Thompson Family's Adoption Adventure!

We are home!!!!

2007-06-21T04:20:00.001-07:00

We are finally home! We got in late last night and are quite tired, but glad to be home. Our next few days will be spent getting acclimated to the time zone, grocery shopping, doing laundry, buying clothes, and working on English. I promise that one of these days I really will get around to updating the blog...It just might not happen for a week or so! Thank you all for your prayers and support! It has been great sharing this journey with all of you!

May God richly bless you all!

I'm still behind....

2007-06-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

I know I'm still a few days behind, but I'll catch up! In the meantime, please pray that will be able to find reasonably priced airline tickets home. When Fred called Northwest to see about changing my flight and getting flights for the girls, the flights were pretty full for next week and it would be over $6000 to fly home on Wednesday, there are no available flights on Thursday, and over $5,000 to fly home Friday. We may end up having to buy tickets on another airline. Please pray that we'll be able to work something out!

Thanks!

Saturday, June 9, 2007

2007-06-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

Today was a very good day. It’s the first day we’ve done something completely different in quite a while! One of the drivers picked up Mark, Christine, and Kseniya and then headed to my apartment to pick me up. We all headed to the orphanage where we would meet up with the girls. Kseniya was teaching us how to make borsch and so we all headed for Amstor to pick up some ingredients. Amstor has a DVD/CD store in the front section and since Mark and Christine are leaving on Tuesday, they wanted Masha to have a chance to pick out a DVD and some CDs. I told Amina and Khrystyna that they could each pick out one DVD and one CD. I also let myself pick out a DVD and CD. We ended up with Happy Feet, the box collection of Cinderella (1,2, and 3) and Maid in Manhattan in Russian. We also ended up with some great CDs. After listening to the radio stations in Russian for the last 4 weeks, I can hum along with a lot of the songs and I had some favorites that I wanted to get. We were all quite pleased with our selections. The girls had only been to Amstor twice before and both times were with us and we hadn’t taken them to the food section. They were quite overwhelmed with all the food and they wanted it all! We started off in the fruit section and the girls wanted tons and tons of fruit! I ended up buying 6 apples and 2 pears for Amina and Khrystyna. They asked about oranges, peaches, strawberries, and kiwi too, but we had already put the apples and pears in the cart! We next headed over to the deli to pick up some salads for the girls. Amina and Khrystyna told me that they didn’t really like borscht very much so I wanted to buy some salads for them. Amina and Khrystyna initially picked out the same salad and then Khrystyna changed her mind and decided on a different salad. I figured that we would get a big container of the ham salad both girls liked and a smaller container of the crab salad that only Khrystyna liked. I ordered a big container of the first one and then Masha jumped in and ordered a container of salad for herself. Khrystyna jumped in next and pointed out the salad she wanted. I told the woman that we only needed a small container of the crab salad. Khrystyna and Amina started talking to her in rapid Russian and she pulled out another big container. I didn’t want to end up with too many big containers of salad, so I told the woman we only wanted a small container. She scooped up the same type of salad we had already ordered a large container of. By the time we left we had 5 containers containing 4 different salads. I guess that is what happens when your children speak more Russian than you do! While we stuffing our cart with salad, Kseniya was stuffing our cart with meat and produce for borscht. We finally made it to the checkout counter, paid for our purchases, and headed to the car. When we got to Mark and Christine’s apartment it was decided that Mark would entertain the girls while Christine and I watched Kseniya and took notes. I was a little unsure about how I felt about borscht. Actually, I didn’t think I’d like it, but I thought I should learn to make it so I knew how to make some type of traditional Ukrainian/Russian dish. We have been told by many people here that Ukrainian borscht is much better than Russian borscht. It took us about 2 hours to make the borscht, cut up bread, and serve it. During that time, the girls looked at pictures on Mark’s laptop and watched a DVD. The girls and I also talked to Fred on the phone while the borscht was cooking. They got huge smiles on their faces when they talked to him. I can tell they’re both going to be “daddy’s girls.” When it came time to eat, I took a very small portion of borscht. I took a bite and was very pleasantly surprised. It was delicious!!!!! We had picked up a few loaves of bread at the store and the fresh bread and borscht were fabulous! It is the best meal I’ve had on this whole trip! When we finished eating, we cleared the table and washed the dishes while the girls finished their DVD. After the DVD was over, we let them have ice cream before heading back to the orphanage. I had the driver drop me off at the internet café on the way home so that I could check my e-mail. It didn’t take long to check my e-mail and I then headed back to the apartment. By the time I got home, it was 8:00. I decided to catch up on my journaling before heading to bed. It’s pretty quite here in the apartment without Fred and since phone calls to the US are pretty expensive, I try not to make too many phone calls. I talked to Fred a few times today and will be glad when I’m back home with him. I miss him already and I still have a couple of weeks to go! ☹

Friday, June 8, 2007

2007-06-13T00:55:00.001-07:00

Our plan today was to have our driver pick up Mark and Christine along with myself at our apartment at noon. Mark and Christine had a driver bring them to my apartment this morning and then they walked from here to the center of the city. I spent some time around the apartment this morning and then walked to the center of the city to get some pictures printed of Sergey, Khrystyna, and our family. I wanted him to have prints of the pictures. Also, I want Khrystyna to be able to pick out a frame and we will frame one of the pictures to give to him. The photo place was a zoo today and so it took forever to pick up the pictures I dropped off last week and have them upload the new pictures I want to have printed. As I walked back towards my apartment, Mark called to tell me that he and Christine were running a little late. They wanted to know if I would ask the driver to pick them up at Vivat time instead. I said that wouldn’t be a problem and headed home to get all the things we would need for the day. I grabbed the necessary stuff from the apartment and headed down to the car. We picked up Mark and Christine and headed to the orphanage to get the girls. When we got to the orphanage, the girls ran over to hug us and say hello. After all the hugs, Amina said “Mom, dad is America. I am sad,” I said “Yes, Amina dad is on his way back to America. I’m sad too. Are you sad Khrystyna?” Khrystyna put on a very sad face and said “Yes.” The sad face lasted about 3 seconds, then she put on a bright smile and said “Lunch?” It totally made me laugh! We let the girls decide where we wanted to go to lunch and they picked Vivat Time. While we waited for Kseniya, the girls all got in one of the cars and pretended that they were driving. Masha pretended to be our driver Misha, Amina sat in the front seat and announced “I am Papa” and Khrystyna waws content to sit in the back seat and be herself.” After Kseniya came out and gave instructions to our drivers, we headed for Vivat Time. My girls picked out a TON of food. You’d think they’d never eaten before. Our normal lunch bill for Amina, Khrystyna, Fred, and I has been 55-70 grivnas. Our bill today was 67 grivnas and I only got a piece of chicken and some mashed potatoes. Khrystyna had 2 salads, a piece of chicken, a sandwich, a large bag of chips, a large glass of juice, and a bottle of water. Amina had a salad, a hug plate of pasta stuffed with meat, a sandwich, a large piece of cake, a yogurt drink, a box of juice, and a bottle of water. They both ate everything but the sandwiches and they asked me to put the sandwiches in my bag so they could eat them at the park. When the girls had finished most of their food, we went through the flashcards I made. I added another 70 or so and they did a surprisingly good job with the ones we hadn’t taught them. After a while, the girls seemed tired of the flashcards and we were all ready to head to the park. We hopped in the car and headed for “Crocodile” park. We decided to only give the girls 15 grivna each, but that we would pay for their ice cream. Amina tried to negotiate how much money we were giving her, but I stuck to the 15. They paid to go on a few rides and then they discovered a playground that was back behind the roller coaster. You had to pay 1 grivna to get into the playground, but it was large and quiet. The girls tried out various pieces of playground equipment before settling on a large row of swings. They were all having a fabulous time swinging when they decided they should swing AND sing. Christine and I were quite surprised when they started singing “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands” in English. Christine and I ran over and joined them and then began singing it in Russian. We had learned it in our Russian class earlier this year! The girls then went through their repertoire of English children’s songs. When they exhausted their knowledge of English childrens songs, they began singing Russian children’s songs. They sang a really cute song about 10 bananas and a gorilla. It was a really fun time. After a long time of playing, we headed out of the playground to hit a few more rides before heading out for ice cream. Masha and Khrystyna wanted to go on the roller coaster and Amina wanted to go on the castle bouncy thing. I’m sure the lady who runs the crocodile was completely depressed when we ran by without stopping. I think she was counting on us to put all her kids through college! Mark and Christine went with Masha and Khrystyna over to the roller coaster and Amina and I headed to the castle bouncy thing. I think Amina was totally enjoying the peace and quiet of being able to bounce by herself! It didn’t last long because Masha and Khrystyna came over soon after to jump with her! The girls jumped for quite a while before time was up and we headed to the ice cream shop. We went to the same shop we went to on the first day with Khrystyna and Masha We had all talked about the shop, but none of us remembered where it was. We discovered yesterday that it is the coffee shop across from my apartment. We didn’t have our bearings when we went there the first time, so we had no idea where it was! We all got small bowls of ice cream and when we were done with our ice cream, the girls were all still hungry. I had the sandwiches Amina and Khrystyna had left over from lunch and they ate those as well as each having a bag of pretzels I had in my bag! The girls can pack away an amazing amount of food. We were quite surprised when we got our bills. This café has prices like we’re accustomed to in America. Each of our bowls of ice cream was nearly $4 and our bottle of water was over a dollar. It’s not quite like the prices at the other ice cream shop we usually go to! After ice cream, we headed back to the orphanage. I had the driver take me to the internet café so I could check my e-mail and then I walked back to the apartment. I was tired and hungry, so I made myself a small snack/dinner, made a few quick phone calls, and headed to bed! I knew that Fred would be getting in around 5am my time and I wanted to be awake enough to talk to him when he called! He ended up getting in closer to 7am my time, called to let me know he made it home safely, and then he went home and crashed. His trip home was about 36 hour of non-stop travel!

Thursday, June 7,2007

2007-06-13T00:53:00.000-07:00

When we woke up this morning, we decided to go grab a quick bite to eat at the coffee shop across the street. We knew that Sasha would be coming today and he told us that it would take most of the day to sign paperwork, so we wanted to be ready when he called. We ate a quick breakfast and hurried back to the apartment. After an hour of waiting, Sasha called. It was 9:30 am and he told us he had to make a quick stop and then he would be over to our apartment. We waited…and waited….and waited. By a little after noon, we were hungry and we knew Fred wouldn’t have much of a chance to eat on the train in the evening, so we decided to call Sasha. Fred called Sasha and asked if we had time to get a bit to eat. Sasha said that he would be here in 20 minutes. We knew that wouldn’t give us enough time to get to the center of town to eat and we didn’t have much food here, so we ran down to the corner store. We bought a loaf of bread and rushed back to our apartment to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After another hour of waiting, Sasha still had not arrived. It was very frustrating because if we had known that we didn’t have to do anything in the morning, Fred could have spent his last day with the girls! When Sasha finally arrived, it was 2pm. He asked us to pay him for train tickets and then we headed off to the notary to fill out applications for passports for Amina and Khrystyna. On the way to the notary, Sasha told us that we would be meeting Khrystyna’s brother at 4 pm. I was a little concerned about the time table because the train to Kiev leaves at 4:30pm. When I asked Sasha about this, he said that they would be taking the train from the capital of the city and that it leaves at 7pm. We got to the notary, spent 45 minutes filling out paperwork, and then got in the car to head to the orphanage. Mark and Christine were at the notary too and they got into a separate car to head to the orphanage. Unfortunately, Sasha had some things he wanted to take care of so we rode around in the car with him for an hour before going to the orphanage. I’m not sure why he didn’t have us ride with Mark and Christine, but who knows… When we got to the orphanage, Khrystyna’s brother was already there. When we got out of the car, the girls ran over to hug us. Khrystyna had been sitting on a bench outside of the orphanage with her brother and his girlfriend. It was easy to see just by looking at them how much they love each other. (I’m not sure if I’ve explained anything about Khrystyna’s brother, so let me give you a brief rundown… Khrystyna’s brother Sergey is 20 years old and moved in with the family of a friend when their mom stopped taking care of them. He is the one who arranged for Khrystyna to be placed in the orphanage because he knew they would take care better care of her their. Although he wished he could take care of Khrystyna, he is currently at the University on scholarship and is working 2 jobs. He doesn’t have the time or the money to raise a child, however, he has been encouraging her to find an adoptive family. She has turned many families down over the last few years! He visits Khrystyna regularly and makes an effort to always bring sweets or other treats to her when he comes to visit. Two weeks ago, he signed all the papers for court saying that he thinks it is in the best interest of Khrystyna to be adopted by us. Now, back to our meeting of Sergey.) The girls ran over and hugged us and said hello when we got to the orphanage. We decided to go introduce ourselves to Khrystyna’s brother. Fred and I both know enough Russian to introduce ourselves, so we introduced ourselves to Khrystyna’s brother Sergey and his girlfriend, Vika. They both don’t speak much English, but they were very nice. After a minute or two, we asked Sasha to translate and he came over and invited us all to come into the orphanage with him. Sergey, Vika, Khrystyna, Fred, and I all headed into the orphanage. We had to wait in the room with the loud bird until Ludmilla was ready for us to come into her office. We took some pictures of Khrystyna and her brother while we waited and then we headed into Ludmilla’s office. Sergey’s girlfriend, Vika didn’t come into the meeting. Khrystyna only stayed for the first part of the meeting and then Ludmilla told her to go play outside. During the meeting, Ludmilla told us more about Khrystyna’s brother and what a good kid he is. She also told us that over the years, both she and Sergey have really hoped that Khrystyna would find a good adoptive family. She said that they were always surprised when Khrystyna turned down an adoptive family and that they both kept praying that Khrystyna would find a good adoptive family. Ludmilla said that after meeting us in March and spending time in our home, she told Sergey that we had been handpicked by God to raise Khrystyna and she thought we would be a great family. She said that Sergey felt the same way. She then told us that now Sergey would be one of our relatives. At this point, he got up and came over and hugged Fred and then he hugged me. He hugged me like he didn’t want to let go and held on for a minute. It totally made me cry. When we sat back down, we told him that Khrystyna will be able to call when she wants and we got his phone number and address. We also told him to call us if he ever needs anything. Sasha suggested that he may someday want to come study in the states and we said that if that was what he wanted, we’d be happy to do what we can to help him. Sasha told Sergey that the most important thing he can do if he wants to come to the US is study English. Ludmilla also suggested that we give Sergey some money as a token of our appreciation. She had talked to us about this in March when she was visiting and she suggested we give him $100 USD. He was very appreciative. We wished we had more money with us to give to him! We had a few Master Spas polo shirts with us in Fred’s suitcase that were in still in the packaging, so we let Khrystyna give those to him after the meeting. She was so happy to have something to give him and he looked really happy to receive the shirts. After giving him the shirts, Khrystyna and Sergey started kicking the soccer ball around. We wanted them to have as much time together as possible. After a few minutes, Sasha came out of the orphanage and said “I’m leaving now. Fred, you are coming with me.” We told the girls that dad was leaving and to come say goodbye. It was the quickest goodbye ever since Sasha was already waiting in the car. After Fred left, Khrystyna went back to playing soccer with Sergey and Amina and Masha ran around acting silly. I have no idea what had them so amused, but they were both laughing hysterically. I was able to get some great video of Khrystyna playing soccer with her brother. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have to say goodbye to a sibling, knowing that it could be years before you ever see each other again. I wanted to have something to give Khrystyna so she could remember him and I thought video was a good idea. It wasn’t too long before Sergey said he needed to leave or he’d be late for work. Khrystyna hugged him and Vika and then they walked away. Khrystyna had the saddest look on her face as she stared after them! I can’t imagine what Khrystyna and Sergey are feeling. Today has probably been one of the hardest days of their life. After Sergey left, Mark, Christine, and I said goodbye to the girls and headed to Amstor for lunch. We were all starving at this point. We ate dinner, did some grocery shopping, and headed to the internet café. As our time at the internet café was nearing its end, total darkness and total quiet filled the room. The internet café had lost power. It was quite eery how quiet it was without the sounds of fans from 45 computers. The only sound to be heard was the shuffling of 90 feet heading toward the front counter. The front counter was directly behind where Christine and I were sitting. My laptop and Christine’s laptop provided the only light in the place. We quickly packed up and headed out of there before chaos broke out. When we got up to the street, we saw that the whole side of the street was without power. Thankfully, we were pretty much done in the internet café before we lost power. Our driver was waiting when we headed outside and he took us back to our apartments. I was completely tired and emotionally exhausted by the time I got home. I spent some time on the phone and then headed for bed.

Cirque de Satan…I mean Soleil

2007-06-09T09:18:00.001-07:00

When we discussed going to the circus, I have to admit, I had preconceived notions. I was thinking elephants balancing on small platforms, lions, tigers, and leapords jumping through fiery hoops, trapeze artists balance precariously high over a safety nets, and lots and lots of clowns all jumping out of a volkswagon. Even after seeing the tent the other day, I imagined the same type of thing only on a smaller scale…baby elephants instead of fully grown ones, 6 clowns instead of 12, and maybe only 1 lion, with no leapords and no tigers. Boy were we in for a surprise! When we arrived at the circus, we already had our tickets. Our seats were in the 2nd row! Our girls had saved some of their grivna from earlier in the day and we decided to give them a little more grivna for souveneirs. We decided that we would give each of them 20 more grivna, but that we would start off by giving them 5 grivna. Khrystyna also told us she had saved a grivna from the day before, so she had quite a few grivna. The girls each bought yo-yo like things (they were small bags of sand covered in cloth and held together by lots of rubber bands. It had a long piece of a rubber band with a small loop tied in it for your finger that hanging off of it) that could kill a person with the crazy way they swung them around. They looked through the other souveneirs and headed inside. There were sets of wooden bleachers that went almost all the way around the inside of the tent. The bleachers had numbers painted on them and we quickly found our seats. While we standing around our seats talking, Khrystyna asked if she could go on the swing. The swing she was pointing to was a porch swing like bench attached to a long piece of rope with a karabiner (I’m sure I totally misspelled that) that looked like it was meant to hold your water bottle while drinking. It didn’t look very sturdy. Khrystyna told me that it was 5 grivna and that if she went on the swing she would have no grivna left. I told her that we could go ask Dad if he would mind paying for both her and Amina to go. While Fred was trying to decide how safe he thought it was, we looked over and there was Khrystyna…slowly being lifted into the air on the “swing.” She looked thrilled and we decided that in the future we needed to make decisions a little more quickly. We decided to pay to let the girls go on together. Amina gave the lady the money, but before Khrystyna had a chance to jump on the swing with Amina and Masha, two other little kids got on. Khrystyna didn’t get to go up with the other girls, but she got to go on it by herself a second time and she was totally content with that. By the time the circus started, Khrystyna looked exhausted and not too thrilled to be there. I think she is feeling much more secure around us now because when she gets tired, she gets a sad pouty look on her face and isn’t as communicative as she normally is, but she doesn’t go into meltdown mode and she’ll still smile when we make eye contact with her. The circus began as I would expect any other circus to begin. The ringmaster was wearing a tux and introduced the first act…trapeze artists. There was no safety net under the trapeze and the man and woman began with some cool tricks. The girls were amazed and tried to take lots of pictures. It was a little difficult with the lack of lighting. At one point, the man on the trapeze was holding the women with a harness that wrapped around his head and that he held onto with his teeth. It was awesome! Then a young girl came out with a few hula hoops. She did a dance and began slowly picking up hula hoops with her feet while continuing to keep the other hula hoops going around her waist. She got to the point where she was hula-ing about 20 or 30 hoops at the same time. She had them going around her waist, around her arms, and with her feet.It was pretty amazing. What followed was not quite as amazing. A woman came out holding a large round tray full of pigeons. For what seemed like the next 3 hours (although, it was only about 15 minutes) she would pick up individual pigeons and have them do tricks…like fly. She had them fly to a certain stand and then one that sat on her shoulder. It was bizarre and slightly disturbing. When her act was finally over, she walked around the ring, coaxing the pigeons to get back on the tray and leave with her. She left one pigeon and it wandered around for a while during the next act. The next act was a clown with a cute little monkey on a string! The monkey did some tricks and ran around the ring. The next act was a guy who balanced on some large rolling tubes. I don’t even know how to describe it…you’ll have to check out the pictures. The balancing man was followed by the woman trapeze artist, however, she was not using the trapeze…she was using a long dangling rope. She climbed the rope and dangled herself precariously in all kinds of cool positions! I think she may have been the best act of the evening. The next guy out was pretty young. His act was pretty much an example of everything you don’t want your kids to do. He juggled with fire and ran it up and down his arms, he laid on the ground and had a woman drop sharp knifes on his stomach, he jumped on glass with bare feet, and then laid down in the glass while having a girl jump on his stomach. While jumping on the glass he managed to cut his feet. He also jumped on a board with a bunch of nails sticking through it and then laid down on the board and had a man stand on his stomach. If that wasn’t bad enough, they then brought out a boa constrictor that he wrapper around his neck and swung around. He walked around the outside of the ring…a foot in front of the audience holding the snake. He then picked a young boy from the audience and had him come to the center of the ring and hold his arms out from his side like a cross, then he placed the snake on the boys arms. The snake probably weighed as much as the boy. I was pretty horrified. I was pretty relieved when it was time for intermission. The girls were really hungry since they hadn’t had a chance to eat yet. I got some popcorn while the girls looked at other souvenirs. I noticed that the clown was outside with the monkey and that you could pay to have your picture taken with the monkey. I asked Fred to take the girls to get their picture taken with the monkey while I waited for the popcorn. The girls had no interest in getting their picture taken with a monkey. I also noticed that they were allowing children to get their picture taken with the boa constrictor. If you paid the money, they would put the snake around the child’s neck and take a picture. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. After getting popcorn, we headed back into our seats for what would be the most bizarre part of the circus. When the ringmaster announced the next act, they turned the lights way down and 2 men dressed as grim reapers came out pushing a cross. They men were completely creepy. They just stood by the cross after they pushed it into the ring. Then a girl came out in a hooded robe holding a candle and chanting. It was like being part of some Satanic ritual. We were totally freaked out. Next a man came out dressed in an old Roman centurion costume. He had the shinguards and breastplate and he had a bow and extremely sharp arrows. He shot them at the center of the cross and then the creepy chanting woman in the robe blindfolded him and spun him around. He was pointing the arrow at various people in the crowd before he finally shot it at the target. There were a lot of scary things like this for the rest of the circus. At one point when the woman in the robe was chanting and doing a strange dance, I was thinking I really don’t want the girls to see this. I don’t want them to think this is normal. At that exact moment, Amina leaned over and said “Mom, that woman crazy!” I was relieved that she realized that! We were so glad when it ended. We took the girls out to the pizzeria after the circus and the girls each got a salad. Khrystyna took apart all the souvenirs from the circus and put them back together again. She then began doing that to Amina’s souvenirs and managed to break it. Amina was very gracious about it. Fred and I told the girls that we would take it home with us and fix it. We were able to use clear nail polish as glue and we were able to get it fixed! By the time we left the restaurant, it was well after 9 and by the time we got back to the orphanage, the lights were out and all the kids were in bed. We quickly said goodnight to the girls and headed home!

