Day 20-Friday

On Friday we went to embassy to sign all the paperwork needed for adoption so I could leave the Ukraine and go to the kids.  It was so fast and easy: after we went inside it took us like 15 minutes to do it all. Then my daughter Elliana felt hungry so we went to McDonalds because she like’s fries.  Prices are so expensive high; everything is almost the same price as in US McDonalds.

My husband got a coffee, so he can be more awake and helpful after court stress.  J He still didn’t function to well.

After that we shopped at market to buys some more things for trip to USA.  It was last time at Petrovsky market for me so I bought few things: books, coloring books (in Ukrainian, and cheap), and few crafts for kids while they are on the plane.

Then we went to Ashan to buy some food for my husband and orphanage. There we met with Valentine, and he had news from court.  He spend 4 hours in the court to check and correct all our paper work, and he told us that on Monday June 18 we could get papers from court.

We spend another hour talking and brainstorming about return date for my husband. Trying to figure out and get tickets. If everything goes well, then on June 28 Sergey will fly home with kids, I am so excited about that. J  After that we went home to have some rest, because on Saturday will be party for boys at orphanage. Every time when kid getting a family, at this orphanage they have tradition to have go away party.  They invite staff that was involved in kid’s life, relatives, director of the orphanage we will meet with boy’s grandpa. I am looking forward this party, and especially meeting boys grandpa. We heard a lot about him, and he is the one who were trying to help boys have a better life. He fought hard and for more than 5 years to get boys out of their “parents” hands.

I am so excited to see him, but Sergey so worry that something can go wrong and Grandpa can change his mind and decided to leave boys in Ukraine, but I know that everything in God’s hands.

Day 18 Wednesday

It was supposed to rain later today, but we didn't' take any jackets or umbrella before we left our house in the morning.  Around 11 am we were on our way to Kiev. We walked around, bought few other things for our parents back in US, and used internet in Coffee Life, where we had better connection. I was able to get up to date with our blog, and it did make my day.:) I was really behind on blogging.

We heard from our facilitator about court date and time while we were in Coffee Life café.

We did walk a little on Khreshatik Street. They did a lot of construction projects, and few of them are still not finished.

 After walking on Khreshatik, we decided to go find restaurant Perizhkova Hata. During our first trip to notary, when we just came to Ukraine, we went to Perizhkova Hata restaurant with our facilitator. They have nice Ukrainian food, and their prices are reasonable.

Sergey had a little idea where to go, but we went just exploring and we did find it. We decided to have a dinner there.  While we were there, it started to rain really hard, pouring rain. In a second’s whole place were crowded with many people, trying to hide from rain.

It’s kind of cool that here, no rain, great weather and in a second can be pouring.  In about 30 minutes it stopped raining and we were off to nearest subway station and on our way home.

After subway station, before catching marshrootka, we did stopped at little supermarket to buy milk, and yogurts for tomorrow, for court time (in case it would take long, and kids get hungry).

After marshrootka we walked home for about 40 minutes and came home very tired. 

***will post pictures when I will have better internet

We are in Kiev

I was able to post few posts today, and upload pictures. We stopped at Coffee Life coffee shop, and they do have a great internet.

Thank you everyone for your prayers and comments, we do love comments.

And we do have a court tomorrow. Praise our God, papers got sign today, and judge is going on vacation this Friday, so she did schedule our court for tomorrow, which is a blessing!!! We have an amazing God!

Now we have to go back to our village Petrivske, so I will try to post when we have internet. At least I am up to date now with blogging :))))
Hopefully by this Sunday I will be home, and Sergey will stay here in Ukraine and come back with boys.

Thank you everyone for your support!!!

Day 17-Raining

We woke up to a biggest rain we ever had in Ukraine. Sky was dark, and it was raining hard, it would stop for a few minutes and would start raining again. At the moment when it stopped raining we went outside, and tried to catch marshrootka (they do have a marshrootka stop by our house), every time before today, we had no luck of catching one. We would be waiting, and waiting and it never showed up, and we had to walk for 1,5 miles to catch one. But today, it did show up, and it was a blessing because of the rain.

We went to see  boys, and decided to spend a day at Father’s House. They have no policy when to come, or what time to visit. We have a choice, and we can spend as much time as we want with boys. We can take boys everywhere up to 3 days. It’s a blessing! Unfortunately we have small place, and boys being very active, it’s hard to keep them on one place. Also with ElliAna, we have to pick good time, do to nap time, feedings(she eats every 2-3 hours). Anyway, we spend almost all day with boys and foster parents. Sergey does have a lot in common with foster dad, and I enjoy talking/spending time with foster mom of our boys.

Here are few pictures:

We are walking to the Father's House, and this is their property, between their two buildings.

