So today is a new day. We got a great night's sleep and cried a bit and are now feeling better. We are still waiting on God to give us further direction, but are comforted to know that He is in control and has a plan for us. We know beyond a doubt that we were supposed to come to Ukraine, so we know that we are in His will on this. We don't know at this point which direction that He will have us go, but sometimes we need to sit and wait for the next move. We are OK at this point if we end up only adopting one child. It is sad and disappointing, since this is not what we were expecting, but if God decides to bless us with one child instead of two, who are we to complain. We are still waiting to hear from our translator at this point. She was going to the NAC this morning to try and get more information on one of the boys. Dana remembered some neat things this morning that encouraged us this morning. After we had looked through so many books and pictures and hadn't found our child, we asked if we could keep looking a little longer. Irena told us that it was time to take lunch break and that it would be better for everyone if we would come back after lunch (I don't remember anyone talking about being able to come back, so this was a blessing). When we came back and were back to looking, someone brought the file on this boy for us to look at. We had already been through "all" of the books with children under 4 and he was not in it. We don't know where the file came from, so we feel as if God selected this boy for us. Some other neat things about this boy (sorry that we don't know his name) is that he was born on my dad's birthday and that he comes from a town called Nicolai (sp?)and that has been a top favorite name for us. The other neat thing is that he only became available for adoption 2 days ago. So again, we are just waiting on God for direction. (The town was actually Mykolayiv, but the first few times we heard it, it sounded like they were saying Nicolai.)

Today's plan is to venture out into the culture and see what we can get accomplished without speaking the language (other than numbers and please and thank-you!). We got plugged into the internet cafe just fine and are headed to buy more groceries after this. The grocery store is very small with 3-foot aisles, but has everything that we need. Our first time shopping Oksana was with and explained things as needed. Buying cheese was interesting. Most of it was white cheese, but we were trying to decide what would be like a Provolone. Since it was all in a typical cheese block, but we couldn’t tell if it was a provolone or an asiago type cheese. This is where translation was a difficult issue. She didn’t know cheese by the names we knew and described them as a “salty” cheese. After buying some of each, we discovered we do like the “salty” cheese. We had never really thought of cheese as “salty”, but whatever works! Then tonight we are going to the Opera and will be taking taxi's there and back, so that should be interesting. Our translator wrote down our address on a piece of paper, so that should get us home. We are thinking that tomorrow we will possibly do some sight-seeing with our translator. Sorry about no pictures, but this cafe doesn't allow anything to be connected to the computers.

Last night was our night at the opera. It was fantastic! We were in the second row, center section - we could actually see into the orchestra pit - despite the two lovers both dying in the end (For those of you who know, Rob likes a happy ending) - it was really great. We both didn't really think we would like it, we were looking for a symphony really, but this was on - anyway it was great, we highly recommend to those who travel. Our cab ride was a bit uneasy, our cab driver was going to charge us almost 3x the amount it should have been. We called our translator, who talked him down to a reasonable price. We highly recommend renting or taking cell phone! :)

Today we found out that we were able get our referral Friday, which means we can travel on Sunday. Our train is at 6, we don't know yet if that is am or pm, we are guessing the overnight train. We will be traveling to Mykolayiv. If you are trying to follow on the maps, it is on the "South" map on our web site and is south of Kiev and a little to the east. They were finally able to get a hold of the orphanage yesterday. The phones were down, so they called the medical center nearby, who ran over to the orphanage, then relayed a message back to the AC here in Kiev. We are told he is a "good, healthy boy". For those that we told he was 18 or 14 months, under stress I (Dana) can't do math, he is 16 mos. We should have just said his birthday was 10/12/02 and let you do the math! LOL

Thank you so much for all the encouraging emails. We don't have time to reply to them all, but know that we are reading them and yes we know that God is in control. - Joel, thanks for the word puns, made us laugh! We have a real peace about the whole thing today. Today we are going to go site seeing with Oksana, so that should be fun. Tonight we try out our travel laundry kit and will try and wash some clothes in the sink. I know you are all jealous of that :) We probably will not post again until we are in region Monday sometime and we hope to have more news at that point. The weather here has been OK, nothing worse than SD or MN has had, but mainly rain/snow and foggy.

Yesterday was a sight seeing day with our translator. We saw various churches and the main monastery in Kiev. We went to an open market that had all sorts of art (hand painted as well as prints), hand painted eggs, various wood carvings, and other hand crafted trinkets. It was good to get out and see more of this beautiful city. Dana and I continue to be impressed with the huge buildings that are located throughout Kiev. Oksana, our translator, says that the Soviets were very much into big buildings because it was a sign of power. They are certainly impressive and make for good pictures. We also got to see the underground mall with various stores that we recognized the name of. We had to giggle at a store called Sonny Bonno, we tried to explain to Oksana that that is the name of a singer from the 70s.