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

2007-06-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

We decided that we would spend our morning getting some new 5 x 7 cards, getting Khrystyna’s sunglasses fixed, and spending whatever time we had left at the internet café. Kseniya called and told us our driver would pick us up at our apartment at 12. We told her that our cleaning lady was coming and that we were planning on heading into town when she got there. We asked if our driver could pick us up at the internet café at 12. She said she would call him and then call us back. She sent us a text message telling us that our driver would pick us up at 10 at our apartment. Unfortunately, we were out of minutes on our phone (all phones in Ukraine our pay as you go) and we had no way to call her back and tell her that we didn’t need a driver until 12. Our driver took us to the internet café and then we walked from there to get flashcards and to get Khrystyna’s sunglasses fixed. By the time we made it back to the internet café, we didn’t have much time left before our driver would be arriving to pick us up. We quickly checked our e-mail and uploaded some more photos to Picasa. When we arrived at the orphanage, Kseniya told us that we needed to have lunch somewhere in the center of the city (either vivattime or Papa Karlo) and then we would walk from there to the park in the center of the city. When we asked the girls where they wanted to have lunch, Khrystyna and Amina both said “Amstor.” Kseniya told them they had to choose between vivattime and Papa Karlo and they chose Papa Karlo. When we got to Papa Karlo, Amina and Khrystyna were able to translate what was in certain foods to us. We’re always curious as to what different foods are…is it chicken, potatoes, fish? They now have been telling what each item is in English. We’re so proud of how hard they are working on their English. After lunch, we headed to the park. We told the girls that they needed to play at the playground first and then we would let them go on one of the inflatable bouncy things. We decided that we would give them money again today since they did so good with it yesterday. Also, there was a vendor outside the playground who sold necklaces, blow up Scooby Do and Shrek, and various other inexpensive toys. The girls have asked many times if they can get one of the toys, so today we told them that if they wanted to use their money on one of the toys they could, but that money had to also pay for the bouncy thing and ice cream. The girls went on the bouncy thing first, then bought ice cream, then headed for the vendor with the cheap toys. After spending a while asking about the various prices, the girls walked away. I asked Amina if they were going to buy anything and she said “No mom, these 10 grivna, that (and she pointed to the bouncy thing) 10 grivna. We go that.” Although we still have some work to do on her grammar, we have been pleased at how well she has been able to communicate what she is thinking. After one more time on the bouncy thing, it was time to head home. We headed back to the orphanage and dropped the girls off. Then we decided to share a driver with Mark and Christine and go get circus tickets before heading to Amstor. After doing some grocery shopping at Amstor, Mark and Christine were going to go back to our place with us and then our driver would come back later to pick us up. The only flaw to our plan was that after buying circus tickets, we only had 20 grivna on us…$4.00. We were able to buy crackers and pretzels for Fred’s train trip back as well as bottled water. Mark and Christine only had a few more grivna than us and we were all thrilled to go back to our apartment where we could walk somewhere to get some money changed. I’m at the internet café now and I haven’t had a chance to write about the circus, but it deserves it’s own space. I’ll update tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

2007-06-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

The weather today was perfect! Thank you everyone who has been praying! We decided to try to get some time in at the internet café before heading over to the orphanage. We only had a few minutes, but it gave us enough time to update our blog. We rushed back to the apartment to grab our bag of Frisbees, racquets, balls, and other fun toys that we play with at the park and headed over to the orphanage. Mark and Christine arrived shortly after us and we decided to go to Amstor again for lunch. Amstor is definitely the favorite lunch spot of the adults. Amina likes it, but Masha and Khrystyna didn’t seem to be too thrilled about going there for lunch. We headed to Amstor for lunch and then went to the park with the crocodile. On the way to the park, we discovered that we weren’t the only creatures riding in our car…there was also a large fly. It was about an inch long. Mark, Christine, and Masha were able to see the fly from their car behind us. It had Amina totally freaked out. We first tried to swat it with a book, but we didn’t think our driver would appreciate bug guts smeared on his seat. We then decided to try smooshing it in a wet wipe. This was Amina’s idea, however, when it came time to implement it, she was too scared to get near it. There was a lot of screaming and jumping onto each other’s laps before I finally got brave and smooshed it. It was disgusting. Unfortunately, Khrystyna’s glasses were a casualty of our fly swatting endeavor. We somehow managed to sit on them and they lost a screw. We searched the car but couldn’t find the missing piece so I decided I would hold on to them and we would either get them repaired or replace them. When we got to the park, the girls immediately started talking about all the rides they wanted to go on. We decided to start working on responsibility today and gave each of the girls 20 grivna to spend for the day. This money was for rides and ice cream. All 3 girls decided together what they wanted to spend their money on and we had a very enjoyable time playing. After they had used up most of their money, they decided to head to the outdoor café tent in the park with the ice cream. Ice cream here is pretty expensive and they were each able to buy ice cream and have a little money left over. They used their left over money for fish treats (salted dehydrated fish…YUCK!) and lollipops. I think they each had 4 or 5. They were very willing to share their fish treats and I had a piece to be polite. It looked like shredded cheese, but it was disgusting. The girls all love them so we let them eat them! Also, in Ukraine there are stray animals everywhere. There was a cat who had taken up residence in the little outdoor café and Amina shared her ice cream and fish snacks with the cat. When the girls were finished eating, we ran through all the homemade flashcards I had made. The girls are really doing a great job of remembering English. They’re also starting to use it more regularly. Amina was pretty tired after all the rides today so after our English lesson, she stayed in the café and held the cat. I think the cat was narcoleptic because it stayed asleep no matter what Amina, Fred, or Mark did. It was the strangest thing. While Amina rested and Fred and Mark tormented the cat, Khrystyna and Masha played outside of the tent. After a while, Masha and Khrystyna decided they wanted to go to the playground. We all headed to the playground and stayed there for an hour. Amina and Khrystyna are getting very good at sharing. Since there is only 2 swings on the playground, Masha gets one and Khrystyna and Amina take turns on the other. When it was almost time for our drivers to pick us up, the girls decided they needed to head to the bathroom. Park restrooms in America are usually not my favorite, but they are nothing like Ukrainian park bathrooms. These bathrooms consist of a long stairway underground that ends in the restrooms…stalls with holes in the ground. I’ll leave it at that…it’s disgusting. I accompanied them to the bathroom, but waited outside. The girls all asked for wet wipes to hold over their noses while they are down in the bathroom. By the time we got back from the bathroom, our drivers had arrived and we headed back to the orphanage. We asked Kseniya if she would be willing to spend a few minutes translating for us. We wanted to explain what would be happening over the next few days. We told the girls that Fred would be heading home on Thursday and that I would be staying in Ukraine with them for another week or so. After we are finished our waiting period, I will take the girls to the capital of the region to get their birth certificates and other important documents, then we will get on a train and head to Kiev. In Kiev, each of the girls will have to get physicals done by the American Medical Center in Kiev and Amina will have to get some vaccinations. Children under 10 are not required to get these shots. When we explained this to the girls, Amina was horrified and Khrystyna breathed a very audible sigh of relief. Her sigh of relief was accompanied by a dramatic eye roll! We explained that we will be in Kiev for a few days and that we will have to go the US embassy to get their passports, but that when we have all of that finished, we will be able to head to America. We explained to the girls that we would work on English everyday at home, but that we will also have an English tutor that they will go to 2 times a week. We tried to explain as much as possible and then we asked if they had any questions or if there was anything they were afraid of. Amina immediately spoke up and let us know that she was fearful that she wouldn’t know enough English by the time school started in the fall. We told her that we thought she would be just fine, but that we would be happy to get additional help for them if they were to need it. Khrystyna didn’t have any fears…she just wanted to know if they would be able to go to camp. We told them that they could go to daycamp for 2 weeks this summer. Khrystyna told us that she wanted to go to camp for 5 weeks. We’ll probably have to work out some kind of compromise. After our talk with the girls, we headed back home. The weather had been cool all day so we weren’t as exhausted as we usually were at that time of day. I had been hoping to buy more of the 5 x 7 card stock I had picked up the other day to use as flashcards. I really wanted to make more flashcards. Fred and I walked over to the store that had the flashcards, but they were already closed. We headed to the mall next to see if we could find any good Russian/English phrasebooks for the girls. We didn’t find any that we really liked. We decided that we should probably grab a bite to eat on the way home since it was already almost 7 pm. We stopped at the pizza place that has American style pizza and split a pizza and got juice and water. All of our food was under $3 USD. We were pretty impressed. When we finished eating, we headed back to the apartment to re-evaluate what we needed to send home with Fred. When we packed his suitcase the other night, I packed all my pants and long sleeve tops, but since we’ve had some cooler days, I thought I should probably hang on to some of that stuff. Also, we called Sasha to see what time we would be meeting to sign documents. He said that since Fred’s flight wasn’t leaving til Friday and since Fred was staying here until Thursday, he decided to come on Thursday morning instead. He also said that a woman would be coming to clean our apartment tomorrow morning at 10. She had to come to clean last week and while she was cleaning we had to be out of our apartment. After talking to Sasha, we did some laundry, started planning for tomorrow, and are now getting ready for bed.

Prayer requests and praises

2007-06-05T01:36:00.001-07:00

**PRAISE** Our court appointment went smoothly and we were able to book a return ticket for Fred
**PRAISE** The weather finally cooled down. Although I’m not a huge fan of cold rainy weather, I wasn’t specific when I asked for the weather to cool off! My prayer has definitely been answered. Maybe next time I should pray for sunny and low 70s! (I guess you can consider that a new more specific prayer request)
*Pray for safe travel for Fred
*Pray for Amina, Khrystyna, and Masha to pick up English quickly and to not be apprehensive about moving to America
*Pray for a smooth transition when we all head home!
*Please continue to pray for our previously mentioned prayer requests

Monday, June 4, 2007

2007-06-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

Today is the day we have been waiting for. When we woke up this morning, we were both excited and nervous. We decided that we would pick up our girls and take them to an early lunch, bring them back to the orphanage, and then head to our apartment to change for court. We took the girls to the café at Amstor. We decided on the way there that we would let each of the girls pick out one DVD to take back to America. They really enjoyed looking through the DVDs and picking out DVDs for themselves! After picking out the movies, we headed into the café for lunch. After the girls picked out their food and sat down at a table, I left Fred to watch them and headed into the store to buy some laundry detergent and some hair stuff. Since it was cold and rainy outside, I also picked up a few mini puzzles for the girls to take to their group. Fred told the girls that they could have ice cream, so we each bought a scoop from the ice cream lady inside the door. Ice cream for the 4 of us cost 8 grivna ($1.60 USD) total. We thought that was a smokin’ deal! Our driver Mischa is wonderful and let the girls bring their ice cream in the car! They ate it on the way back to the orphanage. When we got back to the orphanage, we had Kseniya explain to the girls that we had a meeting in the afternoon and would not be able to hang out with them. They didn’t seem too disappointed. We said our goodbyes and headed home to prepare for court. We quickly got ready and were ready with 45 minutes to spare. I was so nervous I thought I was going to throw up! We spent some time praying together and I felt much calmer when we were done. Earlier this year, Fred and I memorized 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 and have been praying it since then. It has been a great reminder that God is in control. The verse says “Everything in the heaven and earth is Yours O Lord and this is Your Kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. Riches and honor come from You alone and You are the Ruler of all mankind. Your hand controls power and might and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength.” As we headed to court, I reminded myself of the truths in that verse over and over again. Since Svetlana was still in Kiev, we were told that we would meet Lena the official translator at court. When we arrived at court, we waited upstairs in the hallway with the orphanage social worker. She did not speak much English, so we had to wait patiently for Lena to arrive. We had arrived at 2:45 so we had a little bit of time to wait before court started. Lena showed up at 2:55 and we thought that court would start promptly at 3. Unfortunately, at 3:15, we were still waiting in the hallway. The judges for our case weren’t in the courtroom yet, so we continued to wait for them. When the judges finally showed up, it was 3:20. We entered the courtroom and had a seat. There were 3 judges presiding over our case. The social worker from the orphanage was there as a representative of the orphanage and the director of social work for the city was there as a representative for the city. There was also a prosecutor who was present to make sure all proceedings were legal. Court began promptly and Lena translated as the judges read documents. They weren’t pausing to allow for translation. They read documents quickly and Lena had to translate at the same time they were speaking. It was pretty impressive! After reading our application to adopt, the status reports for the girls along with their family history and medical history, they read excerpts from the letters the girls wrote requesting to be adopted by us. It was really cute. They then told us that they had questions for us and we stood up to answer their questions. They asked us if we would love Amina and Khrystyna and care for them as our own children, how long we had known the girls, if we felt we had adequate time to make a decision about adoption, and what our relationship was like with the girls. They also asked how we were going to help the girls with the transition to living in the US and learning to speak English. We were surprised that they didn’t ask more questions. They asked us to sit down and they asked for the opinion of the orphanage and the city. Both representatives stated that they believed that it would be in the best interest of the girls to be adopted by us and that they could tell by our interactions with the girls that we loved them very much. Next, they asked the prosecutor to stand up. He seemed very bored during the court session, but he stood up and said that he had been paying close attention to the proceedings and that everything had been legal. The judges then conferred among themselves for a minute before announcing that our adoption was approved and that after the 10 day waiting period, we could pick up our documents and begin the process of getting visas and passports for the girls. From start to finish, we were only in the courtroom for 20 minutes. We were not allowed to take pictures in the court room, but we took a few outside the courthouse to commemorate the occasion. We then headed to the orphanage to briefly see the girls. While we were in court, Mark and Christine met with Ludmilla and asked her if we could take the girls to the circus tonight. We wanted to take them before Fred left to head back home. She agreed to let us take them if we took an orphanage staff member with us. Kseniya agreed to go with us. When we got to the orphanage, Kseniya got the girls and we got a quick picture with them. When Kseniya explained that we would be going to the circus that night, they were ecstatic! Amina started jumping up and down! We told them that we were going home to change out of our dress clothes, but that we would be back to the orphanage to pick them up in an hour. When we got home, we changed into pants and long sleeve shirts…it has really gotten chilly! We have been amazed by how God has answered our prayers. After changing and eating a quick dinner, we headed back to the orphanage to pick up the girls. I expected the circus to be similar to the circuses in the US…big venue, lots of animals, and lots of space. Instead we pulled up to a small grassy area next to the cable car tracks that had a tent the size of our family reunion tent. It didn’t look very big and there were hardly any people there. When we got to the tent to buy tickets, there was a sign saying that they were closed June 4th and June 5th. We thought that was quite strange since all the signs in town say that the circus is in town from June 1-10. They don’t mention that the circus is town all those days, but not open on June 4th and 5th. The girls were very disappointed, but they handled their disappointment well. They asked if they could go to the park with the crocodile. We were a little concerned that none of the rides would be operating since it was cold and rainy and that the crocodile would be deflated, but we headed to the park anyway. When we got to the park, Masha, Christine, and Kseniya were waiting for us. Mark had headed into the park to scope out which rides, if any, were open. None of the rides were operating and the crocodile was deflated. We expected this to be the disappointment that pushed the girls over the edge, but they handled it in stride. They said they would play on the playground. The girls played on the playground for over an hour. The adults were all freezing. The playground only has 2 swings and it was interesting to watch the dynamics of who got to swing. Masha and Khrystyna got to the playground before Amina and took the swings. Amina handled it well and climbed on the jungle gym. Mark and Fred also played tag with her for a little while. After a while, Masha gave her swing to a little girl and joined Amina on the jungle gym. Masha and Amina then borrowed Mark’s camera and began taking photos of each other. It wasn’t long before Khrystyna joined in! Amina asked for our camera too and they all chased each other around the playground taking pictures. After a while, I noticed Khrystyna and Masha sitting on a bench with Fred. Amina was taking pictures of them and they were all practicing English…Ok, so it wasn’t exactly practicing English. One of the girls (and I have no idea which one it was) started using the phrase “Bad girl” They all began calling each other “bad girl” and chasing each other around the park. They were having a ball AND speaking English. It wasn’t the phrases we were hoping for, but it’s a start. Masha was also using the phrase “good job” tonight. We all enjoy it when they make an effort to speak English. After lots of running, the girls headed for the swings again. This time Masha and Amina got the swings. After a while, Khrystyna went over to Amina and said something while pointing to us. We were on the other side of the park so we’re not exactly what she said. All we know is that Khrystyna started running toward us and Amina followed. When Amina got close to Khrystyna, Khrsytyna turned around abruptly and started racing back to Amina’s swing. Amina beat her there and they both laughed quite a lot. I think Khrystyna tried the “mom and dad are calling us” routine and Amina fell for it! Khrystyna then began to poke Amina everytime Amina would swing forward. They totally behaved like sisters! It was really fun to watch. I think Amina eventually got tired of Khrystyna poking her because she got off her swing and gave it to Khrystyna. She played on the jungle gym some more before heading over and sitting dejectedly on the seesaw. Fred asked if she wanted him to go on the see saw with her and she said “No, Masha.” She then began calling for Masha and giving her sad puppy dog eyes. Masha eventually gave in and came over and climbed on the seesaw. When Masha was fully on the seesaw, Amina jumped off and stole Masha’s swing. Masha then sat on Amina’s lap on the swing. They spent the next 10 minutes trying to “share” the swing. While the older girls were carrying on on the one swing, Khrystyna was swinging her little heart out on the other swing. She had her eyes closed and she was smiling and singing to herself! It was quite cute. We think the girls will probably get a lot of use out of our swingset. Khrystyna used it a ton last summer and we’re guessing that Amina will enjoy it too. Although it was freezing, I could have stayed out there for another hour or so. I was thoroughly enjoying watching the girls play and it was fun to watch the dads play with them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as fun for Kseniya and she eventually asked if we could go. We agreed and headed over to tell the girls that our time at the park was over. The girls then began telling Kseniya that they were hungry. Kseniya told them that there would be food for them back at the orphanage and that if they were really hungry, they could have that food. We finally got the girls in the car and headed for the orphanage. Amina and Khrystyna had bought chocolate bars at lunch today and since we are trying really hard to make sure that the girls don’t take anything to the orphanage that may create jealousy, we made the girls leave the chocolate with us. We allowed them to have some of it on the way back to the orphanage. After all, we don’t have much time left to load up the kids with sugar and leave them with someone else! Just kidding! When we got back to the orphanage, we made some plans for tomorrow before saying goodbye to the girls. When we got back to the apartment, we decided to take a walk outside. We found a little market on the corner in the opposite direction we normally go. I’m so glad I now know it’s there. They sell water and juice. We normally go to the grocery store that is 4 blocks away and walk home with our cartons of juice and gallons of water. I’ve been making Fred carry all the heavy stuff, so I’m glad to know that I can just walk across the street to get the heavy stuff! The store also sells minutes for our phone and that was one of the things we were looking for. All of our incoming calls are free, but it’s expensive to make outgoing calls and we were out of minutes. When we got back to our apartment, we loaded the minutes onto our phone and Fred called Sasha to find out the plans for Wednesday. We knew we would be signing paperwork, but we weren’t sure how much time that would take. Sasha said to not plan on doing much more than signing papers. He also said that Fred would be able to leave Wednesday night for Kiev and that he could go to the American Embassy in Kiev on Thursday morning. He told Fred that he could leave anytime after 11am on Thursday. Unfortunately, there were not any available flights on Thursday, so Fred will be heading back to the US on Friday. He will get into Fort Wayne late Friday night. We are going to talk to Sasha tomorrow to see if it will be possible for Fred to leave for Kiev on Thursday night instead of Wednesday night. I’d much rather him be here for an extra day than just sitting around Kiev doing nothing! Also, if he can leave Thursday night, he’ll be able to go to the circus with us on Wednesday. We should find out more tomorrow. I am happy to report that with our window open and the cold air blowing in, our apartment hit a record low today of 69 degrees…although we closed the window 5 minutes ago and the temperature has already risen to 73 degrees. In my opinion, that’s a pretty good temperature. It is now after 10 pm and I am more than ready for bed. Today has been a wonderful, life-changing, exhausting day! Thanks again for your prayers!

