Monika Greene:  

Life Rick and I met in graduate school at the Marine Sciences Research Center at SUNY Stony Brook. I was just starting my masters degree and Rick was in the final stages of earning his PhD in Oceanography. We were both playing softball for the Marine Sciences Department intramural softball team. I played 2nd base and he was the short stop and we noticed we were getting a lot of double plays together. We were married in less than a year (the day after 20 yr BHS reunion in 1989) My Kids Three of our children, Russell (11), Kai (7) and Patrick (4) are our biological sons. Renat (9) and Rais (8) joined our family last December (2000) after we traveled to Ekaterinburg, Russia to adopt them. It took 21 months of bureaucratic and political torture to get these two little guys out of the orphanage they were living in after being found living on their own at ages 5 and 6. They are now two healthy (mostly), happy and thriving children who are doing amazingly well adapting to their new life here in the U.S. and as a part of our busy family. All five of our boys are playing soccer this season and I am coaching two of the teams myself so our lives are pretty hectic at times. April, 2007 Life has not gotten any less hectic since I last posted this BIO in 2001. Our two Russian boys have given us true insight into the potential impact of being neglected and abandoned at an early age. They have been the biggest challenge to us in the area of parenting we could ever have imagined and make us truly appreciate how easy and trouble-free our birth children have been. Our oldest son is almost 17, a junior in High School, the head Drum Major of the marching band and an avid trumpet, French horn and soccer player. He loves school and is 4th in his class of 468(?). Renat, almost 15, is too cool for anything except the nasty variety of rap music, which is not permitted in our house, hence a source of great conflict, and dressing and acting like he was raised in a ghetto (race not b...Expand for more