When it was time for lunch we started off at a VERY nice restaurant with a Jazz theme that Oksana had never been to. As we looked at the menus and saw the prices, it became very clear that it was time to find another cafe to eat in. We then found another cafe down the road a bit that was reasonably priced and had great food. We had the opportunity to sample some traditional Ukrainian food. Dana and I shared a bowl of Borsch (beet soup) that came with fantastic fresh bread covered in a butter and garlic sauce, it was awesome. Then Dana had Chicken Kiev (we had to try it, we are in Kiev after all) and Rob had Verinkly (sp?) which are larger raviolis stuffed with mashed potatoes. Both were absolutely fantastic. We then decided that we NEEDED to try a Ukrainian dessert as well. We had something that started with a N, which was crapes stuffed with strawberries with chocolate sauce on top and sour cream on the side. Again this was very tasty, are you all hungry yet?

Dana and I took a taxi home while Oksana stayed at the mall to meet up with her friends. The taxi business is interesting. You must negotiate the price before getting into the taxi. The price usually starts off too high and Oksana talks them down to something more reasonable. Yesterday, we had to start walking away from the taxi before one of the taxi drivers waiting there saw it Oksana's way and lowered the price. Dana whispered to me, "see capitalism is alive and well even in Kiev."

Last night we stayed in the comforts of home while resting from our busy day. We definitely are keeping in shape with all of the walking that we've been doing lately. We wished we would have taken our pedometer. We also did laundry the old fashioned way, BY HAND! It took us about an hour and a half just to wash socks, underwear, and t-shirts. It also took all night and some of the morning for these clothes to dry. We are definitely coming to appreciate the "finer" things in life such as a washer and dryer that allow you to do other things while doing laundry, not being afraid of tap water and not having to boil water 10 minutes before being able to use it. We have come to appreciate the things that God has blessed America with that we often take for granted. Our small duplex that we sometimes complain about will seem like a mansion when we return.

We leave tonight at 7pm (UA time) to head south. We are not excited about leaving what has now become our "home" for the past few days, but are excited to continue the next leg of this journey. We will post again when we are able. So long for now.

It's a boy. This is Kyle, he loves to rock on the horse. We will hopefully post more pics later.

Well we will publish the news that you are all waiting for first, then we go into details. The little boy Kayram is our boy, now to be known as Kyle. Our translator wasn't sure how to spell is name, she had never seen the name before, you have to roll the R and make it about 2 1/2 syllables. At any rate he is very healthy, born December 10, 2002 - We KNOW that Europe changes the dates to DD/MM/YY, but we were so excited to see it 10/12 (Oct 12) we went with it, so he is actually back to 14months :) LOL. I know my mom sometimes forgets how old I am, so we consider this normal parent behavior.

We arrived via the overnight train at 6am, after not a lot of sleep. We are not for sure, but we think the train must have stopped every 15minutes. It was nice to be able to stretch out - the first time we can actually afford to travel first class and it wasn't available. We had heard bad things about the bathrooms, so we just didn't go, we have no details to add to how bad they are, we just took everyone's word for it. Once we arrived we checked into a hotel (what US hotel will let you check in at 7am?). Then we had a little snack for breakfast, went to the inspectors office to get permission to see the boy- there was a bit of a wait. Next off to the orphanage, again a wait, then we saw Kyle, fell in love and started the paperwork chase. We got a good jump start on paperwork on Monday. We were then able to go back and visit with Kyle in the afternoon. He still isn't crazy about us (for those not up on attachment issues, that is a good thing). He appears to be a very deep thinker. He was giving us the funniest looks when we first met him, kind of a wrinkled nose, like "who are you"? Very funny, I guess you had to be there. He was born weighing 3.3kilograms, and once we get home we will know how much that is :) They say it is normal. He was also born at 39 weeks, and the length was in cm and I don't remember how much it is. Now home, converting everything, he was born 7lbs 4oz and was 20inches.

Our hotel was OK, it had a view of the river, which is the nicest thing we can say about it. There were two rooms (I am sure they had the Residence Inn in mind, but couldn't quite finish) There were also 2 bathrooms- one small catch, in the morning, we ran out of cold water. You never really think about running out of cold water, but believe us, it's a problem! :) The bed was again two twin beds pushed together, but the problem was the blanket was also only a twin. (Not a normal size twin that would make a king size bed, more like two dorm size mattresses) Today we checked into a Lady's apartment. It is VERY nice, very nicely furnished and appears to have a working shower. We are looking forward to it. Today we getting more paperwork done and trying to shop for clothes, we thought we had the sizes figured out, but those were Polish, not Ukraine, so we have to know where we are shopping before we state a size - we are very thankful for Oksana. Thanks all for now, I know you all just wanted to know what's up, so that's the short of it and we will write more later.