Sunday, June 3, 2007

2007-06-05T01:34:00.002-07:00

Today, our plan is to go to the Extreme Park, eat lunch, and take the girls to a movie. We are going to spend time by ourselves today instead of hanging out with Masha and her family. We want to make sure that the girls realize that life will not always revolve around hanging out with their friends and that we use this time to really bond as a family. When we talked about it with Kseniya, we decided that our driver would take us to the orphanage at 10, that we would pick up the girls, and head to the Extreme Park. We got to the Extreme Park at 10:20 and were very disappointed to see that it didn’t open til 11. I think those may have been the longest 40 minutes of my life. The girls were EXTREMELY disappointed! We walked around the outside of the Extreme Park for a while, but after 20 minutes of walking, we still had 20 minutes of waiting. We really hoped that the girls would be a little happier once the extreme park opened. We had planned this day hoping it would create really fun memories, not really disappointing memories. When the park finally opened, we rushed inside and began deciding which ride to go on first. We told the girls to decide together which ride they wanted to go on first. We gave Amina the money, and she picked the ride she wanted to go on first. I thought Khrystyna was going to punch her. We explained that Khrystyna could pick the next ride and that they should take turns. The rest of our time at the park was wonderful! The girls did a great job of taking turns and we went on some very fun rides. Our whole family rode the rollercoaster together and we all went on the bumper cars. After our first time on the bumper cars, the girls wanted to go again. I just wanted to go to the chiropractor. I have no idea why people think bumper cars are so much fun! We bought tickets for the girls and headed for a shaded bench to watch them from. (Sidenote: Ludmilla has said that when the girls are out in the sun they need to have on hats or headcoverings. Khrystyna’s hair is in pigtails today her baseball cap is perched precariously on top of her pigtails.) The girls got in their cars, buckled up, and prepared to drive. Amina is more like me in the sense that she likes to drive the bumper cars, but she spends her time trying to avoid collisions. Khrystyna is all about hitting as many people as she can! During one of Khrystyna’s major collisions, her hat popped off her head and onto the ground. Khrystyna started to reach out of the car, but Fred and I both yelled “Khrystyna, No!” We were both afraid she’d get out of the car and end up with broken arms, legs, or worse. She heard us, shrugged her shoulders, and went back to driving. In the meantime, her hat was laying in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t long before people started hitting it with their cars and dragging it along the floor. It got pushed around by various people for the rest of the time. When the ride was over, Amina spotted the hat and ran over to get it. It looked as if it had been run over by 50 semis. It was covered in grease! Khrystyna laughed about it and then put it back on her head. I’m sure we’re going to get asked about it. I wasn’t sure if it would be better to take her hat and try to wash it, but I was afraid she’d get in trouble for not having a hat! After we finished riding all the rides they wanted to ride, our driver picked us up and we headed to lunch. We went to Vivattime for lunch. They were handing out balloons for the kids. The balloons were not helium…they were just blown up balloons on a long straw-like stick. Khrystyna got a yellow one and Amina got a green one. Fred and I were really hoping they’d forget them as we left the restaurant. We were heading to the movies next and didn’t feel like being responsible for balloons. We had about 45 minutes til the movie started, so we decided to walk through the park first. The girls wanted to jump on one of the large bouncy things in the park. We’ve let them jump on the larger of the 2 multiples times, but today for the sake of time and money we decided on the smaller one. The girls had a wonderful time and we got a great unstaged picture of Khrystyna punching this large punching bag thing in the face! When we finished at the park, we headed to the movie theater. We went to buy tickets for the 2:00 showing of the children’s movie, but it wasn’t being shown for some reason. The girls were translating for us and I heard Khrystyna say or Shrek 3. We told them that if they wanted to go to Shrek 3 again that was fine with us. The weather was very stormy and looked like there was going to be a downpour at any minute. We bought the tickets for Shrek 3 and on our way out the door, Amina said “Mom, 3”. I wasn’t sure what she meant at first, but I quickly realized that she meant that the movie started at 3 pm. That meant we have over an hour to kill. Fred wanted to take some of the stuff up to our apartment so I asked him to pick up a few flashcards and dry-erase books for the girls. The girls are still not allowed to go to our apartment, so we headed to the pet store while Fred went to our apartment. Unfortunately, the pet store was closed, so we walked to our apartment and sat down on one of the benches near the apartment to wait for Fred. While we were sitting there, it started raining. We headed for the shelter of the building’s overhang. Then Amina told me she had to go to the bathroom. I asked if she could wait until the cinema and she said no. She looked like it was an emergency, so we headed up to the apartment. After the girls had used the restroom, we headed back to the cinema. We now only had 50 minutes to kill! They have a lobby like area where you can wait for the movie you are going to see. It is a large concrete room with a few couches, a few video games, and a concession stand. We headed for one of the couches. I sat down and Khrystyna threw all of her stuff on the couch next to me before heading over to look at the video games. When Fred came over to sit down, I said “Fred, watch the balloon.” It didn’t seem that he heard me as he continued sitting down. I got out another “Fred, watch the” before there was a noise that sounded like a gunshot. One waiting mother covered her child’s head like she thought someone was shooting and the people who work there came running out of the office. Needless to say, it was quite an incident. Khrystyna was rolling her eyes like crazy and Amina acted like she didn’t know us! I’m sure everyone went home talking about the stupid Americans. After the balloon incident, we decided to try working on some English. We spent 15 minutes going over flashcards and writing our letters and then we let the girls play a few video games. We were so happy when it was finally time for the movie to start. When the movie was over, it was pouring out! We waited a few minutes for our driver and then headed back to the orphanage. We were all quite exhausted when we dropped the girls off. We headed back to our apartment and I had just enough energy to warm up some leftovers for dinner. Our apartment is cooler than it has been in previous days. It’s actually under 80 degrees. Court is tomorrow so we need to head to bed early so we are well rested for the big day.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

2007-06-05T01:34:00.001-07:00

The day started off quite warm again. We arrived at the orphanage before Mark, Christine, and Kseniya. Masha was the first one to come outside. When we asked her where Amina and Khrystyna were, she mimed that they were putting on their bathing suits. A few minutes later, the girls came bounding down the stairs and outside. They were very ready to go to the beach. We went to a different spot on the beach today. It was very close to a large inflatable water slide. We set our towels in the shade of a large tree and headed out to the sea. Fred, Kseniya, and I took the 3 girls in. Khrystyna doesn’t know how to swim, so when we got to the deeper area, she spent lots of time having Fred lift her over the waves and help her float. The girls both seemed thrilled to be able to play in the sea with their dad. I think that Fred will end up being the “fun” parent. Our time in the water was absolutely wonderful. The water was cold and there was a very nice breeze. I didn’t feel hot at all while we were in the water. After 30 minutes, we headed back to the shade for a little while. Mark and Christine had brought apples and Pringles for a snack and I added some chips and crackers. While we snacked, I pulled out some dry-erase flashcards and workbooks and the girls worked on their English. They never seem really thrilled to have to work on English, but they’ve been pretty good about doing it anyway. After bored totally set in for the girls, they asked if they could go on the waterslide. We told them they could go and Mark and Fred headed to the slide with the girls. Each slide was only 1 grivna (20 cents) and they let the girls go a few times each. They really enjoyed themselves. We made them work on English a little more after the slide and then they wanted to swim again. They have all learned the phrase “I would like to swim.” When they started saying Swim…I said “I would…” before I could finish my phrase, they side “like to swim.” It’s amazing which phrases of English they retain. We headed back to the water for a little while longer. I had the brilliant idea that a beach ball would be fun in the water. I headed up to get it and Christine blew it up for me. When I got back to the water with it, the current and the wind were quite strong. The ball flew out of one of the girls hands and what ensued was a swimming/jogging marathon to get it back. When we finally got it back, we started heading back in the other direction, but the ball went flying again and this time, a lady and another child had to track it down for us. Maybe next time it won’t be so windy! When we got out of the water, Mark had the kite up in the air. Amina seemed fascinated by it, however, she didn’t get to play with it because our drivers had arrived and were waiting for us. The girls changed out of their clothes and we headed to Amstor for lunch. We also wanted to pick out a few things for the girls. After lunch, we told Amina and Khrystyna they could each buy a pair of shoes for the trip to America. Amina’s first pair of shoes she picked out were red strappy high heeled sandals with a sequined flower on the top. It appears she has my taste in non-sensible shoes. We told her that those weren’t very practical. The next shoes she picked out were orange sandals with ribbons that tie up the leg. She tried them on and they were cute, but completely impractical. Fred reminded me that we would need to go through security at the airport while wearing those shoes. We explained to our translator that Amina would not be allowed to buy those shoes because it would be too much work at the airport. Something got lost in translation. Kseniya told Amina she could buy the shoes, but that she needed to be prepared for the extra effort they would require at the airport! Kseniya said “She has her instructions and she will do it.” Oh well, it was too late to try to explain that we had said no. It wasn’t Amina’s fault things got lost in translation. Khrystyna originally wanted the same shoes as Amina, but thankfully Masha was able to help her find some black and pink flip flops. The girls seemed pleased with their shoe choices, but by this time, I could tell Khrystyna was exhausted and nearing meltdown mode. Mark and Christine were going to take Masha to the park, but we decided that it would be best for us to take Amina and Khrystyna back to the orphanage. We headed back to the orphanage and Khrystyna wouldn’t even talk or look up at us while we headed back. She could barely even keep her eyes open. We were glad we had opted out of the park! When we got out of the car, Khrystyna rallied for a few minutes and gave us a big smile and a hug. Amina gave us a hug and told us she loved us. Then Khrystyna said she loved us too. It was a long tiring day, but a good one. After we left the orphanage, we headed back to Amstor for a few groceries. While we were there, I noticed that my shoulders were feeling quite warm. Apparently they weren’t joking when they said the air is bad here and the sun is quite strong. In the 1 hour I had spent not in the shade, I got fried! Fred had SPF 35 on for half the time and he got burned as well. After we picked up our groceries, we headed home. We put some lotion on our sunburns and I made some spaghetti for dinner. We started packing for Fred’s trip home as well. Although we don’t know exactly when he will be leaving, we wanted to make sure he’s ready when the time comes. The rest of the evening has been spent the same way we spend most evenings, laying around trying to stay cool. Hopefully we’ll have something different to report soon!

Friday, June 1, 2007

2007-06-05T01:31:00.000-07:00

Today is the big celebration at the orphanage. On Wednesday, we asked Svetlana what we should wear and she suggested that we just wear what we have on. She told us it would be very casual. I was wearing very casual shorts and a tank top when she said that. As we thought about the celebration, I wondered if we shouldn’t dress up a little…just to be safe. I’d rather be overdressed than underdressed. I wore a black skirt and turquoise top and Fred wore jeans with a button down dress shirt and black dress shoes. When we pulled up to the orphanage, we were so glad we had dressed up. Amina was waiting for us in a pink ball gown. She looked like a beautiful little princess. Khrystyna came skipping out a few minutes later in her cat costume with her face all painted! They were both so adorable! Our friends Mark and Christine showed up a few minutes after us and Kseniya (the secretary at the orphanage and our translator while Svetlana is gone) came over and told us that we would be going to the performance and that afterward, we would have a chance to purchase some handmade crafts. We followed Kseniya up to the hall where the performance was being held and she motioned us into the corner of the back row. The front row was reserved for orphanage sponsors and the second row was reserved for other important people. The performance started with ballroom dancing! There were 10 children (or I guess I should say pre-teens and teenagers in formal wear) who danced beautifully. When they were finished their dance, the teens who were graduating from high school, college, or the military stayed up front and the others went and sat down. Next, we sat through many, many speeches by orphanage sponsors. Although we couldn’t understand a lot of what was being said, we were able to understand what they were trying to convey. It seems that these orphanage sponsors care a lot about the wellbeing of these children. The sponsors also gave out awards to some of the children for their active role in orphanage life….i.e. singing, dancing, etc. Amina was one of about 8 children to receive this award. When the speeches and awards were finished, they began the main program. It took us a while to figure it out, but they were putting on a performance of The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz was not exactly like our Wizard of Oz. There was a scene in which there were dancing cats. Khrystyna was one of the three dancing cats. She was really cute! Amina played various roles in the performance. She started out the performance in her pink ball gown. She then was in one of the wizard of oz scenes as a dancing tree. During this time she also dances with the tin man while wearing her tree costume. She came out in a later scene wearing a purple dance costume and danced the cha-cha with the tin man. She is quite the dancer. After she finished dancing, she also sang a song which some of the other children danced to. She has a really nice voice! Both of our girls and all of the other children as well did a phenomenal job! We were very proud of all of them. When the Wizard of Oz was over, there were a few more speeches and a few more gifts were given out and then we were dismissed. When we came downstairs to where the handmade craft items were, Amina and Khrystyna had already changed out of their costumes. They were each wearing new outfits. Khrystyna’s was turquoise and Amina’s was lime green. Each of the front of their outfits had a Barbie-like doll on it. Underneath the doll it said “Barby”. It totally made me laugh. They immediately started pointing out everything they had made. There was quite a lot! We tried not to buy too much, but at the same time, we don’t have a whole lot of their handmade projects from their childhood, so we wanted a few. We, along with our friends Mark and Christine, also purchased a cake and some cupcake/cookie things for the girls to share with their friend. The cake and cookies cost us $20…which we thought was a little high, but it was all for a good cause! While we were all shopping for hand made crafts, I noticed that Masha had on the same outfit as Amina. We got a picture of the 3 of them in their matching “Barby” outfits! While we were taking pictures, Kseniya came over and told us that it was time to say goodbye. She also said, “Tomorrow, we will go to the sea.” That wasn’t how we had originally planned to spend the day, but the thought of being in cold water was quite appealing. We told her we would be ready at 9:45, said goodbye to the girls, and headed home. We knew we wouldn’t have a driver or translator the rest of the day, so we planned to spend the rest of the day back at our apartment. After laying around our apartment for a while (it was over 90 degrees…too hot to do anything else), we decided to venture into town for some ice cream. We stopped at our favorite ice cream place, got some ice cream with fruit on it, and headed back to our apartment. Since we had plenty of time on our hands, we watched Madagascar. We bought a few movies while we were out that are in Russian and English. Madagascar was one of them, however, we watched it in English…not Russian. We also watched the news on 3 different channels. All of the news was in Russian, however, 2 of the 3 channels had coverage of the program at the orphanage. On one of the newscasts you could see the back of Khrystyna’s cute little cat costumer as she talks to a newscaster and on the other channel, they had a portion where they show Amina singing. It was very cool to watch! Other than our time at the orphanage, we pretty much just laid around the apartment trying to stay cool. Hopefully the weather will cool off soon!

Thursday, May 31, 2007 Part 1

2007-05-31T07:46:00.000-07:00

Today started out quite warm again. Our apartment is currently 85 degrees! When we got up this morning, we uploaded some pictures of various kids from the orphanage to a memory stick so that we could take them into town to be printed. We figured we would venture out around 9:30 or 10, however, after talking to Svetlana about it, she said that she would have our driver pick us up at 12. She also told us that she would definitely be leaving today. We all had a lot of stuff to do in a very small amount of time. When 12:00 rolled around, we jumped in the car and headed to a photo shop. It’s not exactly what we’re accustomed to at home. Svetlana explained what we wanted to do and left us with the girl who worked there while she went to pick up Mark and Christine. We gave the girl our memory stick and she led us into a small room adjacent to the store. It had a computer set up and a memory stick reader. It had an Epson photo printer. The photos are 1.30 grivna…or 30 cents. We chose 41 photos to be printed and are planning on giving them to Ludmilla tomorrow. Mark and Christine also had photos that they uploaded after they arrived. When Svetlana dropped them off, she told us that our driver would pick all of us up at 1pm, but that she needed to go buy train tickets. She left and the 4 of us wandered around in the center of the city for a half hour. When we arrived at the orphanage, Amina was outside talking to Svieta. She ran over and hugged us and then went looking for Masha and Khrystyna. Khrystyna came out a few minutes later, but they weren’t able to find Masha. After waiting for a little while, Svieta said that she needed to take some papers to the social worker. She told the girls to look for Masha and that when she got back we would head for lunch. By the time she arrived back, we didn’t have very much time left. We needed to get lunch and get a birthday present for one of the workers from the orphanage. We headed to Amstor to eat at their cafeteria. The food was really good. This is my favorite lunch place so far! Khrystyna was in a little bit of a funk because Fred wouldn’t let the girls get soda. She asked for soda and Fred told her no, that she had to have juice. She didn’t want juice so she decided she would have nothing to drink. We told her that was fine with us. She was quite pouty throughout lunch. When Fred went back to the line to get more juice, Khrystyna and Amina went with him and they each got a juice. Amina had already finished her first juice by this point. After quickly eating, we explained to the girls that they each could have 10 grivna to buy a birthday gift and card. They could either each buy her something small or all chip into buy her something larger. They each wanted to get their own card and gift. Each of the girls settled on a little figurine and a birthday card. All of the girls stayed within the agreed upon price range. When we got back to the orphanage, the girls had to run inside because they were late for dance practice. We said quick goodbyes and the girls hurried inside. Svieta needed to talk to someone in the orphanage, so she asked us to wait for her. While we waiting, Khrystyna came out dressed in the cutest cat costume! She looked adorable. We took a few pictures of her. A few of the other kids came out in their costumes as well. The celebration at the orphanage tomorrow is a very big deal. The kids have all been working for hours on their programs. There will be a concert and a fair and lots of items that the children have made throughout the year will be for sale. We are quite excited. Tomorrow is also the day that we will be bringing all of the toys to the orphanage that we bought for the children. We purchased beach balls, pails and shovels for playing in the sand, puzzles, balls, and Frisbees. I think it will be a very enjoyable day for everyone! When Svieta finished in the orphanage, we came back to our apartment so Svieta could get packed to go back to Kiev. She left at 4:30 and now we are home alone! Woohoo! The TV and DVD player in the apartment our in the room that Svieta was sleeping in so we’ve been watching DVDs on our laptop. We’re quite excited to be able to watch movies on a regular TV! We’re planning on heading to the internet café in a few minutes to update the blog and maybe we’ll grab a bite to eat before we head back to our apartment. I am completely exhausted and am going to try to head to bed early tonight. I know I’ve been asking for this repeatedly, but please pray for the weather to cool off. In the time that it has taken for me to write all of this, the temperature has risen to 88 degrees. We’ll try to update again tomorrow night. We should be able to get tons of good pictures tomorrow…we hope. We were told not to speak English any more than necessary tomorrow and that if we do have to speak to do it quietly. There will be a lot of people at the orphanage and they don’t want people asking any questions about what the Americans are doing here.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

