"This wasn't about saving the world," Simmons added. "It was about keeping biological siblings together."

For him, adopting the older siblings meant saving them from possibly becoming another Russian orphan statistic, which, according to what he has read, means that without adoption, his girls likely would have ended up homeless and possibly driven to drugs and prostitution.

For now, life for the two older girls is about adapting to a new environment.

"We speak about as much Russian as they speak English," John Simmons said. He and his wife are taking Russian language lessons. "So there's a lot of charades at our house right now."

The older sisters love spaghetti and hot wings, a switch from the usual soup, porridge and fish that their adoptive mother says they ate at the orphanage. The girls also had never really learned how to use a fork and knife, she said.

And the sisters are into photography and scrapbooking, a means of documenting their new life. They'll have help from the family Web site, www.suncomesup.com.

Today, they'll add meeting new friends in the neighborhood to their list of new experiences.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com