We have finally found a time when the internet cafe isn't totally crowded with "pupils" (i.e. young boys playing games). This has allowed us the time to be able to upload more pictures. Sorry to those with slow internet connections, it may take a while to download these pictures. I don't have the capability to make smaller pictures for thumbnails, so you will just have to wait. So go get a cup of coffee because it'll be worth the wait. It's not every day that you get to see the cutest kid in the world!! :) You may notice a bruise on his forehead, all we can say is that he's a boy, this won't be his last! It had happened earlier in the day before we met him.

This will be a combination of Wed & Thursday news. The News bits are at the top, with more details as you read, for those with more time.

Well things here were slow (Wednesday), no paperwork to do yet, we are in a holding pattern. Thursday should have more things to do. Wednesday we went shopping for Kyle, bought some shoes, the cutest hat, umbrella stroller and some shirts. Thursday (now today) is a paperwork day - it is going very well. Our best case scenario for a court date is next Wed. THere is a holiday on Monday and that will slow things down a bit.

Shopping has been interesting. The stores will have kids clothes, but perhaps only sizes for say a 12mo and 3yr, with nothing in between. We were hoping to get lots of shopping done today, but it takes a while, store after store to find things. We aren't really complaining we don't have much else to do today. We visited Kyle this morning and will again in the afternoon. He at least looks interested to see us, and doesn't fuss when we take him away from the group. We must take him to a room that looked like a breakroom for the staff, this helps the other kids, as they don't see that Kyle is singled out and getting lots of attention. The few times we were waiting in his room for something, the other kids would come up, very sad we couldn't take them all! We took some measurements yesterday, so that we kind of know what size to buy for him. He is 75cm tall and his feet are 14cm long. We will have to learn what that means in American sizes. More updates on him, he has four teeth on the top and 2 on the bottom. He is walking pretty good, but of course falls every now and again. He has very long eyelashes and is the cutest kid on the earth!

We also went grocery shopping today and found frozen pizza! - Life is happy. Pizza here isn't the same, but it is still good. Interesting thing, the eggs are sold in bags that are like the kind you put produce in. There will be just 10 eggs in sack, you can also buy them for more in a carton - we splurged with a carton with the hope of them making it home in one piece! We also found instant oatmeal, we had our translator tell us our choices, they were, Oatmeal and cherry, raisin or...broccoli. :) We passed on broccoli for breakfast and the cherry was pretty good. We are trying to get some food supplies for this weekend. Our translator is going home to see her family over the weekend, so that will leave us here alone. By then we will have figured out most things (how to get water, and internet) and should survive OK. If we are feeling brave, we might try and go to the zoo! Our apartment is the nicest thing ever, we figure it is the Ukraine version of the Ritz. We have hot showers, a very nice duvet on our bed and real towels. You never realize how much that means, but to date, we have had things that feel like a dish towel and aren't a whole lot bigger :) We now have nice big towels and they are soft - Praise God! The lady who owns the apartment has offered to cook for us, which we declined, but she also offered to do our laundry, and we will probably take her up on that! She is going to charge us $10, which makes us laugh at the thought that we grumbled that the dryers at Lakenheath (when we were in England) were .25cents for 15min! I'm sure it will be a blessing to her and it is certainly going to be a blessing to us.

We found out that there was a couple from E. Peoria that adopted a little boy from Kyle's group and they left days before we got here - small world. We will want to hook up with them when we get home for sure. We also met another couple from NC, but they were leaving the day after we got here. They had been in country for 24 days, this was there 3rd referral, so they were happy to be heading home. We would love it if some other American's came to this region. Just to sit and talk with someone who speaks our language (more than just English) would be nice.

The sun came out when we came South, and it has been nice. Someone once said they felt like they have been living in a black and white movie, that is how it felt in Kiev. Here, there still aren't a lot of colors on the street clothes, but the sun shining sure makes a difference.

The internet is cheap, but it is also dial-up, it makes us think our cable internet is worth it (not really of course, but we are under stress) Internet charges in the region were about .20/hour.