2007-05-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

When we asked Svetlana if we had anything to do today, she told us that didn’t think so. She left our apartment around 11am to take some documents to the court. She told us that she would pick us up around 1pm. I was being lazy this morning and just hanging around the apartment since we didn’t have anywhere to be and since it was quite hot! I decided to hop in the shower around noon, however, I was distracted by a phone call. It was Svetlana calling to tell us she would pick us in 15 minutes. We were needed at the court to sign some documents. We quickly got dressed and headed outside. Unfortunately, from the time of her phone call to the time she arrived, was 45 minutes…not 15. When she arrived, we hopped in the car and headed off to court. We had to sign our application to adopt Amina and Khrystyna and to change their names to Amina Lynn and Khrystyna Ann. It didn’t take long to sign the papers and then Svetlana told us to wait for her in the car while she took the papers to the judge and tried to get a court date. (Funny side note…All of our documents we have signed have been in Ukrainian. We have had a translator interpret each document that we’ve signed and we’ve had to sign a bunch since we added a second child and there was a lot of extra paperwork. Each time they translate a document the document starts out with our full names, date of birth, and full address as well as our passport numbers. Whenever they read our address, they always put the word “Mister” in front of our city. They read our street address, say “Mister Fort Wayne”, state of Indiana. It totally cracks me up. At first I thought it was just some funny way that our translator was reading it, but after having multiple translators say this, I guess it must be just the way they say the city…although when they saw where our passports were issued they just say San Francisco…who knows? If anyone has an explanation…please post it in the comments…I’d love to know.) Back to our day… We waited in the car for 15 minutes and when Svetlana came out, she told us that if all went well, we would go to court on Monday. Please pray that all will go well!!!! While we were waiting in the car, we noticed that the sky was looking very overcast. We really hoped that we would have rain soon. When we left the court, Svetlana needed to pick up some folders at the office supply store. This is the store that I wanted to go to on Monday, but after walking there on Monday, we discovered it was closed for the holiday. I was so excited to go in there. It was a small store with various writing tablets as well as markers, pens, and pencils. I couldn’t find any 3x5 cards or even 4x6 cards for flashcards, but after asking, I was able to puchase a few packages of cardstock. The cardstock is about 5x7, but hopefully it will still work for making flashcards. We were able to purchase 5 packs of cardstock and a box of markers for under $2. I thought that was quite a deal! When we came out of the store, it was pouring outside. We got totally soaked in the 10 steps it took to get to the car. When we got to the orphanage, we waited inside for a little while for the girls. It didn’t take very long for Masha to show up, but we waited quite a while for Khrystyna and Amina. When they came downstairs, we headed out for lunch. It was so dark and gray outside that it seemed like night. Also, traffic was very slow due to the rain. When we got to Vivottime (I know I spell this differently everyday…I’m experimenting), we ran inside. We got in line behind Masha’s family and began our daily ritual of picking out food. The girls normally each get a bottled drink, a cup of juice, soup (Ludmilla insists the girls eat soup everyday), salad, and various other foods. They ask for soda almost everyday, but we usually say no and they end up with bottled water or sparkling juice. Today we decided to let them each get a coke. The café was out of borscht today and Khrystyna and Amina didn’t want the other kind of soup they had. I told them that they could only get one bowl between the 2 of them, but that they each needed to have 5 bites. They agreed, but Khrystyna had a hard time accepting that. As we moved down the line, the girls added potatoes and sandwiches to their trays. Khrystyna was rather impatient today, so she decided to pass everyone in line and head to the juice dispenser. She moved her tray over to the display of desserts and grabbed a glass of red juice. While Khrystyna and Amina were deciding on what dessert to split, Khrystyna inadvertently spiller her entire LARGE glass of RED juice all over her tray and the floor. The juice filled her plate of potatoes and created quite a mess. I think Khrystyna was really embarrassed. She just stood there looking at the floor. Amina quickly asked one of the workers for a rag and started cleaning up the floor. When I got Khrystyna to make eye contact with me, she looked like she was going to cry. I told her that we loved her, that it was OK, and asked her if she wanted more potatoes. Her sandwich was wrapped in plastic wrap so we were able to salvage that. When Khrystyna said she wanted more potatoes, Amina headed back to the potatoes, and asked for more. We held up the line for quite a while trying to take care of the juice issue and eventually we made it to the cash register. We had a ton of food, divided between 3 trays, and somehow I managed to leave the line with only mashed potatoes for myself! It was quite an experience! I’d like to say that lunch was completely normal after that, but things just got stranger! When we finally got everyone situated at the table (no easy task), we began eating our lunch. There was a man in his 60s and a girl in her 20s sitting at the table behind us. The mans’ chair backed up to Fred’s chair. A few times during the meal, I noticed that the man was leaning on Fred’s chair rather strangely. I even pointed it out to Mark and Christine, but every time they turned to look he was sitting up normally. I eventually tuned the man out and went back to discussing English with the girls. We have been practicing English everyday. Today we wanted to do something a little different so we asked each of the 3 girls to come up with 3 word or phrases that they would like to learn in English. Masha said that she didn’t want to learn anything because if she wanted to know something, she just asked Svieta and Svieta would ask us in English. Khrystyna told us in Russian that she didn’t have any specific phrases because she already knew everything. Amina seemed to think long and hard before she told us that she had something she wanted to know how to say. We were all expecting something like where are we going, what time is it, or the name of a favorite food. Instead, she asked “How do you say ‘lawyer’ in English?” We were all totally dumbfounded! I asked her if she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. She quickly responded in English…”No, a doctor” I guess Fred and I better start saving for med school. We still have no idea why she wanted to know the word for lawyer, but I guess we’ll find out eventually. Amina’s desire to become a doctor quickly sparked another conversation about what each girl wanted to be when she grew up. Masha said she would like to be a Professor of Russian Literature. When Christine asked her what kinds of books she liked to read, she responded…I like DVDs. We all think it may be a little difficult to become a Literature Professor if you only watch DVDs, but who knows. Khrystyna does not know what she would like to be when she grows up. We probably could have gotten an answer from her, but while we were having the conversation there was a very loud “THUD” Fred had moved his chair and the old man behind him fell on the floor! He seemed to be unconscious! He was laying flat on his back groaning or gurgling. We all jumped up…we were quite worried. When I turned around to look at the girl who was with the man. She was just sitting at the table eating and drinking as if nothing had happened. The man was still laying on the floor! He hadn’t even regained consciousness! We quickly moved the girls away from the man. Mark ran over to the man while Fred ran to the cash register and pointed to the man. Svieta went to the girl at the table and asked if the man was ok. The girls said that this always happens when he’s drunk. She didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered that he was still laying on the floor unconscious. At this point, security came over and began halling the man off the floor. We took this as our cue that it was time to leave. We headed out to the car, hopped in, and headed back to the orphanage. The girls had another dance practice so we said goodbye and headed back to our apartment. We wanted to spend some time uploading pictures from the last week, so we grabbed our laptop and headed to Papa Karlo. We were quite discreet this time with the use of our laptop. We kept it behind our bag the whole time and tried to not to speak English. Amazingly enough, the internet stayed up the whole time we were there. When we were finished uploading pictures, we headed back to our apartment. It was raining outside and had cooled down considerably. Although it didn’t stay cool for very long, it was a very welcome respite! When we got back to the apartment, we waited for Svieta to return from the train station and then headed to Amstor. We were able to pick up some “real” spaghetti sauce as well as a few other items. We have to pick up bread every few days because they don’t use many preservatives in their food. The bread is fresh and quite delicious! When we finished our shopping, we headed back home. I made spaghetti for dinner and it turned out to be delicious! Much better than the last attempt with the borscht sauce. I also picked up some garlic rolls at the bakery. It was a good dinner and I thoroughly enjoyed eating something similar to what I’d eat at home! When we were finishing with the dishes, Svieta came into the kitchen and asked if we would need to purchase any clothing for the girls. She told us that when we finally get permanent custody of the girls and go to pick them up at the orphanage, we must bring all new clothes for them. They are not allowed to leave the orphanage with any clothing. I brought a few outfits for Khrystyna and the girls are close enough in size that they can probably share those outfits, but I knew I would need to buy shoes. I wondered why she was asking about this now. We haven’t had our court date yet and we have to wait 10 days after the court date to pick up the girls. When I asked her about this, she told us that she may be heading back to Kiev tomorrow! She told us that she would try to pick up whatever we need tomorrow while she is still here. I thought she may just be heading back to Kiev temporarily, but she told us that she may not be coming back at all. We may be on our own from here on out! She’s still not positive if she will be leaving. She said she would let us know tomorrow. Although we will miss her if she leaves, it will be nice to have our own space. We’ll let you know what happens! After talking to Svetlana, we spent the rest of our evening making phone calls and working on the logistics for the rest of the trip. Fred spoke to his boss about his return to work. His boss has been extremely kind and flexible and it has really made the uncertainty of the trip a lot more bearable! We also talked to our facilitator in Kiev about Fred’s return to “Mister Fort Wayne”…Ok…so we didn’t say Mister Fort Wayne while talking to him, but I think it has a nice ring to it. It makes it sound like a much friendlier town! I’m beginning to ramble, so I should probably go to bed. We’ll keep you posted as things develop here! Thanks again for all your prayers! They are being answered!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

2007-05-31T07:43:00.000-07:00

This morning was a very lazy morning. Fred and I hung out at the apartment until 12:15pm. Svieta got a phone call at 10am to inform her that Mark and Christine would be having court at 11am…that morning. She quickly got dressed and headed out of the apartment. She told us that she would call to let us know when our driver would pick us up. We hadn’t heard from her at 12:15pm, so we decided to head out to get some money exchanged. When Svieta called us, we were on our way to the center of town to get more money. She told us that she would pick us at 12:45pm. We hurried to get our money exchanged and ran back to the apartment. We then headed to the orphanage to pick up the girls. The girls were a lot quieter than usual today. When we got to the orphanage, Svieta went into the orphanage to talk to Ludmilla while we played with the girls. When she came out she told us that Amina’s medical documents were ready to be signed. We quickly followed her into the orphanage to sign the paperwork. The doctor went over Amina’s medical history, Svieta translated, and Fred and I signed on the dotted line. It didn’t take very long since Amina is very healthy! When we headed back outside and played with the girls for a few minutes…then we were told that the girls had dance practice. The girls headed to dance and Mark and Christine headed to lunch with Fred and I. Svieta needed to take care of some documents so she went off on her own. We had asked her earlier in the day if it would be possible to take the girls to see Shrek 3. She said she would have to check with Ludmilla, but Ludmilla was very busy. After lunch, we wandered through the mall for a little while and then headed to the movie theater. Svieta had hoped to meet us there, but she had still not been able to talk to Ludmilla. She had our driver pick us up and take us back to the orphanage. When we got back to the orphanage, Svieta was still waiting to see Ludmilla. After a few minutes, we saw Ludmilla walking down the hall toward us. Svieta explained that we wanted to take the children to Shrek 3 and Ludmilla gave us permission. We quickly rounded up the 3 girls and headed to the theater. When we got to the theater, Svetlana helped us buy tickets. The theater only has 5 rows and you had to purchase tickets for specific seats. Mark and Christine bought their tickets first and we bought ours next. Unfortunately, our tickets were not all together. The girls decided that they 3 of them would sit in one set of seats and Fred and I could sit with Mark and Christine. Christine and I ran back to our apartment while Svieta pointed out the seats to Mark, Fred, and the girls. Svieta told us that she wouldn’t be going to see the movie with us. When Christine and I got to the theater, the movie had already started. Apparently, after Svetlana showed the girls their seats, they decided to move. There was enough seats for the 3 girls and Mark and Fred to sit together, but not for Christine and I. We ended up sitting in the row behind them. During the movie, my phone began to flash at me. (I had turned the volume off) I didn’t plan on taking the call, but I noticed it was Svetlana so I ran out of the theater to take it. I was quite surprised that she would call when she knew we were in the movie. She asked me to run outside of the theater to get the keys to our apartment. She told me she was heading out of town in order to get our documents to Sasha. She said that she wouldn’t be back until after 10 pm. When the movie ended, we called Svetlana to ask her how we would get back to the orphanage. She told us that Mark and Christine’s driver would be meeting us in front of the theater and that he would have another driver with him for our family to ride with. The two drivers would take us back to the orphanage where we would say goodbye to the girls and then Mark and Christine’s driver would take us all home. When we got to the apartment, we decided to walk over to Papa Karlo to get on the internet. We were able to upload our blog, however, we lost our internet connection quickly after that. It seems that the workers at Papa Karlo are not big fans of Americans. When we overstay our wecome, they unplug our wireless access point. After a while, we figured that they weren’t planning on plugging it back in, so we left. We headed back to our apartment. We watched a little bit of Shrek 2 (in English) before Svetlana got home. When she got home, we asked her why she had to rush off so quickly. She told us that she had all the necessary documents for Kiev, but that she didn’t have them in time to meet the train in our city. She headed to a larger city which is a few hours away and handed off the documents to someone on the train there. She then headed back home. She was quite tired and so were we. We said goodnight and then headed to bed.

Prayer Requests:

2007-05-29T10:01:00.001-07:00

*Please pray that the weather will cool down. We are
tired all the time because of the heat and are not
sleeping well!

*Please pray that we get a court date this week. Fred
would like to be able to get back to work as soon as
possible. Also, I don’t want to spend my entire summer
in Ukraine!

*Pray for our relationship with the orphanage. Pray that
we would be a source of encouragement to the staff of
the orphanage as well as the kids.

*Pray that the children who are in the orphanage will be
put on the registry soon so that they can be adopted by
loving families and that those children who are already
on the registry will be adopted quickly!

*Pray for all the families who are waiting to adopt. It is
a long and emotional process. Pray for strength and
stamina and that things will move swiftly along.

Monday, May 28, 2007

2007-05-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

Today was another scorchingly hot day. It is also a holiday! (No, it’s not Memorial day…actually, yesterday was a religious holiday. It has something to do with 40 days after Easter or something like that) Since the girls didn’t have school, we would be able to pick them up at 12 today instead of 1 or 1:30. When we got up this morning, I worked on what we wanted to teach the girls today. We really wanted to make sure they can express their feelings in English. I bought each of the girls a notebook and wrote their full name on the first page. On the second page I wrote their full name in cursive. On the following pages, I wrote out a few “feeling sentences”….I am happy, I am sad, I am bored, I am confused, I am hungry, and I am thirsty. Each of these sentences got one full page devoted to it. I had Fred draw a small illustration of each feeling at the top of each page, then I numbered the lines on each page 1-5. I figured that I would have the girls write each sentence 5 times and then draw a picture to illustrate each point. I also wrote the feeling in Russian at the bottom of the page. After getting the notebooks ready, I hoped that we could go to the office supply store to pick up some 3x5 cards. I wanted to have Fred draw his faces on one side of the card and write the word on the other side…homemade flashcards. We knew we would have to leave our apartment at 10 am since the cleaning woman would be coming so we figured that we could use that time to buy some notecards and make flashcards. Unfortunately, the office supply store was closed due to the holiday. The mall was open, so we spent a little time in the mall. We picked up another Frisbee…they tend to either get taken into the orphanage for the group, broken, or stuck up in a tree! We also picked up some bubbles for the girls. The mall is not air conditioned either and it was quite stifling in there. Part of the mall houses electronic equipment, and that section is air-conditioned. We walked around 4 of the 5 air-conditioned floors of the electronics store. I’m sure people were wondering why people who only speak English were looking so intently at stoves and washing machines, but we knew we still had an hour to kill and it was miserably hot in the rest of the mall. When we had spent as much time as we reasonable could in the mall, we headed to a furniture store that was adjacent to the mall. It was a really strange store. We had noticed a sign on the way into the mall that showed all kinds of Apple products…iPods, Mac Powerbooks, etc and the sign pointed into the furniture store. When you walk into the store, you immediately see all kinds of furniture, however, if you go to your right, there is a little freestanding Mac store area. If you go the left, it’s like and old 5 and dime store. It had notebooks, towels, toys, clothes, etc. We only had a few minutes in there before our driver was picking us up, but we found some inexpensive notebooks and colored pencils that we picked up for the girls. When we came out of the store, our driver was waiting. We hopped in the car, waited a few minutes for Svetlana to come out to the car, and headed back to our apartment to pick up our toys for the day. We didn’t want to be stuck walking around for 2 hours with a bag full of Frisbees, balls, rackets, water, and other necessities. When we grabbed everything we needed, we headed back out to the car and over to the orphanage. The girls were waiting for us when we arrived. They were quite excited to see us! We told them that we were going to go to lunch, work on English for a little while, then head to the park. Khrystyna and Amina had told us on Saturday that their classes at school were going to the park on Tuesday. Khrystyna reminded us about this and asked if she could buy chips for all the students in her class. I figured that since she goes to school with children from families, there are probably lots of times that parents send in treats for all the students, but that Khrystyna probably has not had that luxury. We agreed to buy chips for everyone! She was totally thrilled. We offered to do the same for Amina and she was quite excited as well. We told them that we would go to the grocery store after we finished lunch and worked on English. Svetlana had our driver drop us off at the cafeteria for lunch and Mark and Christine’s driver ran them by their apartment to pick up stuff for the day. Amina and Khrystyna decided to split a bowl of soup today and to split a dessert so that they could still have ice cream later. They finished their food fairly quickly and while we were waiting for Masha to finish her food, I pulled out the English books I made for them. Christine was completely impressed and asked if I would teach English to Masha too. Christine had an extra notebook, so I wrote the same stuff in Masha’s book and had Fred quickly illustrate it. When we were finished, we started our English lesson. The girls seemed to like the goofy pictures that Fred drew. When it came time to draw their own pictures of each feeling, Amina drew a big round smiley face. Masha did the same. Khrystyna is definitely the artist of the group. She copied Fred’s smiley picture. It was awesome. We did happy and sad while we were in the cafeteria and then headed out to the park to finish. By the time we finished all of our sentences, the girls were getting restless. Mark and Christine decided to take Masha shopping for a pair of shoes and we decided to take our girls to the playground and to the grocery store for chips and ice cream. While we were walking to the playground area, Khrystyna and Amina began asking about going on the big bouncy thing. This is the one that Masha and Khrystyna got to go on that has a crocodile, a cobra, a big slide, and lots of things to climb on. Khrystyna has been telling Amina about it every time we drive by that particular park. I told them that they could go on it after Masha left the park, but that I didn’t want them to say anything to her because I didn’t want her to be sad. They quickly agreed and when Masha and her family left the park, we headed to the bouncy thing. The girls had a blast and we were glad that Amina was able to experience it with Khrystyna. We are trying to be really careful to make sure that Amina gets to do the same fun things that Khrystyna did last week. We still need to plan a trip to the extreme park so that Amina can have that experience as well. After the girls finished jumping and playing, Fred suggested we buy ice cream from a lady with a cart in the shade. The girls got yummy strawberry popsicles and Fred got some coffee flavored ice cream creation that he said was really good. We then headed to the grocery store to pick up chips. We saw Masha and her family as we headed to the store. Svieta was with them and she asked if we wanted to stay at the same park or go to a different park. We decided to let Amina and Khrystyna make that decision. Of course, they decided on the crocodile park. We made the decision to head to the crocodile park after we went to the grocery store. Masha’s family decided to stay in the park we were currently in. Masha sat down on a bench and put her new shoes on and of course my girls had to go over and admire them. While we were walking to the grocery store, Amina said, “Mom, Masha’s shoes BEAUTIFUL!” I told her that we would buy new shoes for the two of them sometime later this week. They immediately began whispering back and forth…I think they are planning on what kind of shoes they will get! When we got to the grocery store, the girls explained how many kids they had in each of their classes and that they wanted to get individual bags of chips for each person. I took them into the store with me while Fred waited outside and we picked up chips for their classmates. Khrystyna also asked nicely for some cat food for the cat and kittens. I bought her a 40 cents bag of food for the cats. She and Amina immediately told Svieta that we got cat food when we ran into her again. It’s amazing how much joy they get out of the simplest things. After our grocery store run, we headed off to the park. The girls pulled out their rackets and began a rousing game of hitting the ball back and forth. We played in the shade and it was quite relaxing to sit and watch them. We only planned on being in the park 45 minutes and after 30 minutes of playing the girls began to ask about the crocodile. I told them that if the wrote their full name 9 times and “I want to go to crocodile.” 2 times that we would go. Amina’s name is shorted than Khrystyna’s and Amina is faster in general, so she finished much more quickly. By the time Khrystyna was finished with her name, she was frustrated. We told her that she only had to say “I want to go to crocodile” and that we would let her write it 2 times tomorrow. That seemed to be about all she could handle today. The lady at the crocodile looked extremely happy to see us. She even offered me a chair to sit down on while the girls played. I think she just likes us because we’ve given her enough money to put her kids through college.  When the girls were finished, we headed back to the car and then on to the orphanage. We spent a few minutes blowing bubbles and then the girls decided to feed the cat. The kittens are still too small to eat cat food, but that didn’t stop the girls from trying. They played with the kittens for quite a while. When Masha and her family got back, each of the girls as well as Mark and Christine grabbed a kitten and headed to the other side of the parking lot for a kitten race. We saw a few of the older boys doing this the day before and it seemed fun. You place your kitten on the ground and stand in front of it then slowly back up and the kitten follows you. Amina’s kitten was halfway across the parking lot before Khrystyna could even get her kitten moving. Since Khrystyna is very competitive, she just picked up her kitten, ran across the parking lot til she was even with Amina, and put her kitten back down. Poor Khrystyna…she picked a kitten that was completely content to stand in one place. After the kitten races, she put her kitten up on the wall and holding on the the underside of her, ran along the wall, letting her paws drag on the wall. I think she was trying to teach her kitten the importance of hurrying…a lesson that was completely lost on the cat. On the way back, she let go of the kitten and the kitten actually started walking. Khrystyna was so excited, that she started skipping back to us and she left the kitten all alone. We all started yelling for her to watch the kitten and she turned around just in time to catch the kitten before she fell off the wall. It’s amazing how much entertainment a few kittens can provide…even for people like Fred and I who aren’t big fans of cats. After playing with the cats for a while, it was time to say goodbye again. That’s the hardest part of this process for me…part-time parenting. During the day, you are the parent and you make decisions and then you have to give them back at the end of the day. I’ll be so happy when we can play with them during the day and tuck them into bed at night! After our goodbyes, we headed back to the apartment to pick up our laptop and then we went over to Papa Karlo. Unfortunately, the wi-fi connection was down and we were unable to upload our pictures to the internet or update our blog. Hopefully tomorrow the connection will be back up. When we got back to our apartment, it was nearly 90 degrees inside our apartment. By the time we went to bed, it had cooled down to 29 degrees Celsius…84.2 Fahrenheit. We were sooo hot. I slept with 2 frozen waterbottles snuggled up next to me. It actually kept me cool enough to sleep. When we woke up this morning, our room had cooled down to 28 degrees Celsius (82.4 F)…not much better, but it least it got cooler rather than hotter.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