 I love how they did it, it's beautiful, and they are doing great job of keeping it clean with so many kids around.

 Building wood airplane with kids

 Foster dad building something with boys

 Surprise, Iron Man

 Stasik with ElliAna

 Danik playing on guitar

 Everyone is busy :)))

Day 16 Monday

Still no water and we have no idea why. Lady of the house, from who we are renting our house left to Kiev for 2 days, and hopefully tomorrow she will be back with her husband and they will fix our water.

In the morning we went to Kiev, to walk around, bought few things for baby and kids to keep them busy, and then headed to Fathers House.

It was funny when ElliAna after been told 1000 times "Don't touch the salt"! still did it. She is in the stage of exploring and not always listening. Here is the result...

She asked for some bread with Nuttela,  I was in the room, Sergey was doing something when we heard ahhhhhh..... and this what we saw. She decided to put some salt , ok maybe not some, on here sandwich with Nuttela :)))

Ukrainian Security Car, we saw by on of the stores while our trip to Kiev

Today is a holiday, and boys went to church, and we didn’t get a chance to talk to them, but we left them few things with their foster parents.

We were walking home very tired, and ready for bed. Even ElliAna who always has so much energy, was barely walking, and didn’t want to be carried. 

Day 15 –with our boys

Sunday we spend  with our boys.

We woke up to no water in the house, not even cold water.  We had to go back to old fashion way to get water. It was a blessing to have a water source close to our house. Sergey had to go outside and get our own water in the bucket and carry it home, but even that couldn’t destroy beautiful day ahead of us. I have no idea what the name of the thing is. I will post pictures. It was interesting day without water, but it was fun, and something to remember.

In the morning Sergey went to get boys from orphanage while I was making breakfast for us. Boys were very excited to spend all day with us.  After breakfast my husband took kids to play soccer on the field, so I can stay home and do some blogging. Soccer score was Sergey 4 – Danik/Stasik team 5. They were very happy, tired and hungry when came back. After good homemade pizza on lunch we were doing some activities such as books, lego, chest, crafts and more.

Breakfast/snack time

 by our house they have a field. This is where boys and daddy played soccer

This is where we were getting our water

 Lunch time, homemade pizza and tea

 craft time

 Daddy and Stasik playing. Stasik won :)

 going back

Later boys wanted to play more soccer with my husband, so we went for it.  Around 5 pm they all came back wet, tired and happy.  Boys helped us with caring water to the house, after that they got a snack and with ice cream and we headed to orphanage. It was so sad, because time flied so fast, we didn’t even notice.  In the Father’s house boys ware so happy and excited to share with everybody how exiting their day was. Danik and Stasic jumped all over place- so I couldn’t figure out where they got so much energy, because I was so tired and my husband barley could move, but this day was unforgettable.

And little bit about our boys, it’s impossible to not love them!

Danik: Shy, sweet, loves baby, and help with baby – is awesome babysitter.  Very curious, and know a lot. He is smart little boy. Have many traumas, problems with his eyes, due to physical traumas from his “dad”. He is more mommy boy than his brother. Loves to play with LEGO, and read books. He love’s math. He loves to help, to ride a bike, to play soccer. Also he loves animals. He can play with LEGO for long time. Want to learn how to play guitar, did attend few lessons. He is older, but only 3 centimeters taller than Stasik, and he is very thin.

Stasik: innocent, sweet, very funny, helpful, loves to cuddle a lot, needs daddy attention and  love the most, likes to explore new stuff, very active, likes  to run and bounce of the walls – he had hyper active disorder. He has kidish, sweet- honest boldness (what is in his mind- on his tongue). He has some speech disorder – can’t pronounce some letters. Same as his brother,  Stasik can’t wait to see us. Every day he asking when we going to adopt them, when going to take them home.  Stasis is younger than his brother but hi is a leader. When we are at home Danik sitting next to us but Stasik jumping all over place, but when we are outside it is opposite – Stasik next to us, but Danik running forward.      

*****we are heading to Kiev now, and I will try to post pictures if we will find a good place with internet there

Day 14 Saturday

In the morning, after breakfast we went to Ashan, bought some groceries to take to our kid’s family.

Went to see boys, and spend some time with them. They always very excited to see us, and we love to spend time with them. They are great boys, and all of our kids play very good together.

Planning to take boys for a day to our place on Sunday, Sergey will go in the morning and come back with boys.  Close to our house we have a place where kids like to hang out. It’s not a park, it’s kind of big field with grass and trees.

Boys are very excited to see us, and like always many questions when we take them home, how many days and etc. We can’t’ wait to get it done with a process and be back home with all of our kids.

We had tea with foster parents, and whatever we been told before about them, it’s not true. They are very nice people, and they do care about kids.