Interesting taxi story for those that are still reading. On Wednesday we took a cab shopping and were on our way back to the apartment. The driver took a turn and you heard a HUGE clunk! We all get out of the car, and the entire front wheel is in what looks like a storm drain, only without the cover. The wheel was completely spinning freely and the car was resting on it's frame. Within literally no less than 2 min, another cab pulls up (obviously friends) they hook a rope to the back of the stuck taxi and then hook the other end of this rope to the front of the friends cab. Then in REVERSE in traffic, the friend pulls back enough to generate smoke from his own tires and tada, we are on our way. The rope had to have been 25feet long. Everything you ever learned about towing cars and potential accidents was seen before us. Just all part of the travels I guess.

This is the picture that was on the referral from the NAC. If it looks blurry, it is! This is all that we had to go on when at the NAC.

This is one of the pics that we took on the first day that we met.

This was taken on Tuesday. We have to take him to a separate room to play, so that the other kids don't have to watch us play together and also to prevent us from bringing in our germs into the groupa room.

This is my favorite picture of Kyle. He is just so expressive once he gets comfortable being around us.

This is Oksana and Dana outside of Kyle's orphanage.

Sorry it has been a few days since our last update. Rob had a temp of 100.4 all day yesterday with a cough and sore throat, and Dana is capable of writing the text, but not getting it on the website. Today (Sunday) Rob is stuffy, but the fever is gone and he is out and about.

News---not much here, this is a 3-day weekend, but we were able to get some last minute paperwork done on Friday before everyone stopped working at noon. Oksana was able to meet with the judge and with some encouragement ($$) he has agreed to waive the 30 days. :) He wants some additional paperwork from us and the orphanage, but it is all a workable plan. We are still hoping for court on Wednesday. Oksana went home for the weekend and will be back on Tuesday morning. We are only about a 40min bus ride from her home. We are glad she was able to go home and see her daughter and family.

On Saturday, Dana went to see Kyle, he was sleeping. Getting to the orphanage during the correct times has been a real challenge. With the holiday, they have altered the schedule a bit, so we are never really sure what will be going on when we get there. Saturday night Dana was able to go back and see him for about 1hour. They stayed in the groupa with the other kids. This was difficult as all the kids are starving for attention. Very sad. Sunday morning we went back to the orphanage to the pre-arranged time of 9:30. He was again sleeping. We called Oksana and had her talk to the caregivers, who explained that the schedule wasn't messed up, he fell asleep in the sun. Today was a beautiful day and we admit a nap in the sun sounded pretty good. We went down the hall and read our books for awhile, then we were able to take him to play for about 1hour. At lunchtime we attempted to feed him, but he wasn't interested in his food. Which from the looks of things was mashed potatoes and carrots. Saturday's food looked like mashed potatoes and beets, so perhaps he is just sick of mashed potatoes.

Sunday on our way to the internet cafe we stopped by the market feeling brave, we bought a spatula. We wanted fried eggs and not scrambled, but all we have is a wooden spoon, ladle and 3 meat tenderizers as utensil choices. So the apartment owner will get a new spatula. It was $3.42, which by Ukraine standards we thought was a bit much- it could have been the "American" price, but still a deal if we can have fried eggs tomorrow. We are really missing the spice rack from home. We attempted to buy salt and pepper (like the kind you take camping), but apparently you can only buy it in bags, so a "pinch" of salt is a "pinch" of salt. (We later saw spatulas in other places and they were the same price, so we didn't get ripped off)

We finally got shoes to fit Kyle, after many attempts. Apparently the metric sizing thing isn't as smart as we thought. We measured 14cm, but the size 14 shoes were huge. We returned those, ended up with size 11's, that when you measure the bottom of the shoe, they are closer to 14cm - go figure. At any rate he now has shoes for the way home. We have been unsuccessful in finding PJ's that have little "footies" in them. We can find them for 3yr olds, or for infants, but nothing in between. We don't quite get why PJ's have been one of the hardest things to find. He does finally have some, but they are on the borderline of girly, but not as bad as the pink socks he was wearing when we met him. We are still on a mission for slipper socks, or something that will be for his feet in hotel rooms and the train, we still have a few days, although the middle of next week should hopefully be busy.

We also bought some DVD's. THe covers are in Russian, but the movies are in English. They worked out to be about $4 each, which is what we would pay for a rental, so we are ok with that.

This is Kyle is his new hat that we had bought that day. We were unsure if it would fit, so we thought it best to try it on. To our delight, it fit and he really liked the hat and started to cry when we took it off.

Kyle with our translator Oksana. She is very good with kids, which will be very handy as we make the transition away from the orphanage.

This is Kyle's "Groupa" room. This is where he has spent most of the days of his life. As you can see, it is well equipped with toys and such. His groupa consists of about 12-15 kids.