2007-05-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

Today was a little cooler than yesterday. It was only in the high 80s!  When we were planning out our day last night, I decided that we would pick up the girls at the orphanage and then head to lunch. After lunch, I planned on bringing Khrystyna and Amina back to our apartment so that we could work on English. When I told Svieta our plan, she told me that she had talked to Ludmilla and that we are not allowed to bring the children back to our apartment until after our court date. We decided that we would just go from lunch to the beach! We didn’t have beach towels, so we had our driver pick us up and we headed to Amstor. We were quite surprised to find that beach towels cost 170 grivna (or 34 dollars!!!!!) We were not quite prepared to spend that. I found 2 beach towels with a tic tac toe board on them that came with Xs and Os. The material was super thin, but they were only $8 each. They only had 2 of them, so we decided we would just have to share! We also found some rackets and squishy balls that were designed to be used in the water. When we got back to the apartment after going to Amstor, we loaded a bag with fun beach stuff…Frisbees, the rackets that we got at Amstor, a kite, some gum, and bottled water, then we headed to the orphanage. Since Khrystyna told us last Sunday that she doesn’t like pizza, we have been eating primarily at the 2 cafeterias. We all enjoyed the pizzeria we ate at last Sunday and had been wanting to go again, but we didn’t want Khrystyna to be upset. Fred and I decided on the way to the orphanage that we would tell Khrystyna that we were going to the pizzeria for lunch. They offered other foods there and we decided to tell her that she didn’t have to eat pizza, she could have something else off the menu. We had Svieta tell her that she could eat what she wanted, but that she needed to have a good attitude or we would not go to the sea. Svieta explained all of this to her and she agreed very quickly! She was even smiling about it. As we walked to the car to head to lunch, Khrystyna asked Amina if she liked pizza and was going to eat some. Amina quickly said yes! Khrystyna told Svieta that if Amina would eat pizza, she would eat it too! We were completely amazed. When we got to the pizzeria, they didn’t have any outside table available. We headed inside to sit down. Our waitress told us that you are not allowed to put tables together inside the restaurant, so Svieta sat with Mark, Christine, and Masha, and we had our own table! Amina and Khrystyna did a very good job translating what the various toppings were for the pizza. We all ordered pizzas and they were really tasty! Khrystyna picked at one piece of her pizza and then just ate the toppings off the rest of the pizza. She didn’t eat very much, but she was very pleasant and didn’t complain. I had bought a few bags of chips with me to give them at the beach, but brought them out at the pizzeria instead. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy the chips! When we were all finished, we headed for the sea! The girls were thrilled!!!! I was the only adult with a bathing suit, so I was elected to go in the sea with them. When the girls pulled off their clothes, I was relieved to see that Amina and Khrystyna both had modest swimsuits! Khrystyna’s was quite funny, though! It was a navy 2 piece with a McDonald’s logo on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bathing suit with a McDonalds’ logo on it! The girls didn’t want to spend anytime sitting on our beach towels, they just wanted to swim. We taught them the phrase “I want to swim” and then headed into the water. The water seemed a little cold at first, but it was sooo refreshing. Masha and Amina paired off once we got in the water and Khrystyna was stuck trying to get their attention and doing flips. I tried to applaud loudly each time she did a trick. I think she was frustrated that Amina and Masha were playing together, but she handled herself quite well! After playing in the water for a while, we headed back to the beach. Svieta told them they could go in the water again once they were dry. They spent some time playing with the rackets and Fred tried to teach them to fly a kite. Unfortunately, there was no wind so the kite didn’t do much good. After sitting around for a while, the girls started pointing to the sea again and asking Svieta in Russian if they could go back in. We made each of them say “I want to swim” before we headed back to the water. Khrystyna got a little confused and said “I want to sleep”. She immediately realized that she said sleep instead of swim and we all giggled and told her that the other girls could swim and she could sleep. She kept saying “No, no…swim, swim, please” We smiled and told her that of course she could swim with the other girls. The 3 girls and I headed back into the water. When we got in the water the second time, the girls were all trying to do flips and handstands. Amina was doggy paddling through the water. She said “Mom, I swim like dog”. I hadn’t even noticed that that was what she was doing, but it made me laugh that it was called the same thing in Russian…and her translation was quite funny! After 15 minutes in the water, Svieta waved us back in. She told us that we would need to dry off again before we could go back in. This time, the girls decided to play in the sand. I was really ready for some shade and since Fred had been sitting in the shade while I was in the sea, we decided to switch places. He headed down to the water’s edge where the girls were playing in the sand. They played for quite some time before coming back up to play with the rackets again. They were definitely worth the $2 we paid for each of them. When the girls were dry again, we headed back to the sea for one more swim! We all splashed and had a great time. No one wanted to get out when the time came. We told the girls that they would need to dry off and then we would head back to the orphanage. While Khrystyna and Amina were hitting the ball back and forth, Khrystyna and tripped backwards and ended up flat on her back in the sand. She hadn’t dried off much and the entire back of her was covered in sand. We quickly headed back to the sea to wash off the sand. Masha took her place hitting the ball with Amina. When Khrystyna finished washing the sand off of her back, she wrapped herself in her towel and sat on the beach quietly. She was exhausted. After the girls changed clothes, (we held a towel in a circle as a makeshift dressing room and each girl took a turn) Masha began complaining that she had water in her ear. Svieta turned to Mark and Christine and asked “Do you have a stick?” The look on Mark’s face was priceless. He looked at her like she was crazy. Christine quickly realized that she meant a Q-tip. Christine told Svieta that she had some at the apartment, but not at the beach. Personally, I was relieved to find out that it is not an approved practice to put sticks in children’s ears! On the way back to the orphanage, Amina and Khrystyna were very quiet. They were both exhausted. Khrystyna struggled to keep her eyes open the whole way home. We didn’t spend much time saying goodbye because the girls were soo tired. We hugged the girls, told them that we loved them and would see them tomorrow, and headed back to our cars. Mark and Christine invited Fred and I to go out with them after the beach. We went back to our apartment, took quick showers, and hopped into the car to head to Mark and Christine’s apartment. We spent some time relaxing in their apartment and chatting and then walked to a restaurant that was a few blocks from their apartment. It was a really nice seafood restaurant and it was air-conditioned! We sat ourselves at a table by the window and the waitress headed our way. Unfortunately, she didn’t speak much English….and we don’t speak much Russian. Also, the menu was very large. It had pages of hot and cold appetizers, soups, salads, entrees, desserts, and drinks…all in Russian. After giving us some time to look at the menus, she could tell we still had no clue. She tried to explain the menu to us. She said “Steaks?” I knew what a steak was and it sounded quite good so I just said “Yes, steak Y Kartoshka” or steak and potatoes. She said ok and then she tried to explain more of the menu. She started pointing at entrées and explaining them. She showed us steak with potatoes and steak with vegetables. When she pointed to the steak and vegetables, she said Steak…moo moo. She was letting us know it was cow. Then she pointed to an entrée and told us it was chicken. She seemed to be at a loss for words and then she said chicken and starting hitting her leg. We figured out that was a chicken leg. She pointed to the next item and said chicken and then she waved her hand across her chest! We thought it was hysterical, but we got her point…it was a chicken breast. We placed our orders, ate delicious food, and had a wonderful time. We finally got back to Mark and Christine’s a few hours later. Our driver picked us up and we immediately headed back to our apartment to go to sleep!

Saturday, May 26, 2007

2007-05-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

This morning started out with yet another trip to the notary. Lena met us there and we filled out paperwork requesting the adoption of Amina and Khrystyna. We had previously done these documents for both of the Khrystyna and we did lots of other documents so that we could get our referral for Amina, but now that we have our referral for Amina, we were able to do a joint application to the Dept. of Child’s Rights Protection Services and an application to the local court system. We were able to get things notarized very quickly this morning and then we headed off to the orphanage.
When Fred and I arrived at the orphanage this morning, the girls had not yet returned from a special party as school. Svetlana decided to leave Fred and I at the orphanage and take our driver to go pick up Mark and Christine. I guess she needed to talk to them, but I found it to be quite strange. After being dropped off, we waited only a few minutes before the girls returned home from school. All of the children were walking in a line of groups of 2. It was to so cute to see Khrystyna and Amina walking together! They seem to have embraced sisterhood! As soon as they saw us waiting, they said something to their teacher and came running over to hug us. Amina showed me that she ripped her skirt that morning and told me that she needed to go change. The girls ran inside to change and came out a few minutes later. Amina had her hair in a French braid and Khrystyna’s hair was in a normal braid, but looking much neater than normal. (Khrystyna hates brushing her hair!) When I told them how pretty they looked and that I liked their braids, Amina explained that the teacher braided Amina’s hair and Amina braided Khrystyna’s hair. While we were waiting for Mark and Christine, the girls started making swimming motions and saying “slimming, slimming”! They all really wanted to go swimming. I told them that we could talk to Svieta, but I wasn’t sure if they would be allowed. We told them that we would go to lunch and then go to the park with the crocodile. Amina told us that her sunglasses had been stolen at school last week and we told her that we would stop after lunch to get a new pair. We ate lunch at Vivotttime (I’m sure that is spelled incorrectly) one of the cafeterias that we frequent. The girls ate a ton of food, but were willing to pass on dessert so that they could have ice cream later. After lunch, we headed to the market to buy sunglasses for Amina. She tried on a few pink pairs that were similar to the ones we bought her last weekend, but they were too small for her head. She finally settled on a brown pair with a few crystals on them. They make her look much more grown up! After the market, we headed to “crocodile park” with Masha and her family. The girls had noticed a house of mirrors when we had been there previously and had asked to go on it. We told them they could go on a different day. As soon as we got into the park, the girls started asking about it. We told them they could go and they headed inside. While we were waiting, Svieta asked us if she minded if we got some cotton candy. She knew that if she got some the girls would want some too. We told her that was fine with us. She got cotton candy that was larger than she was! When the girls finished in the house of mirrors, they wanted cotton candy too! We bought one cotton candy and made the 3 girls split it. They totally enjoyed themselves. When the cotton candy was finished, the girls immediately began discussing which rides they wanted to go on. They went on the roller coaster, the crocodile, the centrifugal force ride, and a ride which was like a very large swing that went back and forth. When we were finished with the rides, we headed to the playground and played on the playground equipment for a little while. The girls had a great time and they were totally filthy by the time we left. We headed for the ice cream shop next for some super delicious ice cream. I’ve even figured out how to order the ice cream I want! It was a very fun day! When we got back to the orphange, we asked Svieta to ask the orphanage workers if the girls were allowed to go to the sea and if they had bathing suits. She told us they would look for bathing suits that night and that if we tested the water and thought it was warm enough, we could go in! We didn’t tell the girls because we wanted it to be a surprise. When we got home, we were too exhausted to do much of anything. The weather has been consistently in the 90s and it has been totally draining. We don’t have air-conditioning in our apartment, so we usually don’t want to do much more than lay around! We decided that we would try to head to bed early so that we would be ready for our big day at the beach!

Friday, May 25, 2007

2007-05-29T09:53:00.001-07:00

It is now Saturday morning, but I was so tired by the time we got home yesterday that I didn’t take time to journal! Yesterday was definitely a very interesting day…in some ways it was our best day so far and in other ways our worst! Our morning started off wonderfully when Svetlana knocked on our door and told us Sasha was on the phone for us. Sasha told us that he had spoken to the SDA and that he would be able to pick up Amina’s referral in the afternoon. We were so thrilled to know that we would be able to adopt Amina! Also, we had been praying that we wouldn’t have to go to Kiev for our second referral, but we also knew that the SDA rarely, if ever, gives out referrals without seeing the family face to face…even if it is a second referral. We were very excited to hear this! After explaining about Amina, Sasha said something very strange. He said that Ludmilla was very upset about some things that had happened and that we should probably buy fruit for all of the children in the orphanage. We were more than willing to buy fruit for the orphanage, but we were totally confused as to what Ludmilla was upset about. When we got to the orphanage to pick up the girls, we were called into Ludmilla’s office. I thought we were being called in to talk about Amina, but Mark and Christine came in with us. What happened next was very surprising. We spent what seemed like 3 hours, but was probably closer to 45 minutes being lectured by Ludmilla. She wanted to make sure we understood how much the orphanage does for the children and that we respected that. She felt that there were other families who did not appreciate how much the orphanage does for the children and does not put the needs of the children first. It had nothing to do with us…and I am sure that the families that she felt were not respectful were not intentionally disrespectful. I think it was a misunderstanding combined with cultural differences. The end result was that Ludmilla said that we were only allowed to spend one hour with the children and that it had to be on the orphanage grounds. The girls were very disappointed that we would not be taking them to lunch. I felt especially bad for Amina as this was the first day we would have been able to take her out! We were very disappointed. When we were finished our meeting with Ludmilla, we were told that the girls would have dance practice for an hour. We took that opportunity to run out and get lunch for ourselves and fruit for the orphanage. Svieta took us to her favorite pizza place. The pizzas were a lot more like a traditional American pizza. They let you choose what toppings you want and then hand make the pizza when you order. It was really quite tasty. I got chicken and mushrooms and Fred got ham and pineapple. When we were finished lunch, we headed to Amstor for fruit. We bought a ton of fruit. It cost us $60, but we figured it was quite worth it to restore our good relationship with the orphanage. When we got back to the orphanage, Fred and I began playing Frisbee with the girls while Mark and Christine were meeting with Svieta. While we were playing, a few children from the orphanage came outside. I suggested that we toss the Frisbee to some of the other kids. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but eventually we had lots of kids playing with 2 frisbees and a soccer ball. We had such a wonderful time playing with all the children. It was exciting to get to know the children by name and to see Amina and Khrystyna interacting with their friends. We also were able to get lots of fun pictures of the kids who played with us. When we left the orphanage that evening, the children were all hugging us and telling us that they loved us! It was really cute. It made me wish we could take home more with us. Maybe someday we’ll be back for more! By the time we left the orphanage, it was 6 pm. We headed home for desperately needed showers and then we walked over to Papa Karlo (they have wi-fi) to upload a few pictures and to update the blog and let everyone know that we got permission to adopt Amina! WOOHOO! The day had been emotionally and physically exhausting, so we didn’t stay at Papa Karlo for very long. Mark and Christine were at Papa Karlo when we got there and their driver was waiting to take them home. Thankfully, he was willing to take us home too! I probably could write 10 pages on everything that happened today, but it’s probably better that I keep it fairly short.

Good news

2007-05-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

We finally have good news to report! Sasha called this morning to tell us that he would be able to pick up Amina's referral this afternoon. We will not need to travel to Kiev to pick up the referral. Amina was thrilled and called us mama and papa today. We'll post more later! Thanks for your prayers!!!!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

2007-05-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

We hoped that by the end of the day the SDA would have made a decision about our adoption of Amina, however, we are still waiting. We woke up this morning, spent some time hanging around the apartment, and then decided to walk to the internet café. We headed down there so that we could update our blog. We also hoped to be able to pick up 2 more necklaces for the girls. We spent a little time at the internet café uploading pictures and updating our blog and then headed out to buy the necklaces. We knew that we didn’t have too much time before we would be meeting Svetlana and our driver. When we hadn’t heard something by noon, I decided to call Sasha. I’m sure he is as eager to hear from the SDA as we are…just so we’ll stop pestering him. When I talked to him, he said that the SDA had called in the morning and asked for our case number. He thought that was a good sign and that we would hear something by this afternoon. He told me he’d call as soon as he heard something. We headed off to buy some necklaces from a local vendor. Also, I was really hoping to buy a few bowls. Our apartment only has 2 bowls and they are small. Svetlana bought sunflower seeds and so one of the bowls is sitting on the table with the sunflower seeds in it. It makes it really hard for 2 people to eat pasta or cereal. I was able to find some bowls for 2 grivna (40 cents) each. We weren’t able to find the same necklaces that we bought yesterday, but we were able to find similar necklaces. After our purchases, we headed back to the internet café to meet Svetlana and Andre, our driver. He picked us up and took us back to the apartment so we could drop off our laptop before we headed to the orphanage. We quickly unloaded the laptop, grabbed a Frisbee and a soccer ball and headed to the orphanage to pick up Khrystyna. We still are not able to take Amina with us. While we were waiting outside at the orphanage, Amina came outside. We were able to talk to her for a few minutes. I’m so glad that she speaks some English…it’s not much, but it’s nice to be able to say “How are you?” and have her say “I am fine…How are you?” She’s sooo cute! She looked sad as she headed back inside. I’m sure that the wait is killing her as well. When she got to the door to go back inside, we called her back over and gave her a pack of gum. I wish we could do more, but for now that will have to be enough. Maybe tomorrow we will be able to take her with us. After Amina went inside, Khrystyna and Masha came running outside. So far I have managed to not comment on everyone’s clothing, so you’ll have to forgive me for describing what Khrystyna had on. She had on a pair of homemade looking shorts in a bizarre floral pattern that were extremely short and a top that came nowhere near her belly button! It was definitely not one of her best outfits, but she still looked really cute. I just don’t want her dressing like that when she gets back home. While we were getting ready to leave for lunch, Svetlana thought of another café we hadn’t visited yet. Although the food at Papa Karlo and Levotttime has been good, we were ready for something different. The café she took us too was actually air conditioned. It felt so good!!!! Unfortunately, it took forever to get our food and the food wasn’t very tasty. I would go back there again if for no other reason than it is the only air-conditioned place we’ve found and it’s been extremely hot! After eating lunch, we headed to the park by the sea with the inflatable crocodile. We had talked about going to the beach today, however, we decided on the park because it’s a lot more shaded. We spent some time playing Frisbee and kicking the soccer ball around before we let Masha and Khrystyna jump on the crocodile. After the crocodile, the girls wanted to go on 2 more rides, but we told them they had to choose between the roller coaster and the centrifugal force ride. Also, we told them that we wanted to go play on the playground equipment before going on a ride. They played on the playground for a little while longer and then headed over to the centrifugal force ride. Mark and Fred went on the ride with them. They all really enjoyed themselves. After the ride, we headed for the ice cream shop where we got the yummy banana splits yesterday. I got ice cream with bananas, pineapples, and shaved chocolate. Khrystyna got her ice cream with strawberries, bananas, and chocolate. Fred chose a banana split. While we waited for the ice cream to come out, I pulled out my picture/word flashcards and quizzed Masha and Khrystyna. They are both very good at reading the words, but they are not as good at remembering what the name of each picture is. We’ll keep working on it. The more English words they can learn, the easier things will be when they get to the US. When we were finished with our ice cream, we headed back to the orphanage with the girls. We still hadn’t heard back from Sasha. By this time, we knew that we had already missed today’s train to Kiev. After we dropped the girls off and said our goodbyes, we headed back to the apartment. When we got back to the apartment, Sasha called. He said that the SDA had pulled Amina’s file and that they had called him to see if we had been approved by US Immigration for more than 1 child. Sasha told them that we had approval for 3 children. They told him they would look into it and get back with him. Sasha thinks we should know something by tomorrow. Please pray that God will work a miracle and that we will NOT have to go to Kiev for our referral. If they can get us the referral without seeing us again, it will shave a few days off of our trip. Also, since Monday is a holiday, the earliest business day that we could be in Kiev would be Tuesday. This whole adoption process is a ton of logistics, so just pray for all the details to be processed smoothly and quickly! After our phone call with Sasha, we relaxed and watched a DVD on our laptop. Now that the movie is over, we are heading to bed! I know I said this yesterday, but hopefully I will have some good news for you tomorrow!

