric can barely carry the thing… (Why else did Scott give it away?) Then Scott had an additional 3 dollars, so he wasted it on the basketball shooting game right next door and won that one too. He won a basketball and gave it to Vera.

All very sweet.

We stayed at Silverleaf’s Hill Country Resort that Sunday night, staying in unit #4. (If you are searching for info on Silverleaf and happened upon this site, send me an email and I’ll tell you our experiences with them thus far) I was in charge of putting Vera to bed that evening.

Now I want to give you some background info so that you can visualize the story so far. Vera had an abusive father back in the old country. As a result, she has always been somewhat aloof with me. I will often tell her “Vera, I love you.” and she will often reply with “Papa loves feet” or “Papa loves snakes” or “Papa loves bananas”. I asked her a couple of weeks ago who she loved. Turns out, that she loves the cat. Pretty much everything else, “Vera, no love.” My heart aches for this little girl…
On Sunday night, I tried to kiis her goodnight on her forehead. You would have thought that I had acid oozing from my lips the way she turned away from me. I went to bed a bit dazed, upset and feeling pretty dejected. For those that have never gone through the process of adopting a child, understand that this is pretty much the norm for many parents, and I know that in my head, but my heart still hurts for her.

I slept little Sunday night. All I could do was to pray for her to open up a little bit. “God, heal this little girl’s heart just enough so that she will let me in!” I went to sleep praying that prayer, and woke up with it still on my lips.
Tonight was my turn to put her to bed again. Oh joy… Sometime ago, early on, we had taken the CD player/clock radio out of her room because she had the habit of unplugging it and dragging it aroud as if it were a portable:-) Tonight, I gave it back to her. She immediately put in one of her kid CD’s in it. Then she told me to read her a story from this little book that Disney made, called “Princesses”. It is an early easy reader. Now I’m told that every girl wants to be a princess. Before the adoption, I had read “Captivating”, which is really for women, but I got so much insight out of it.

It is written by John and Staci Eldridge, and if the question on every boy’s heart is “Do I have what it takes?” then the question on every little girl’s heart is “Am I captivating? Am I lovely?” So I can identify with a little girl wanting to be Arial, the mermaid princess, or Cinderella, the girl that nobody wants but somehow get discovered by the prince. So we read the book. I told her that she was a princess, that she was my princess. That someday she would be tall and beautiful and lovely. That someday she might meet a prince, like Cinderella did. Then she might get married and have children and be a mommy too. She looked at me as if I had brought up something that had never been in any vision she had for herself. Then she told me that her birth father had a moustache, and he was big and strong and had muscles. That he had hit her mother a lot. I asked her if she had been scared of her father. “Vera no scary.” was her answer. Then, I asked her if she would like me to tell her a story, and she did, so I did.

I told her the story of “Rapunzel” but made it with Princess Vera and Baba Yigha, the evil witch. I told of the tall castle tower in the swamp. Vera said “Papa, Devsky Doma” the children’s home. And so I made her tower the children’s home where she had lived for over a year. This made her happy to be rescued from the orphanage. And her prince was Prince Scott. And Prince Scott rescues her from the evil witch and takes her to a far away land where the witch can not go. The witch searched and searched, but could not find the princess, so she went and found a new princess to enslave. I told her not to worry, another prince will rescue that little princess soon. But by this time, she was snuggled in my lap like a cat cuddled up for a nap.

I asked her if she missed her children’s home. “Yes.”

Do you wish you were there? “No! NO! NO!”

“Well, I am very happy that you are here with me now. Do you feel like this is Vera’s family now?”

“Yes Daddy.”

Sometimes, it is two steps forward, and one step back. Tonight, it was two steps forward. Tomorrow it may go backwards a step, but for right now, in this moment, I rejoice that there is a God that loved her so much that He would awaken us from our slumber and comfortable lives, travel 9000 miles and rescue her from the hands of the enemy.
I’ll post the recent photos as soon as I can find the camera. It is around here someplace.

Richard