ARLINGTON — After eight years in the county, Lyubov Lanovenko and her daughter obtained citizenship of the United States, Dec. 11, in the Federal Building in Seattle, and her fellow workers at Presidents Elementary School helped her celebrate with a party Dec. 16.

“This is quite an accomplishment,” said Misti Gilman, the school district’s spokesperson. “I hear that she and her family came here with $20. Through hard work and perseverance, each of them obtained citizenship, which I understand is not only an ordeal, but costs around $1,000 per person,” Gilman added.

Actually it costs $700, said Lanovenko who arrived in Everett from the Ukraine in September 2000 and has been working with Arlington schools since September 2004.

Her mother left Russia earlier with all but herself.

“My grandfather was thrown in jail because he was a Christian. He died there,” Lanovenko explained. “My mother never met her father.”

Lanovenko, her husband and their three children moved to Arlington a year later.

Her children are now 24, 23 and 21, she said.

“I started to learn English at age 40,” Lanovenko said.

“When we were in Ukraine, we didn’t have any money. We didn’t know where our food would come from,” she said, remembering the time when she said she didn’t like milk to save it for her children.

“I had to tell my children they couldn’t have any more bread. It was very hard.”

The entire family started preparing in May this year to become citizens. They were not approved at the same time, however, so they didn’t get their citizenship all together.

Lanovenko and her daughter took the test on Dec. 1 and received their certificate on Dec. 7.

Her husband and other two children got theirs Oct. 31.

Lanovenko said the next hardest thing after learning to speak English was learning how to drive a car.

“I told my husband, if I have to drive, I will not go to the U.S. He said, ‘we will see.’”

After she got her first job, she walked to work for two weeks and then told him, “OK, I will learn to drive.”