Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I am writing this blog entry with no direction in mind so be aware of that as I ramble.

I have been feeling very guilty about the negativity I have brought to my blogs about Liza. I figured I needed to rectify that with another post.

Only 10% of the time was she ever difficult to deal with. As you could see in my last post, she didn't like showers, going to bed, and was randomly nasty in situations, like for example, when we picked her up at places, which still mystifies us. That was it though. The other 90% of the time she was either all smiles and giggling or just completely quiet and shy. I think her true personality was the one we saw the most and I have to blame the issues we had with her on the fact that she was being an 8 year old and many miles away from home.

I think respect played into it a lot too. I don't think she expected two 20-somethings to be taking care of her and telling her what to do. I think had we been an older family with kids she would have treated us differently and with more respect. Maybe she saw us as more the baby-sitter type that she could get away with a lot on our watch.

The honest truth is that I missed her a lot today. I kept thinking about where she might be in her travels home. If I calculated it right she should be getting home around 8 or 9 PM tonight Eastern Standard Time. She is right now on a bus from Kiev, Ukraine on her way to Minsk, Belarus. Tuesdays were always my days to stay home with her and when I came home at lunch I couldn't help but notice how empty the house felt. I got the same feeling when we dropped Daisy off at the kennel and don't even get me started on how it feels when Liz goes to NY for a week. It is just a weird feeling without Liza around and it will just take time to adjust again.

Liza is a good girl with a good heart. She really cared for Daisy and Gryffin and gave them a lot of love and attention. One time Gryffin ran across her legs and seeing how he has unusually long nails for a dog, he scratched her legs up. She easily could have gotten angry and hit him or yelled at him but she didn't. She is also extremely intelligent and hard working. She would often times just sit down and read on her own or write out her multiplication tables. She had homework for her bible classes she attended and she finished 4 weeks of homework the day after her first class. We never had to care about it because she already did everything. It was amazing.

There are so many good qualities about her that it stinks we let her difficulties get the best of us. Hopefully I can show those good qualities with some videos here soon. I think we'd love to have her back next year but only if she wants to. She can't come here with an attitude that she is being forced to be here. We know her well enough that that is never a good thing. Plus we want a child who wants to be helped. She is in perfectly good health so if she doesn't come back, I don't think Liz and I would feel guilty at all. We would just request another child that is in need of help. Hopefully over the next few months she realizes what a great time she had and what a wonderful opportunity it was and will want to come back.

I realize my blogs have been on the wordy side and lacking the picturey side so I'll do my best to correct that soon.