Super Dylan

Today is Dylan's 15th birthday.  It's hard to believe he's getting that old (he certainly is getting tall!).  When we looked into adoption the doors opened for us to host Kayleigh, and as she had a younger brother in Michael, we ended up being blessed with two new awesome kids into our family.  We had gotten to know Kayleigh from the hosting trip but didn't meet Michael until we arrived at the orphanage in Zhytomr a year ago (hard to believe it's been that long!).

We still laugh about when we met Michael.  As usual they had to send kids to go find him as he was always out in the woods around the orphanage.  When he came into the office he ended up standing next to Dylan and everyone kinda just stopped talking and started looking.  It was uncanny, they looked like real brothers!  In the year that we've known and had Michael, it has been awesome to see what has literally been a total transformation.  What started as a quiet boy who kept to himself and never smiled has become a strong, confident and happy boy.  He is very warm and outgoing, excels in sports and has a really good group of friends.  He has really been a huge blessing to our family.

I credit Dylan for a lot of this.  When you have kids and adopt, it's not just you adopting or taking on the responsibility for parenting your new kids, it falls on the whole family.  Dylan has been the best big brother in the world with Michael, took him under his wing as a brother from day one, and has truly helped him become one of us.  He really embraced having a brother (he always had wanted one....) and that big brother / little brother relationship has really meant the world to Michael's emergence.

We know that Michael have 2 older brothers back in Ukraine but know so little about them.  We pray that they are well and hope that they will know in their hearts that their younger brother is in a family where he is cherised, loved and cared for, and has a big brother here to watch over him.  He couldn't be in better hands!