Whew! It's HOT! ;-)

2007-05-24T02:08:00.000-07:00

Weather Forecast... It's definitely starting to warm up here. There is not rain forecasted for any of these days! Hopefully we'll be able to find a place in the shade or maybe we'll take the girls to the beach. We bought a kite, a frisbee, and a soccer ball so a day at the beach could be quite fun!

Thursday
82° F | 64° F
28° C | 18° C

Friday
87° F | 68° F
31° C | 20° C

Saturday
93° F | 75° F
34° C | 24° C

Sunday
89° F | 73° F
32° C | 23° C

Monday
89° F | 66° F
32° C | 19° C

Denver and Fort Wayne families!

2007-05-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say a quick hello to all of you families who are waiting to adopt. We will try to get as many pictures of your children as we can. We are grateful for your prayers and will be praying that your adoption journey moves along quickly and smoothly! Thanks for all of your e-mails and kind words! Also, Aimee, thanks for providing a picture of all the kids who were in Denver. It will make it easier for us to spot them and take pictures!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

2007-05-24T01:47:00.000-07:00

We really hoped that we would have good news to report today, but we are still waiting to hear back from the SDA. When we woke up this morning, we spent some time straightening our apartment and eating breakfast and then we headed to the center of the city. Svetlana told us she would meet us downtown at 1pm. We knew that Sasha would be taking our documents to the SDA around 11am and do we were anxiously awaiting his call. We figured we would do some shopping at the outdoor vendors as well as the mall. When we spoke with Khrystyna on her birthday, we asked her if there was anything special she would like us to bring her when we came to Ukraine. She asked for a necklace. We had been planning on bringing her a locket and having it engraved when we got home with the date of her adoption. We were told by our facilitator not to give our children any gifts of consequence until they are in our permanent custody. Unfortunately, anything that we give to them while they are still in the orphanage has to be left in the orphanage. They are not even allowed to take any clothes with them. We were told that we will need to bring clothes and shoes for the children we adopt when we pick them up at the orphanage for the last time! Since we have decided to adopt Amina as well, we didn’t think it would be fair to give Khrystyna a necklace and not give one to Amina, so we decided to wait until we got home. We wanted to buy necklaces for the girls that they could wear while they are here. We hoped to find something in the marketplace for under $10 each. On our way to the mall, we stopped at a street vendors table. She had lots of little silver(ish) necklaces with hearts. When I asked her how much they were, she told me in Russian. I was slightly confused, so I asked her again in English. She held up 3 fingers. I figured she meant 30 grivna each with is about $6. That seemed pretty reasonable to me, so we picked out two necklaces that were very similar with only a slight difference. Each were heart shaped with one small diamond-like stone. She said another number in Russian for the total….I figured she said 60 grivna, so we handed her 100 grivna. She looked a little annoyed that we gave her such a large bill. I figured she was just annoyed because it was so early in the morning and she didn’t have much change. When she gave her our change, we thanked her in Russian and walked away. We are so glad she didn’t understand much English. I told Fred that I thought she meant 30 grivna…$6. Each necklace really was only 3 grivna….60 cents. We are going to go back again tomorrow morning so we can try to buy 2 more of the necklaces we bought today. That way, when they leave the orphanage and have to take their necklaces off, we can give them another one. I’m sure it will probably turn their necks green, but they’ll enjoy it anyway! After spending some time in the mall, we headed to the park in the center of the city. We changed some money and waited for Svetlana to pick us up. We also were still waiting for Sasha to call. At 1pm, Svetlana picked us up and we headed for the orphanage. When we got to the orphanage, Mark and Christine were waiting, but the girls weren’t around. After a few minutes, we saw Khrystyna standing up in an upstairs window with her friend. They came running downstairs. Khrystyna introduced us to her friend Luba…the girl that has been in the hospital. She looked very healthy to us! After a minute, Masha joined the other girls. We stood talking for a few minutes while we waited for Svetlana to join us. While we were waiting for Svetlana, Ludmilla arrived at the orphanage. She is still not feeling well, so please pray for her health. Khrystyna and Masha each gave her a big hug and Luba went back inside. While the girls talked to Ludmilla, a group of children arrived home from school. Amina was one of the girls in that group. She immediately ran over and hugged us. While she was standing with us, Ludmilla asked Khrystyna and Amina if they would be good sisters to each other. They both agreed and she made them promise. I’m really glad that they are both looking forward to being sisters! When we left for lunch a few minutes later, Khrystyna asked why Amina couldn’t come with us again. I know she is really looking forward to having Amina be able to spend time with her every day. Ludmilla and Svetlana both talked to Amina today to make sure that she understood that we are doing everything in our power to adopt her and that we are just waiting to find out if we will get approval from Kiev. Lunch today was at a cafeteria that we have eaten at a few times with the girls. I think it is called LevottTime. Ludmilla said that the girls were supposed to eat soup for lunch since they would have a long dance practice after lunch. Svetlana explained that to them, but Masha and Khrystyna both got crab salad, soup, French fries, and bread. Svetlana seemed to think that was totally acceptable. Oh well, I’m sure Ludmilla just didn’t want them to get sick. After lunch, we had 30 minutes to do something fun before we had to get the girls back to the orphanage for dance practice. We decided to walk over to the park in the center of town. It has a good sized playground that is well shaded and 2 really huge inflatable bouncey things. The bigger of the 2 bouncy things had all kinds of things you could climb as well as 2 slides and lots of places to jump. For 10 grivna, you got 10 minutes on the large bouncy thing. Khrystyna and Masha had a great time. When their 10 minutes was up, we headed over to the playground. The girls swung on the swings, climbed across the monkey bars, went down the slide a few times, and then decided to play on the merry-go-round. At first, Masha and Khrystyna tried to push themselves, but Mark quickly jumped in and pushed them. They went really fast and were having a great time. Fred took a turn pushing the merry-go-round after Mark. When it was time to go, we told the girls they had to get off the merry-go-round. They were really agreeable and quickly got off. Fred and Mark decided that they should have a chance to ride it, so they jumped on and had the girls push them. After only 30 seconds, a very ANGRY looking old woman came over and started yelling at them in Russian. Apparently, the playground is only for children. I think Fred and Mark act like children…doesn’t that count? Fred and Mark quickly got off the merry-go-round and we all headed back to the orphanage. There was a vendor set up selling inflatable Scooby doos on the way back. Khrystyna asked for one and we told her no. We had brought 3 bags of cookies with us…1 for Khrystyna, 1 for Amina, and 1 for Masha. We told Khrystyna we would give her cookies instead of Scooby Doo. We gave Khrystyna and Masha their cookies right then. When we got back to the orphanage, we said goodbye to Khrystyna and Masha. We also gave Khrystyna a bag of cookies to give to Amina. As hard as it is for Fred and I to wait to hear back from the SDA about Amina, I’m sure it must be even harder for Amina. Please pray that the SDA will make an immediate favorable decision! We are praying for a miracle! We are praying that the SDA will decide that we don’t need to come back to Kiev for the referral and that they will be able to fax the paperwork so we can get the process moving along more quickly! After saying goodbye to the girls, Mark and Christine headed back to their apartment and Svetlana, Fred, and I headed for Amstor. I wanted to pick up some more bread from their bakery. We were able to pick up our groceries in less than 15 minutes and Fred and I headed back to our apartment. Svetlana had the driver drop her off in the city center by the shops and told us she’d walk home later. By the time we got home today, we were quite tired so we took a little nap. We also laid around and read for awhile. I decided I should probably cook dinner around 7. I had picked up some pasta and tomato sauce earlier this week, so I thought we’d have spaghetti with some fresh bread. While the pasta was cooking, I opened up the jar of tomato sauce. It had the look and consistency of ketchup. I tasted a small bit and it tasted quite strange…not at all like spaghetti sauce. I decided that I should probably make a cheese sauce for the pasta instead. When Fred came into the kitchen, I told him that the pasta sauce tasted funny and that I was going to make a cheese sauce instead. He tasted the sauce and said it was fine. I told him I wasn’t sure, but he insisted that it would taste good. When I finshed pouring the sauce over the pasta, it looked like a big pink blob. It didn’t taste horrible (I was starving), but it did taste rather strange. Fred only ate 2 bites before he decided that it tasted funny and he didn’t want anymore. I made quite a bit of it because I thought we’d both enjoy some spaghetti with yummy bread. Fred ended up eating mostly bread for supper. When Svetlana came in the kitchen, we were dumping the remainder of the spaghetti in the trash. I didn’t want to seem rude, so I told her that normally we would offer her some, but that it tasted really funny. She asked if the pasta was different than what we were used to in the states. I told her that the pasta was the same, but I thought that the spaghetti sauce tasted really different. She asked if I used the can that was sitting on the kitchen table. I told her that I had and she started laughing really hard! She told me that the sauce I used isn’t really a pasta sauce, it’s some kind of special tomato sauce that is used in making borscht! She told me that she would help me find pasta sauce later on in this week. Fred told me that he thought that this meal was one of the worst meals we’ve had….he said that there was a strange breakfast that we had in Kiev that was worse, but that he didn’t think it was my fault that the spaghetti turned out horrible. Oh well, I guess we’ll go back to eating out while we’re here. It costs about the same to cook or eat out here. Our meals at the cafeteria for the 2 of us have typically been about $5. After dinner, we relaxed a little more. I wanted to blog about our day before heading to bed. We are hoping that we will hear something first thing tomorrow morning so we can plan the rest of our trip! We’ll keep you posted!

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

2007-05-24T01:46:00.000-07:00

Our plan for today was to relax during the morning, go to the internet café around 10:30am, and then head over to the orphanage to pick up the girls at 1pm. We usually try to pick them up at 1 and take them to lunch. As we were getting ready to walk out the door this morning, Svetlana told us that she needed us to come with her to the notary to sign some papers. We figured it wouldn’t take long and that we could head to the internet café when we were finished. We got in the car and headed off. Svetlana said she needed to make a stop on the way. When we stopped, she hopped out of the car and told us to wait for her, she would be back in a minute. We waited in the car for over 30 minutes. We drove for 5 minutes and then stopped at the court building we were at yesterday. We started to get out, but she told us we needed to wait for her again. This time, we waited over an hour! By the time we finally got to the notary, it was 1:30pm. She dropped some documents, told us to wait for Lena the translator, and left to go sign documents at the court with Mark and Christine. We signed a document at the notary that said we would like to adopt Amina as well as Khrystyna. We were there for a while longer before Svetlana finally came back for us. We headed over to the orphanage and played with the girls for a few minutes while Svetlana took care of some paperwork in the orphanage. While Svetlana was inside, Amina came out and hugged us and said hello. She then told Masha and Khrystyna that they needed to go inside and practice dancing. While the girls were inside, Svetlana came outside and was ready to leave for lunch. By this time it was 3:45pm! We had planned on eating almost 3 hours before and we were STARVING! While we waited for the girls, one of our drivers took Svetlana back to the apartment to pick up some documents. When Svetlana came back to the orphanage, the girls were still inside. She decided to go inside to look for them. Khrystyna came out shortly after Svetlana went inside. Amina came out next, but Masha still hadn’t come out yet. Amina and Khrystyna headed back in to look for Masha, but they couldn’t find her either. When Masha made her appearance, we were ready to head for the car. Unfortunately, we still do not have permission for Amina to spend time with us outside the orphanage. When we were getting ready to leave, Khrystyna asked if Amina was coming with us. Svetlana told her that Amina wasn’t allowed to come. Khrystyna looked sad, but Amina looked even sadder. She gave us a hug and said goodbye! We felt totally bad leaving her. Ludmilla, the orphanage director was out sick again today, so she was not able to call the adoption center in Kiev or talk to Amina. Nataliya, the orphanage psychologist talked to Amina today and asked if she would like to be adopted by us. She said that she would really like to be part of our family. Amina wrote a letter to the court requesting that they allow us to adopt her. Natliya told her that we really want to adopt her, however, we would have to wait to see if the State Department of Adoption would give their approval. Sasha, our facilitator in Kiev, told us that he expected to know something by tomorrow around noon. We are really hoping for good news. If the adoption center agrees to allow us to adopt Amina, we will head back to Kiev in the next few days to get our referral for her. Also, if things go well at the adoption center tomorrow, Sasha will ask the orphanage for permission for us to start taking Amina with us on a regular basis.

When we finally got to Papa Karlo for lunch, it was after 4 pm. We were starving. While we loading up our trays, Khrystyna asked if she could get chips. I told her that she could have a bag of chips. She then asked if she could have 2 bags? She told me that 1 was for her and she gestured that the other one was for someone else. I wasn’t sure exactly what she was saying, so I told Khrystyna to ask Svetlana. Svetlana explained that she wanted to buy chips for a friend. I asked which friend it was and she told me that it was her friend Luba. She told me that Luba has been in the hospital and today was her first day back at the orphanage. Khrystyna also wanted to buy Luba a pack of gum. We let her buy chips, gum, and a bottle of sparkling water for Luba. She was so excited about buying these things for Luba After we paid and sat down, Svetlana said “You have 10 minutes to eat and then we have to leave.” I literally inhaled my food. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t even take any pictures. We all finished quickly and hopped back into our cars. Svetlana had to take our documents to someone who would be taking them on the train to Kiev. Our drivers dropped Mark, Christine, Masha, Fred, Khrystyna, and I off at the park where we took Amina and Khrystyna on Saturday. Masha had not been there before. We only had 30 minutes to play at the park before Svetlana would be returning and we had to have the girls back to the orphanage around 5pm. We let the girls play on the crocodile slide for a little while and then we agreed to let them take one turn on the roller coaster. When they were finished with those things, we headed back to the car. Svetlana hadn’t returned yet, so we pulled out the soccer ball and let them kick it around for a few minutes. It didn’t take very long for Svetlana to get back and we headed back to the orphanage. As soon as we got back to the orphanage, Khrystyna jumped out of the car and told me that she was taking her gifts to Luba. She literally ran into the orphange! She came back out a minute later, hugged us, and said goodbye. We agreed to meet the Niles for ice cream at a local ice cream place. Svetlana had to go to a meeting, so were on our own. The menu was in Russian, but we were able to figure out some of the important words…like dessert and banana split! I ordered a banana split. Fred told me to order for him. That he wanted something chocolate. I wasn’t sure if I ordered him chocolate ice cream or ice cream with chocolate on it. When our food came out, his dessert was like a chocolate mousse. My dessert was ice cream on a plate full of fresh fruit! It was fabulous! The ice cream here is better than any ice cream I’ve had anywhere else and the fruit was really good too. There was a ton of kiwi, pineapple, banana, strawberries, and oranges! It was quite tasty and it only cost $2.40 USD. Fred’s mousse was only $1.00. After ice cream, we headed to the internet café to update our blog and upload pictures. We spent a little time uploading pictures and then we headed back to the apartment. We are all exhausted and have been laying around the apartment tonight being lazy! I’m super tired, but I wanted to write about today while it was still fresh in my mind! Please forgive my spelling and grammar…my mind is ready for bed! Hopefully tomorrow I will have some good news to report. Also, we will try to post more pictures then!

Thompson Family Photo

2007-05-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of our new family!