Got home, did some laundry, and spend evening doing nothing.   

Also we got a chance to skype for few minutes with kids back in US. Without video, but at least we did talk a little. They are doing ok, and they miss us a lot. I can’t wait to get home, and hug them. Miss them so much.

*Please pray for our paperwork to get sign as soon as possible, we still didn’t hear nothing from our facilitator. 

Day 13 Friday

We had breakfast and started to get ready to go to Kiev.  My uncle came to Kiev for personal business and we had a little gift from US (my parents) to give it to him.  We were in a hurry, and waited for marshrootka for about 30 minutes – never showed up, and we had to walk to main road to catch different one.

We met with uncle Vasya, my dad’s younger brother. We spend 2 hours together, before he had to go catch his marshrootka, and go back to his city. We had lunch together in Puzata Xata, and then headed to nearest subway station.

Khreshatik is getting ready for Euro 2012. They have many construction projects going on, and it would be nice to see if they will finish it on time for Euro.

*we are at Father's House spending time with kids. They have wi-fi here, and I will try to transfer as much as I can from Word to my blog, and will try to post pictures. 

Day 12 Thursday

In the morning we took marshrootka to a big store called “Ashan”. It’s 30 minutes of walking and then 20 minutes on marshrootka. This store is huge like Costco/Winco stores, and has everything from food to clothes and more. You do have a choice to buy in small quantities. We did buy some food and prices are much better than in other supermarkets.

 In this new apartment we have a nice kitchen and it has everything I need to be able to cook and make homemade food.  

Went to see boys, and like always, there is thousands of questions: “When is court?”  “How many days till court?” “ When will you adopt us?”  “When we will go to America?” and etc. And all this questions are repeating in 20-30 minutes again and again. J  

Day 11 We moved again

In the morning my husband bought some breakfast called “Kiev’s perepichka” , that was very good. After that we stared packing to move out.  We paid for apartment in advance, and if we will return keys to the office at 12 noon they agreed to reimburse money back.

 Around 10:30 very mean lady came to our apartment and without explaining anything rushed inside. My husband stopped her and asked: “Can I help you?” On what she replied: “You are leaving at 10:30!” He said: “no, not till 12 pm “After that she rudely slammed the door and left, without saying hi, or bye.

Then at 12 pm Sergey return keys back to office and start putting stuff in taxi cab. Same lady showed up again. She was not happy for any reason and start yelling on us to give her keys back. She started getting very angry because we didn’t give her keys back. My husband told her that keys in the office and you need to talk to them about rules not to us. We got yelled for what we been told to do.  Anyway that is how we checked out in Ukrainian way. J

  

At 1:30 pm we moved to new apartment. Its private house, owners live on second floor and we are renting first floor. House inside very nice, we have 2 rooms and it is very comfy. Owner is still remodeling upper part of house, and sometimes they come to use kitchen downstairs.

Unfortunately owner didn’t have time to make internet for us, but at least we close to the boys. We do have mobile internet now, but it’s not that great. We are thankful for what we have.   After unpacking our stuff we went to see boys, this is when we discovered that it is 30 minutes’ walk to the orphanage. At first our legs hurt but thank God we had some training walking in Kiev so it was no bad for us. Danik and Stasick were very happy to see us; we spend very good time together and went to the local store to buy Russian dumplings for breakfast.  Then we rushed back to apartment. 

Day 10 - Tuesday

We went to pharmacies to buy few things for my parents and Sergey mom to take it back to US, and were preparing to move to little city Petrovske, where our boys live. Tomorrow by 12 pm, we have to be out of our current apartment #3.  I don’t think we will have internet there for a while, but I will try to keep track of everything what is going on.  

Later afternoon we went to a local market again, and bought more things for boys ( books, notebooks, etc.)

***We moved and we had no internet for almost 3 days. I made notes in Word, and now will transfer everything to a blog.

Day 9-with kids

We had a great morning with boys. By 5 pm we had to take them back to "Fathers House", and it take almost 2 hours to get there, so we had breakfast at home, Sergey went with boys out and got some food.

They were hungry  :)

 We made tea and stayed home for breakfast

Kids loved to stay on the balcony, there were some workers outside, kids watched them

Played with some toys

We went to eat lunch, o my, they have so much energy in the morning !

 Puzata Xata , kids room.

Kids had icecream

We took subway

then marshrootka

Daniel and Stasik foster parents are super nice people Nazar and Natasha. They are young but they are doing such a great job of taking care of the kids. All total they have 6 kids, that live with them in same apartment, and it's like family type. They make their own food, they have their own budget, and rules. I will take more pictures, and will post more about boys home(for now).

We did had a nice chat with foster parents, and had tea. We left their place and headed home, because it was late.

We had a wonderful day!!!