Monday 5/21/2007

2007-05-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Today was a fun day, but it was also very busy. Svetlana left our apartment this morning at 8am to take care of some documents. She called us at 10:15 to tell us that Andre, our driver was on the way to pick us up. Fred was watching out the window of our apartment for our driver when he started calling my name and telling me to come to the window. There was a man walking by our apartment with a very large rat of his shoulder. It had a long nasty tail! That’s not something you see every day. The man and his pet rat were gone when Andre pulled up. We headed out to the car and Andre drove us to the city office building. The mayor, head of social work for the city, and other important city officials have their offices here. We were introduced to the director of social work and then we sat and waited for a little while so that we could meet with the assistant mayor. Our meeting with the assistant mayor was brief, but quite hilarious. When we were ushered into her office, she began speaking in Russian and holding out her left hand. Fred walked up to her and put out his right hand in order to shake her hand, but then he noticed she was holding out her left hand. He tried to move the stuff he had in his left hand to his right hand and did some strange looking handshake dance. He’d put out his right hand, then his left hand, then his right again. Finally, our translator informed us that she just kept telling us to sit down. Apparently, she had no desire to shake our hands…she just wanted us to sit down and get the meeting underway. We brought up Fred’s handshake dance later on with our translator and she laughed really hard. She agreed with me that Fred was hilarious! The assistant to the mayor asked a few questions about our relationship with Khrystyna, she asked us if we went to church, and if we had any other children. Our answers must have all been satisfactory because she wished us good luck and told us that she was in agreement with our adoption. After our meeting, Svetlana had more work to do, so we agreed that our drivers would drop us off at the internet café and she would call us when she was finished working and we could meet at the orphanage and then take the girls to lunch. She thought she would be done around 12:30. We spent 30 minutes in the internet café and then wandered through downtown to the mall.. We spent a really long time in the mall. We were able to find a Frisbee in the mall that made a whistling noise when you threw it. We also bought Madagascar and Finding Nemo in Russian. Mark and Christine picked up Shrek, Princess Diaries, and Toy Story 2 in Russian. At 1:30pm, we still hadn’t heard from Svetlana so Mark tried to call her. She didn’t answer her phone. She finally called my cell at 2:20 and said she would meet us at the orphanage. Our driver came and picked us up in front of the internet café and took us to the orphanage. Svetlana called to tell us she would be a little while longer so we got out the Frisbee and played with Masha and Khrystyna in the orphanage parking lot. When Svetlana arrived, she told us that she had been meeting with Khrystyna’s brother. He signed all the necessary paperwork that says he agrees with Khrystyna’s adoption. We are really looking forward to meeting him and will probably get to meet him later on this week. Svetlana said he is a very handsome young man. He is currently working and going to the university simultaneously and is studying economics. After Svetlana shared this info with us, we piled into our cars and headed for Papa Karlos. We were starving!!! Fred chose 3 different chicken entrees, some grapejuice, and a large piece of chocolate cake. I had chicken breast with cheese and mushrooms on it, a yummy garlic roll, and some apple juice. Khrystyna had some kind of salad made with ham, mayonnaise, peas, and cucumbers, a chicken drumstick, a pink heart shaped pastry, grape juice, and a bag of salted dry tuna (YUCK!). Khrystyna scarfed down her food and had her heart shaped cake eaten before we all finished our regular meals. When Fred tried a piece of his cake, he practically gagged. He said it tasted like it was loaded with rum or something. Before Masha started eating her fruity looking cake, she offered half to Mark. After taking one bite, she offered the rest to Christine. Masha said it wasn’t very good. Mark, Christine, and Svetlana all tried it and agreed that it was nasty. Svetlana then took a bite of Fred’s cake and declared that it was much worse. She said “There is definitely something not right with this cake.” Fred wholeheartedly agreed. The girls then started eating there dried salted fish in a bag. They offered us some, but Mark smelled it and immediately gave it back to Masha. Fred and I both refused it and Christine agreed to dry it. She made the most hilarious face when she tasted a small bite. It must have been quite bad because Christine is a pretty adventuresome eater! Also, later on in the day, Masha offered a piece of her fish to a cat on the orphanage grounds. The cat sniffed the fist, stuck its nose up in the air, and walked away! I’ve never heard of a cat turning down fish products before. When we finished lunch, we headed back to the orphanage to sign some medical documents. The orphanage doctor showed us the immunization record and medical record for Khrystyna and then showed Masha’s reports to Mark and Christine. After signing papers, we played Frisbee for a few more minutes with the girls while we waited for Svetlana to talk to a few more people in the orphanage. While we were playing, the girls were called in the orphanage. While we were waiting for the girls and/or Svetlana to come back outside, a group of girls came outside. The group included Amina, Vika (one of the girls that came to Fort Wayne last summer) and Lena (a girl that is a friend of Masha and Amina). They headed out to the place that housed the cat with her new kittens. The new kittens are very tiny and very cute. We got some great pictures of Amina with the little kittens. When Svetlana came out, she said we needed to hurry to the courthouse to take some papers to the judge. She said that we would have a chance to see the girls again tomorrow. On the way to the courthouse, I realized that we were turning in our documents for Khrystyna and we hadn’t made a decision on how to spell her name or what her middle name would be. Fred and I decided in the car that her “new” name would be Khrystyna Ann Thompson. We decided to use our mother’s middles names as the girls middle names. Amina’s middle name will be Lynn. The court building is a very old building that smells inside. We waited for a few minutes and then we met with the judge’s assistant. She asked us what name we wanted to Khrystyna and we wrote it down on paper for her. She said OK and asked us a few quick questions about our relationship with Khrystyna. She then asked Fred and I if this was our first marriage. I’m not really sure what it mattered, but we answered her and she dismissed us. Mark and Christine headed into the office next and picked out their name and spelling for Masha. We had hoped to discuss Khrystyna’s middle name and the spelling of her first name with her before we gave the info to the judge’s assistant, however, we didn’t have time. When Masha and Khrystyna had been called into the orphanage earlier, they were writing their letters that state that they agree with the adoption and that they think of us as parents. When we got back to the orphanage, the girls were finished with their letters and were playing outside. Svetlana translated for Mark and Christine as they told Masha her new name. They chose Maria Elizabeth. Masha is a nickname for Maria although her Russian name is spelled Mariya. They chose to go with a more traditional spelling of Maria because they were afraid that people would mispronounce it. When the told Masha the name they chose, she said she really like Elizabeth and could they call her that. We’ll have to see what she ends up going with. Next Svetlana explained how American names work to Khrystyna and that you have a first and a middle name. We told Khrystyna what her name would be. The only piece of paper I had with me was one of my Master Spas business cards, so I wrote her new name on the back of it. After we told her new name and showed her how to spell it, she and Masha were comparing their names. Another friend came over and Masha was telling them her full name and Khrystyna was telling her full name. It was quite cute. We played some more Frisbee and then said goodbye to Khrystyna. We headed for the grocery store, picked up a few things for dinner and then headed back to our apartment. When we got back to our apartment, we called Sasha, our facilitator in Kiev to get an update on the process of adopting Amina. He said that the orphanage director was not feeling well today, so he hadn’t been able to talk to her for long, but that we should be able to talk to Amina tomorrow to find out if she wants to be adopted by us. If she does (which we are seriously hoping is the case), Ludmilla will call the SDA in Kiev to let them know that we are here to adopt Khrystyna, but we met another girl and would like to adopt her as well. The SDA will then pull her paperwork and make sure all is in order with her and then they will give us a date to go get our referral. We could leave as soon as tomorrow afternoon. If you don’t hear from us for a few days, it’s probably because we are spending hours and hours on a train.

Please continue to pray for us! We have really appreciated all your prayers and your e-mails. I apologize that I have not been able to respond to every email you have sent. We have been very busy and our time at the internet café is not always productive. During our 30 minutes in the café today, the internet was down for about 20 of those minutes. When it finally came back up, I started typing a message, but before I could get anything done, our time ran out. Anyway, we are so thankful for each of you. Some of have asked how you can specifically pray for us, so here are some specifics…
*Pray that our conversation with Amina will go well
*Pray that Khrystyna will be happy that we have chosen
Amina to be her sister.
*Pray that our process will continue to go smoothly and
that our court date will be very soon!
*Pray for our translator and facilitators. They are
working round the clock to make our adoption happen as
quickly and smoothly as possible. They are amazing!!!!
*Pray that those we spend time with on this trip will see
Jesus in us and that we will be able to share God’s love
with them.
*Pray that Amina’s paperwork will be in order and that
we will get an appointment with the SDA quickly.
*Last, but definitely not least, please pray that we will
continue to bond and grow as a family. The time we
have here is really special and we want to make the most
of it!

Sunday, May 20, 2007

2007-05-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

Although we have started the process to adopt Amina, we haven’t been able to ask her if she wants to be adopted by us or even to mention it to her! Until that time, we are only allowed to take Kristina (or is it Khrystyna?) Who knows?!?!? Anyway, Mark and Christine and Fred and I decided that it would be fun to take Khrystyna and Masha to the Extreme Fun Park. It’s like Funspot (for those of you in Indiana) or a very, very small Six Flags! Since we will probably start including Amina in all of our outings within the next week, I figured it would be more fun for Masha to go with just Khrystyna. It’s really hard to take 3 girls somewhere without 1 of them feeling left out…especially in a place where most rides are designed for 2 people! We decided that it would be best to go to the park after lunch so the girls would have more time. We picked up Khrystyna and Masha at the orphanage this morning at 11 and headed for the center of the city to get lunch. We had a little bit of time, so we walked around the center of the city with Svetlana and she showed us where the stores were and a few good restaurants so that we can walk around in the city during the day without her. After walking for a while, we stopped at a pizzeria. The menus were in Russian, but Svetlana helped translate what was on the various pizzas. Fred had pizza with chicken and pineapples and I got pizza with chicken and mushrooms. It was out of this world. Khrystyna doesn’t like pizza, so she ordered a salad. When her salad came out, it was in a goblet. Her salad was made up of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and crabmeat with a big glob of mayo on top that was covered with cheese. Not exactly what I was expecting when she ordered a salad. After lunch, we loaded back up in our cars and headed to the Extreme Park. When the translator was telling me about it earlier this week, she told me it was an indoor amusement park. When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t decide whether to wear jeans or shorts, but since we were going to be inside all day, I figured I’d save my shorts for a day when we would be outside. I checked with Svetlana again before we left our apartment this morning since she was in shorts and a tank top, but something must have gotten lost in translation. When I asked if the park was inside, she said yes so I wore my jeans! Needless to say, when we pulled up to the amusement park, it was outside…and it was a really HOT day. It cost 1 grivna per person to enter the amusement park which is the equivalent of 20 cents. Each ride in the park cost 1-3 grivnas per person depending on the ride. We let the girls pick which rides they wanted to go on. They picked out a ride with swings that fly around in a circle…something you see quite regularly at carnivals and Fred and Mark agreed to go on it with them. They also wanted to go on a ride that looked like a waterslide and that’s what it was except instead of wearing a bathing suit, you go down the water slide in a little inflatable rubber raft. We let them go on that by themselves…it looked fun to me except I was burning up and you had to go up a zillion steps to get to the top of the slide. After the slide, we headed for a freefall ride. Mark and Masha and Khrystyna and I rode together. It didn’t look very high from the ground, but once we got up in the air, it was really quite scary! After the freefall ride, Khrystyna, Masha, Mark, and Fred headed for one of those rides that is shaped like a banana where 4 people sit in each car facing each other and the ride pivots on an arm and goes up and down in a U shape. I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about because I described that horribly, but if you look at the pictures, it might make sense. While waiting in line for that ride, the girls noticed we were next to the bumper cars, they bought tickets and headed for the bumper cars with Mark and Fred. Khrystyna and Masha started out together in one car, but then when Mark and Fred were let in, Masha got out and got in a car with Mark. That left Khrystyna and Fred together in one car, however, there was one car left, so Khrystyna hopped out and rode by herself. They all seemed to have a really fun time. We had bought tickets for a few rides before heading for the freefall, but after the last ride, Masha decided she didn’t want to go on the roller coaster. She said she wanted to go down the slide again. Khrystyna said she wanted to go down the slide again as well. We told Khrystyna that she could go on the slide and the rollercoaster if she wanted and she quickly decided that she wanted to do them both. As Masha and Khrystyna headed for the slide, they made a strange detour and headed for the swings again. We knew they didn’t have tickets for the swings and when we asked the girls what they were doing, they told us that the lady who operated the ride said they could ride for free. I was a little concerned that they had made that up, but it was apparently true since the lady didn’t make them pay. They headed for the slide next! When they were finished on the slide, Khrystyna told us she wanted to ride a children’s ride where these logs float around in this track of water. It looked extremely boring!!! We asked Khrystyna if she wanted one of us to go with her or if she wanted to go with Masha, but she told the translator she wanted to be by herself! We let her go on the ride and I expected her to look extremely bored, however, instead of being bored she was paddling like crazy with her hands. She got to the point where she was bumping the kid in front of her and he was turning around and telling her to stop, but she just kept paddling and bumping him until he decided to start using the walls to push himself along. Who would have guessed a children’s ride could be so fun? After she got off that ride, we headed for the rollercoaster. Fred and Khrystyna went on it together and had a really good time. From the rollercoaster, we moved on to bumper boats. After we got off the bumper boats, we re-connected with Mark, Christine, Masha, and Svetlana. The girls went on the slide a few more times, on the small children’s ride, and then Khrystyna, Fred, and I went on the ferris wheel. After the ferris wheel, we all got some ice cream and the 7 of us headed to the park. We dipped our feet in a fountain and tried to cool off a little. By this point, the adults were all pretty sunburned, so we didn’t stay long in the park. Our drivers came and picked us up and we took the girls for a bite to eat before bringing them back to the orphanage.

After dropping the girls at the orphanage, Fred and I headed back to the apartment. I was so ready to change out of my hot sticky clothing!!! Svetlana went by the internet café with Mark and Christine and they found out that we can bring laptops to the internet café. When Svetlana got home, she decided to rest and Fred and I headed for the internet café. It’s about a ten minute walk from the apartment. Fred felt a little conspicuous carrying a laptop bag so we’ll probably try to pick up something a little less obvious tomorrow. We were able to get on blogger with our laptop! WOOHOO! I should be able to update daily now! We stayed at the internet café for an hour and a half uploading photos and catching up on our blogging. Our time at the internet café cost us 6 grivna…the equivalent of one dollar and twenty cents! We walked quickly back to the apartment so that we would be here before dark. We folded some laundry and hung more up to dry. As I sit here finishing my ramblings for the day, Fred is sound asleep in the other room. He went in to add more air to our air mattress and fell asleep in the middle of the bed. Oh well….we all had a long day and are quite tired. I should probably follow his example! Sweet dreams!

Exciting News!!! Saturday, May 19, 2007 Part 3

2007-05-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

We have decided to adopt Amina! We put in our request tonight to our facilitator in Kiev. He will be working hand in hand with our adoption agency in the US. We will also need to talk to Amina to find out if she would like to be adopted by us. Please pray for us as there are a lot of logistics to be worked out. We will have to travel back to Kiev for a referral for Amina. Also, we will have to figure out how to come up with the money for a second child. Getting more US cash in Ukraine is easier said than done!

Thanks so much for your continued prayer and support! We can’t wait for you to meet our 2 beautiful daughters!

Saturday, May 19, 2007 Part 2

2007-05-20T09:02:00.002-07:00

When we went to the orphanage this morning to pick up Kristina and Amina, we brought some gifts that prospective adoptive parents had sent to the children that they’d hosted. Mark and Christine had gifts as well. We brought all the kids together whose parents had sent packages and we distributed the gifts. It was really neat to watch these kids open their gifts. They were so excited!! One little boy, Oleksi, who was in Fort Wayne this summer at the same time as Kristina chose me to be the one to share his fun new books with. We were able to put a few stickers in his book and do a few of the mazes. He was absolutely thrilled! We enjoyed watching their little faces light up. Mark and Christine brought their video camera and each child got a chance to say hello to their mamas and papas in America.

After the gift giving, Amina, Kristina, Fred, and I headed out to the park while Mark, Christine, and Masha went to the sea. Not only did the park have playground equipment, but it also had rides. There was a small rollercoaster, a few children’s rides, Centrifuge (or some other kind of centrifical force ride) as well as a large inflatable crocodile slide. It is very similar to one of those inflatable bouncy things, but you can slide or bounce down the back side of it! The rides were quite inexpensive, however, most of the people in the park did not speak English and figuring out which rides took money and which rides took tickets was a little over the top. Thankfully, Amina knew enough English to help us over that hurdle! We were very pleasantly surprised at how good her English is! We went on the roller coast multiple times and then headed for the bouncy crocodile. As we were getting off of the roller coaster, Svetlana (our translator) joined us in the park. Kristina and Amina had the time of their lives on the crocodile. I’m surprised neither of them ended up with any serious injuries…they were like crazy people! They were doing somersaults down the slide and falling all over each other! They interacted so well and had a lot of fun together. After our first crocodile bounce, we got water for everyone and walked down to the sea. It’s amazing how cool it is down by the sea! The girls didn’t enjoy walking nearly as much as riding rides, so we headed back towards the rides. Fred desperately wanted to ride the centrifugal force ride and convinced Kristina and Amina to go with him. I felt sick just looking at the ride. I was worried that one of the girls would get sick and it would spoil a lovely day, however, my fears were unfounded. Both girls thoroughly enjoyed the ride! When they got off the ride, the girls were walking like drunken sailors. It was really funny to watch. We let them take another time on the crocodile and then they rode a ride that I think was designed for 3 year olds. They both looked completely bored out of their mind during the whole ride. Kristina spent half the time re-doing her ponytail and Amina looked like she was ready for a nap. After we finished our morning at the park, we headed for the market so we could meet Mark, Christine, and Masha to get sunglasses for the girls and then head to lunch. Amina and Kristina decided on matching pink sunglasses. They look really cute in them and they seemed happy to have them. We took them to a café for lunch and the girls managed to pack away an impressive amount of food. Thankfully the food isn’t too expensive and the four of us were able to eat for about $12 USD. When lunch was over we headed back to the orphanage. We were only allowed to take Amina for a few hours. We spent a little time hanging out with the kids before we headed back to our apartment with Kristina. She was so exhausted this afternoon that she could barely cope. We ended up spending out afternoon watching a children’s movie. By the end of the movie, she seemed a little more like her old self. By that time, we had to head back to the orphanage. After dropping off the girls, we headed to Amstor, a large grocery store that reminds me of Sam’s Club. We were able to pick up a few items for breakfast and dinners as well as some snack foods. They had a bakery with fresh baked loaves of bread. Our loaf of bread was still warm when they handed it to us and it cost less than 40 cents. I also got a pastry…it looked like a very large cinnamon roll, but it tasted more like a donut! The pastry cost 15 cents. Some things here are really inexpensive while other things are totally overpriced. I was looking at some Nike clothing while we were in Amstor and the shirts that would cost $35 USD in the US cost the equivalent of about $70 USD. It’s kind of crazy! After Amstor, we headed to Papa Karlos, the café we had lunch in yesterday. It’s definitely not as good at dinner time! They didn’t have much of a selection and the food was cold, but it was still quite tasty! We hoped we would be able to e-mail pictures out to all of you when we got home, but Svetlana didn’t want us out again. We feel a little stir-crazy at night! Fred is still working on trying to figure out how to get an internet connection here so he can start doing some work here. Please pray that we will be able to come up with something soon!

*

Saturday, May 19, 2007 Part 1

2007-05-20T09:02:00.001-07:00

The sun comes up really early in Ukraine. By 5am, it is quite bright in our room! Fred got up and immediately started playing on the computer. He’s been trying to figure out a way to get internet in our apartment. Hopefully, he will be successful and we’ll soon be able to update you more regularly! If not, at least our apartment is within walking distance of an internet café, so at least we’ll be able to post more regularly. Our apartment lost power last night for most of the night. Apparently, that is pretty normal here. We were told by other families that have adopted from this region that the power is not reliable. I’m glad they provided us with that info because we packed a flashlight and it came in really handy! We are going to eat breakfast and head out for the day, but we will post more as we have time.

Friday, May 18, 2007

2007-05-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Today is finally the day! We are in Khrystyna’s region and will finally be able to go to the orphanage! When we arrived this morning and got off the train, we thought we’d have a chance to get a little rest. We were quite wrong! When we got to our apartment, we were given an hour to shower and change and get settled in. Our translator didn’t even have that luxury! She hit the ground running and headed off to get documents prepared. When she returned, we headed out to the notary to get our adoption documents notarized. We were supposed to go meet with the social worker from the city and the assistant to the mayor after we finished at the notary, but the social worker and assistant mayor were busy in meetings! We headed to lunch instead! By this point of the day, we were starving. We had brought a small amount of food onto the train with us, but had not eaten since sometime in the middle of the night! Svetlana took us to a wonderful café called Papa Karlos! It had a variety of traditional Ukrainian and Russian dishes as well as what I would call “regular food.” The food was out of this world. I had a mushroom salad, a chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms, and some garlic rolls. Fred ate salad, pork and rice, a breaded chicken breast, and some rolls! We were so excited when Svetlana finally said we could go to the orphanage.

When we arrived at the orphanage, Svetlana told us we could all (Mark, Christine, Fred, and I) wait in the green room. The green room is a room filled with plants. It’s quite homey and has a large aquarium with fish and a frog as well as a large, very loud bird! On our way into the green room, we saw Vika and little Masha, two sisters who were also in Fort Wayne this past summer. One of the sisters was diagnosed with a brain tumor this past fall and not expected to live more than a few weeks. When they took her to a hospital in a different region, they were able to operate successfully and remove the tumor. It was the miracle we all prayed for! It was great to see her looking healthy!

We waited for a while before being invited into Ludmilla’s (the director of the orphanage) office. I felt like I was waiting for a first date. I had butterflies in my stomach and was totally nervous. When we arrived in Ludmilla’s office, we sat down and she immediately pulled out a picture frame/clock that she had on her desk. It is the gift we gave her when she visited us in Fort Wayne in March. It has pictures of all the children from the orphanage who are being adopted by families in Fort Wayne. Ludmilla told us that she had a man who came to the orphanage and saw the picture frame and decided he wanted to adopt Khrystyna. Khrystyna told the man she already had a family and did not want to be adopted by him. He tried bribing her to be part of his family and offered her nice gifts, but she still refused. He ended up adopting another child instead! During our meeting, Ludmilla had the orphanage doctor and orphanage social worker join us so they could give us background info on the kids. Also, she invited some other children to come to her office to get candy. The children she invited were children that she thought would potentially be good siblings for Khrystyna or Masha (the little girl being adopted by Mark and Christine).

***As we have gone through this process, we have heard from a number of people that it is often easier for children to adjust if they have a sibling. We have been praying about this for the last 6 months, however, we knew we wouldn’t be able to make any kind of decision before coming to Ukraine. When the orphanage director visited us in March, we told her we were considering adopting a second child. We told her that we were interested in adopting a little girl who would be a few years younger than Khrystyna. She told us she would look into it. A few weeks ago, we were told that they did not have any little girls in that age range that were available for adoption. We broadened our age range to be from 3 to 8. They still did not come up with any other little girls, however, they suggested a little boy who is almost 5. They didn’t provide any info other than a name and age, so we didn’t feel like we could make much of a decision. We decided to wait til we got here.***

When Ludmilla brought up the subject of second children. She reiterated that she did not have any girls younger than Khrystyna that were currently available for adoption, but that she had a little boy named Stanislav. She also mentioned an older girl named Amina that she thought would make a great sister for Khrystyna. We really hadn’t even considered adopting an older child, however, we agreed to see both of the children. When Amina came into the room to pick up some candy for her group, I was immediately struck by how much she looks like a Thompson. She has dark hair that was pulled back in a ponytail and she definitely looked like she could be Fred’s daughter. Ludmilla explained to her that our families were from America. Amina told her that she knew who we were…we were Khrystyna’s mama and papa. She said that she had seen pictures of us. When Stanislav came in, he was so shy he wouldn’t even look up. He just stared at the ground and would barely even talk to the orphanage director. Neither of us felt much of a connection with him!
After the children left the room, we continued our meeting and were given Khrystyna’s medical info. We didn’t learn much that we hadn’t already been told! After they finished talking about Khrystyna, they gave Mark and Christine background info on Masha. When we were all done getting background info we were FINALLY allowed to see the girls! It was so awesome to see Khrystyna! She looked so beautiful! She was really happy to see us as well! We took a walk around the grounds of the orphanage. There was a cat on the orphanage grounds that had recently had kittens. Khrystyna showed us the kittens. They were sooo tiny. After our walk around the grounds, Khrystyna and Masha were called back inside to go practice dancing. While they were inside, Fred and I seriously discussed the possibility of adopting a second child. We felt that we still needed more info, so Fred and I headed back into Ludmilla’s office. This time, it was just the two of us with Svetlana and Lumilla. We were able to ask more questions about Amina and her background. We were told that her dad had been killed in a war and her mom had later died as well. She had been living in the orphanage for 4 years and was well liked by everyone. Ludmilla said she was extremely smart and was all around quite talented! She suggested that if we were interested in getting to know her better, we should spend time with her and Khrystyna together. She suggested we take them out for a few hours today. Ludmilla told Amina and Khrystyna that we wanted to take Khrystyna and one of her friends out tomorrow and would Amina like to be that friend. They both thought that was really cool! We don’t want Amina to know we are considering adopting her because we don’t want her to get her hopes up.

After Ludmilla talked to Khrystyna and Amina, we were able to head out for ice cream. We took Khrystyna with us in the car and Svetlana went with Mark, Christine, and Masha. We ate absolutely delicious ice cream! It may have been the best ice cream I’ve ever had! While we were there, I noticed that there were children’s books to read and little chalkboards for kids to write on. I grabbed one for Khrystyna and one for Masha. Khrystyna wrote I love you in English. She also wrote Fred and Lisa in English. Someone also taught her how to write Khrystyna in English, however, they didn’t translate it literally, they adapted it to a more “American” spelling. She spelled it Kristina…so it looks like that may be how we spell Kristina. We still need to talk to her about it, but we’ll let her decide! After ice cream, we took the girls back to the orphanage. Svetlana rode in the car with us so we could talk to Khrystyna. We asked her if she would prefer to have a sibling or if she wanted to be by herself. She got this huge grin on her face and said she didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl, but she really wanted a sibling. That definitely did not make the decision any easier! When we arrived back at the orphanage, the children were outside playing and we got a chance to see Amina in her element. A bunch of kids, boys and girls alike, were chasing her around the playground and she was outrunning them all. She’s really quite cute…and she’s athletic! Khrystyna, who is quite the budding photographer, snapped photo after photo of the other kids, the playground and anything else she could, with the digital camera. All to soon, it was time to say goodbye. We hugged Khrystyna and told her we’d be back tomorrow to pick her up. After we left, we headed to the grocery store to pick up a few groceries and then headed back to our apartment. Svetlana is sharing our apartment with us and Mark and Christine have an apartment that is 5-10 minutes away by car. After arriving home, Fred and I uploaded our photos from the day and spent the rest of the evening talking and praying about adopting Amina… We will keep you posted as more unfolds!

Thursday, May17, 2007

2007-05-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Today we got together with Andy and Sherry, another family from the Fort Wayne area. They live in Auburn and attend church with Lisa’s parents and are adopting a little girl from another region. We ate at a small restaurant within walking distance from the SDA. Andy and Sherry had their appointment in the afternoon, so we all arrived early for lunch. Lunch was quite delicious. Sherry and Andy ate borscht and Chicken Kiev and Fred and I ate what they called spaghetti in tomato sauce, however, it was penne pasta in slightly sweet tomato sauce. We also tried some of the chicken kiev and it was fantastic!

After our lunch meeting, we hurried back to our apartment to pack for our trip to Khrystyna’s region. We only had a few minutes to pack so we quickly stuffed everything back in our suitcases and headed for the train station. Our train departed before 5pm for the long journey to Khrystyna’s region.

Fred and I had a train compartment to ourselves. Each compartment is 5 feet wide by 7 feet long and has really skinny bunk beds and a little table. It was extremely small! Also, each compartment was not air conditioned and was quite stuffy. We were told that it was OK to keep our door open during the day, but that at night while we were sleeping, we needed to have our door locked. One of us needed to be in our compartment with our stuff at all times so we didn’t get to venture out in the hallways together, but when we each ventured out separately, we saw that we not the only people who were hot! People were sleeping in their cabins and walking around the train in various stages of undress! Grown men were walking around the train in their underwear! When we finally arrived in Khrystyna’s region, we were exhausted. It was 9am and we had not had much sleep!
We headed for our apartment to take showers and prepare for the day!

Wednesday, May 16,2007

2007-05-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Today proved that the phrase “Adoption Adventure” is an appropriate one! Today was our appointment at the State Department of Adoption (SDA). Our appointment was at 10 am and because traffic in Kiev rivals that of any major US city, our translator and driver picked us up at 8:30 am. We encountered a major traffic jam on the way into downtown. Cars were at a complete standstill on the freeway! Cars began jumping the 8 inch curb and hurtling down the sidewalks at 30-40 mph. After sitting in traffic for a while and not moving much, Svetlana and our driver became worried about making our appointment. They decided we should try a “different way.” Boy, was that an understatement. Our driver cut through various parking lots and apartment complexes before hopping back onto a normal road. We didn’t get very far on the road before we encountered standstill traffic! That didn’t deter our driver. He backed up, turned around and headed down a dirt road. The road was not meant for traffic and ended in a field that was separated from the freeway by a steep 100 foot tall hill! Our driver told us to hold on, floored it, and headed up the hill and onto the sidewalk! We drove down a portion of the sidewalk at 80 kilometers per hour before jumping a curb and heading back into traffic. Our driver probably saved us at least an hour of sitting in traffic. Although the drive was a little crazy, we thoroughly enjoyed it and Fred tipped him generously when we got to the SDA…25 minutes early!

We were told that our meeting at the SDA would take approximately 5-10 minutes. Our facilitator told us that we would go in, they would ask us a few questions about why we wanted to adopt Khrystyna and then they would tell us that we could come back tomorrow for our paperwork. The SDA provides their own translator for all meetings and does not allow translators or facilitators to accompany prospective parents into the meeting. Our meeting started out with the psychologist and translator asking for our passports. Unfortunately, our passports were not easily accessible. I had a money belt under my dress with my passport in it and had to pull up my dress to my hip to access my passport…needless to say it was not my most ladlylike moment! Fred had his moneybag under his shirt and had to unbutton his dress shirt to get his passport out. I’m sure they thought this was strange, but they seemed to act like it was no big deal! We were quite embarrassed, but after the stress of the meeting was over, we found it to be quite funny. Fred said they were probably thinking, “We only want to see your passports…not your whole body.” After the passport fiasco, we sat down and the translator said “So you would like to adopt three children, yes?” I said we’d really like to adopt Khrystyna, the little girl who stayed with us this summer on her vacation, however, we were approved to adopt 3 children just in case there were siblings we didn’t know about, etc. The translator and the psychologist began speaking to each other rapidly. They told us that they did not have our request to adopt Khrystyna and that they had chosen a group of siblings for us…3 girls! Fortunately for us, our facilitator had made us a copy of our request for a specific child before we went into our meeting. We gave them the copy of the original document and they told us that this is not the way they normally operate, but they would see if they could find her file and if she was available for adoption. They left the room and came back 5 minutes later with her file. After that, they sat down in the room with us and called the orphanage to check on Khrystyna’s status. The orphanage director, Ludmilla, spoke with the psychologist at length and then the psychologist hung up. Fred and I prayed the entire time she was out of the room and on the phone. Things were looking a little precarious! After the phone conversation, they told us a little more about Khrystyna’s background and told us that we could come tomorrow to pick up our referral! They also showed the picture in Khrystyna’s file. The picture was taken in 2004 and Khrystyna had a buzz haircut! She was so little and sad looking! Fred didn’t even recognize her…he thought the picture must be of Khrystyna’s brother!  We were thrilled when we left the SDA knowing that we will be able to pick up our paperwork tomorrow evening and head to Khrystyna’s region! Our friends Mark and Christine had their appointment at 11 am. They were in and out in under 6 minutes…we were in and out in 45 minutes!

After our appointment, we headed back to our apartment. Fred was in need of a haircut, so we headed to the salon in our apartment building. Fred’s haircut only cost 25 grivna which is the equivalent of $5 USD. After the haircut, we walked to McDonald’s. It’s a little less than a mile away, and it was totally worth it. I got wonderfully yummy cheese sticks that tasted very similar to brie and came with a berry sauce. For those of you who have had the fried brie at Saunders in New Hampshire, that’s what it tastes like and it only cost 6 grivna ($1.20). Fred was quite happy with his double cheeseburger and we had Kit Kat McFlurries! We spent the rest of the day relaxing and resting. We had a really yummy dinner tonight. Sasha’s (our landlord) mom made us yummy breaded fish fillets and rice! Last night she made us a wonderful soup without potatoes and we ate it with crackers! Meals are definitely getting tastier!

Tuesday 5/15/2007

2007-05-20T08:57:00.001-07:00

When we posted Tuesday morning, we were planning on being in downtown Kiev for only a short time. We wanted to purchase a Ukrainian cell phone, replace our electricity converter that only lasted halfway through Monday night, and pick up a few groceries. Our short trip ended up being a trip full of sightseeing and speed walking! Our translator, Svetlana (Svieta for short) asked us if we would like to see a few of the sights in Kiev after we left the internet café. We were excited to see a little more of the country so we quickly agreed. Downtown Ukraine is very similar to San Francisco in its topography…lots and lots of steep hills. After an hour of walking, Svetlana called Sasha (our facilitator) to check in with him and found out that he was in downtown Kiev with Mark and Christine so we agreed to meet up with them for lunch. We had lunch in a pizzeria that had a menu in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The pizzas were similar to pizzas you would order at California Pizza Kitchen although some of the toppings were more unusual (Mark and Christine’s pizza had kidney beans on it!) After lunch, we strolled through the underground mall. It was a very nice mall with some upscale stores. While walking through the mall, we saw a man carrying a monkey dressed like a child. It was quite a sight to behold!!! From the mall, we decided to visit some of the churches. We visited St. Sofia’s Cathedral, the oldest church in Kiev which was built a thousand years ago! It has a large bell tower which until recently had been closed. The reason the bell tower was closed was because from the top of it, you could see into the courtyard of the KGB headquarters in Kiev. They regularly executed people in the courtyard and did not want that to be public knowledge. We thoroughly enjoyed our tour and Sasha and Svetlana were a wealth of information on the history of Ukraine. Although we were gone from our apartment for over 8 hours (instead of the 2 we had planned on), it was a very enjoyable day. The people here are very friendly and the city is rich with history! When we got home, we ate the delicious soup that Sasha had brought to us. It was full of veggies and tasted wonderful! I picked up some crackers on the way home and it was “soup”er!

Important Note

2007-05-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

This blog has become more like a rambling online journal. For those of you who don’t care what we ate or the minute details of our trip, I apologize. Just skim over the ramblings and look for important details. For the rest of you, this will give you a little more insight into our day to day life here! We’ve been taking lots of pictures and will try to post them soon. I’ve tried to get pictures of everything we’ve eaten, however, I’ve forgotten at quite a few meals. At least it will give you a little more idea of what food is like here!

We're in Kiev!

2007-05-15T01:22:00.000-07:00

After a long night of flying, we arrived in Kiev yesterday morning. We were met by our facilitator Svetlana and were taken to the apartment where we are staying. Our friends Mark and Christine were met by a different facilitator and were taken to an apartment that is 25 minutes away by car. We were told that we won't be able to see them very much while we're in Kiev. We are staying in a 2 room apartment. It has a kitchen and a living room with a sofa bed. Our landlord Sasha has been very nice and part of our arrangement has been that he cooks for us. This has proven to be quite a challenge since Fred is allergic to potatoes and doesn't like veggies and I'm not a big fan of meat (especially brats and sausage). We'll definitely post more when we have more time. Today we are going to buy a Ukrainian cell phone and get a few groceries (ie things that we really like!)

Tomorrow is our appointment with the adoption authorities and on Thursday we will probably catch the overnight train to Khrystyna's region. We will probably get to see Khrystyna on Friday. We're super excited about seeing her! We are enjoying our adventure in Ukraine and will try to post later with pictures!

Less than a week to go!

2007-05-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that we will be leaving for Ukraine in less than a week. Our "To Do" list is a mile long, but we are slowly making our way through it. We are excited about seeing Khrystyna and bringing her home for good! We spoke with Khrystyna on her birthday (April 24) and she is soo excited about us coming to see her. We did not tell her that we are planning on bringing her home with us. We don't want her to be disappointed if anything were to go wrong. We just told her that we are coming to visit. Please keep us in your prayers as this is a very exciting, yet very stressful time. Please pray that we will not encounter any roadblocks along the way and that our meetings with the Ukrainian officials will go smoothly. Please pray for safety and good health. Also, please pray that we would make a good impression on the people that we come in contact with in Ukraine and that they will be able to see Jesus in us. Last, but not least, please pray for all of us (especially Khrystyna) during this time of transition in our family. We know that although adoption is a wonderful opportunity for Khrystyna, she will be leaving her friends, her country, her brother, and everything she is familiar with to come to live in a place where no one speaks her language and everything is very different from what she is accustomed to. We are thankful for each of you who has embarked on this journey with us and who have prayed for us and shared your resources to make this a reality! We are so blessed!

Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again...

2007-04-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

Those words sum up our trip to Ukraine. We purchased our tickets and will be heading to Ukraine on Mother's Day. Fred will be staying in Ukraine until after our court date and Lisa will be staying until the adoption is complete. Our trip home is scheduled for June 18th, however, we are hoping we'll be home sooner than that. We are excited about our time in Ukraine. Our good friends Mark and Christine are adopting Khrystyna's best friend and will be travelling with us. We are amazed that God has allowed us to have appointments on the same day (which is an absolute miracle) and are thrilled that we will be getting our daughters around the same time. It will also make things easier for Lisa after Fred goes back home to know that she has friends that will be staying nearby. Please keep us all in your prayers as we are frantically trying to purchase the necessities for our trip and trying to prepare ourselves for parenthood!

Exciting news!

2007-04-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

After months of waiting and planning, we have finally received our invitation to travel to Ukraine. We have our meeting with the State Department of Adoption in Kiev on Wednesday, May 16th. We will be travelling over Mother's Day weekend and will hopefully be able to see Khrystyna on Thursday or Friday of that week. We are so excited to be able to see her and spend time with her.

There are still lots of hoops to jump through when we get to Ukraine. At our meeting on May 16th, we will be given permission to travel to Khrystyna's orphanage. Once we get to her orphanage, we will petition the local court for an appointment date to adopt Khrystyna. If all goes well, our court appointment will be about 2 weeks after our appointment in Kiev. At this appointment, we hope that our petition to adopt Khrystyna will be granted. There will then be a mandatory 10 business day waiting period which is required for all Ukranian court decisions. Fred will travel home during this time and Lisa will stay in Ukraine. After this waiting period, our adoption will be final and the official decree will be signed and translated for us. Once all the papers are issued, we will scramble to get amended birth certificates and a new passport issued, and then we head back to Kiev for about three days of appointments at the US Embassy for her visa.

Now that we have an appointment date, we will try to post more frequently to keep you all posted. Also, we have been told that we will have access to internet cafes while we are in Ukraine, so we hope that you will be able to follow us on every step of our trip.

Paperwork, paperwork, and a lot more paperwork...

2007-02-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

After Khrystyna's visit, we moved full speed ahead into our "Adoption Adventure." We were told that the Ukraine wasn't accepting any new dossiers until the beginning of January, so we didn't feel the need to rush. We began gathering the documents necessary for our home study as well as those we would need to submit to Ukraine in our dossier. We had to gather birth certificates, marriage certificates, and passports along with copies of the deed to our house. We also needed to have 2 different medical forms done for each of us. I had to return to my doctor twice to have my forms fixed and I lost count of how many times it took to get Fred's papers right. We also needed employment verification letters and numerous other random documents. Our homestudy was done in November and upon it's completion we sent it off with some additional documentation to the Dept. of Homeland Security. They reviewed our documentation and gave us a date of December 21 to come to Indianapolis and have biometric fingerprinting done. By mid January, we recieved approval from the Department of Homeland Security to adopt from Ukraine. We had hoped to have all of our paperwork in Ukraine by the end of December, but it didn't happen. At the end of January, I took a gazillion papers to the Secretary of State's office in Indianapolis to have them apostilled. The "apostille" process authenticates that all of the notaries who notarized our documents have valid commissions and that they were notarized correctly. I also made a trip to California in January to have some documents from Fred's work apostilled at the Secretary of States office in California. The process was long and tedious, but at least we got it done. We sent our completed dossier to Ukraine on January 31, 2007.

Hosting Khrystyna

2007-02-28T13:53:00.000-08:00

In June of 2006, while surfing the net for things to do, I came across a community calendar. As I scrolled through the calendar, I came across this activity...HOST AN ORPHAN. Being curious, I clicked on the link and began to read about the Orphan Hosting Program that would be taking place in Indiana. I was immediately interested in the idea of having a child in our home for a few weeks and helping that child find a family. I suggested to Fred that we consider this and he was agreeable. We filled out the application, sent it off, and within a few hours, we had received a response. We had no idea whether we would be hosting a boy or girl, although I preferred to host a girl. We only knew that we would have a child between the ages of 7 and 12 in our home for 3 weeks. About a week after submitting our application, I talked to the director of the Indiana program. She informed me that if we wanted to host a girl, we would have to host through the Indianapolis program rather than the Fort Wayne program. She said that for the first week of the program, we would need to drive "our child" to Indianapolis every day for day camp. If after a few days, we decided that we wanted to adopt the child, we could keep this child at home with us for the remainder of the time. That didn't really appeal to me, since we weren't planning on adopting, but I knew they were desperate for host families, so I agreed. The trip was scheduled for late August.

On Sunday, July 9th we received a picture of the little girl we were to host. Her name was Iryna and she was really cute. I was quite excited. Within 24 hours, we found out that there was a change of plans. Iryna was going to a different family. Families who got involved early on in the program were allowed to pick the children they wanted to host and due to some changes in schedule, another family decided to take Iryna and participate in the Indianapolis program rather than the Fort Wayne program. We were sent a picture of another little girl named Khrystyna. She was really cute and she was part of the Fort Wayne program. This was a definite answer to prayer! The only thing that looked like it might cause problems was the dates of the program. The kids were getting into Fort Wayne on August 5th and Fred and I were going to be at a wedding in California. My mom agreed to watch Khrystyna at our house for us during that time and we continued moving forward with the hosting program. Before we could host a child, we had to be fingerprinted for a criminal background check and we had to have a home assessment. With only 2 weeks before I headed out for pre-wedding festivities, we rushed around like crazy to make sure we had all the paperwork necessary to host. We also rushed out to find bedding and furniture that would be appropriate for a little girl.

As we prepared for Khrystyna's visit, we prayed daily that God would provide a family for her. The more we prayed, the more we began to wonder if we might be that family! By the time we met Khrystyna for the first time, I was ready to adopt her. Fred was moving a little slower.

Our time with Khrystyna was fun, challenging, exhausting, and amazing. She is an extremely bright little girl with "strong character." This is how the workers from the orphanage described her amazingly strong-willed personality...."Strong Character" Fred and I battled this "strong character" repeatedly. The language barrier added additional challenges. Khrystyna only speaks Russian and Fred and I only speak English...although Fred tried speaking in Spanish to Khrystyna. By the end of the first few days with her, we were smitten! The only thing that made us hesitant to commit to adopt her was the financial aspect. It was going to cost us around $35,000! As we prayed, we really believed that this was what God had for us, so we decided that God would provide!

Our 3 weeks with Khrystyna seemed way too short. There was a day camp program during the day for all of the kids to attend where they learned some English and went on lots of field trips. I helped with day camp and was able to take Khrystyna lots of interesting places. Her time with us was filled up with shopping, daycamp, a trip to the lake, the zoo, the Botanical gardens, the fire station, indoor go kart racing, a tour of a chocolate factory, trips to the park with friends, dinners at Cracker Barrel, Rob's soccer games, church, and just hanging out watching cartoons! She figured out how to work the remotes, the digital camera, and the computer on her first day here! Needless to say, it was a very exciting time. When she headed back to Ukraine, it was with the knowledge that we were planning on adopting her and would be doing everything we could to get her back home to us.