To follow up on our laundry story - quite funny really. We saw Tide in the apartment, so we were pretty sure there was access to a washer somewhere. We came home and our clothes had all been washed, but they were hanging on the line. Not a huge deal, except it was snowing! We were quite amused. She left a note that she didn't want to put the clothes through the spin cycle as they might lose there shape. As we pulled a frozen t-shirt off the line and it could stand up by itself, I think shape was our least concern! To complete the story though, she did come back the next day and iron the frozen and somewhat damp clothes and it did make them softer, still a little cold, but softer :)

This is the kitchen of the appartment where we are currently staying.

This is the view from the balcony of our appartment.

Not a lot happening over the weekend, so we thought we would make some cultural observations for you. This weekend is "Women's Day" it is a national holiday. Lots of flowers being bought. We noticed that everyone carries the flowers upsidedown. They are all sold "right" side up, just like we would see in a store, but once bought, they go heads down...interesting. We later found out there is nothing superstitious about this, it is just to protect the head of the flower, by minimizing the stress on it.

No pictures today, our usual internet cafe was crowded, so we went to a different one and don't want to try and explain to these people the USB thing, so we will have more pictures later. For those of you wondering a timeline, we will have a better idea on Wednesday for you.

Monday morning we went and saw Kyle for a bit, in our play room we managed to all get along for about 2 hours. Usually he starts to get fussy and a bit scared after about 1hour, so we counted today as progress. We also found out that his feet are ticklish and we got a great from-the-gut, almost uncontrollable laugh, so that was great!

Note from the other day, we went to a pizza place with Oksana, looked like a great place! There were no tables available. Ukraine is not a "wait to be seated" kind of place, it is a "hunt for your own table" kind of place. After looking for a table, we thought it wouldn't be long, we would wait. There were several tables that appeared to be almost finished. While waiting near the door, Oksana went to ask how long they thought a wait might be, she was told we can't wait inside near the door, we would need to leave and come back later. Well we left alright, but didn't come back later. We did however find a favorite chain pizza place (local chain). Oksana was explaining the topping choices to us, which all sounded pretty normal (except tunafish), we ordered peppers, pepperoni and tomato. The pepperoni turned out to be a marinated pepper, somewhere between a cross of a peppercini and a banana pepper. It's pizza though, you can't really mess it up! :)

Monday we walked down to McDonalds. We usually aren't a big fan, but it made for "someplace to go". It was about a 40min walk one way, and thanks to McDonalds for putting pictures of everything, we can order our own food without a translator. It makes it such a deal, two meal deals are about $4, so it all makes a positive experience. As a bonus, they have "western" style clean bathrooms.

On the news front, we didn't receive a paper that we needed from the NAC on Tuesday, which means court on Wednesday isn't happening. We did get a court date for Thursday at 4:00pm- Yeah! For those that are wondering when we are coming home..here is the generic sequence of events.... After court we then must travel to the town where Kyle was born (approx 30km) we then get a new birth certificate and passport, this could be a slow or expensive process. Then we travel back to Kiev to do some things at both the American Embassy and the Polish Embassy. After that we are off to Poland to finalize some paperwork at the American Embassy in Warsaw, then home. We will most likely be in Poland for 2 nights, depending on the day of the week when we get there. That is all generic, but nothing can start to move until AFTER court, so the aforementioned items should start happening tomorrow (Friday). They have since changed the immigration process and Poland is no longer a required element to the adoption process.

Other news, Oksana broke a tooth, which is the bad news, the good news is her sister is a dentist and we are close to her home. She was able to take a bus home first thing Wednesday morning. No paperwork was able to get done today in our city as there was a city-wide notary meeting, that will last the whole day She was able to get home, and made it back here by 12, feeling much better.

Life here is starting to get old, nice place, but.... Our spatula purchase was the best $3 we have spent in awhile. It finally broke up our steady breakfast of alternating between scrambled eggs and instant oatmeal. We are very much breakfast people and longing for cold cereal (with great milk) and waffles someday very soon :) To have a bed that was designed for people over 6' would be a bonus for Rob!

To follow up earlier report on Kyle, he has 4 upper teeth and 2 lower. We have had a couple of good visits. We are all getting tired of the play room, we are just ready to go home now.

Another note about the orphanage, there is this older guy who wanders the halls in the evenings. He looks to be like the maintenance man or something. At any rate, we call him the hall monitor. It is funny how he instills that same fear you had in Jr. High if you were wandering the halls in between classes. The door to the orphanage is locked in the evenings, so he locks it after we leave. Seems like a nice man, doesn't speak any English and all we can do is count and describe our place setting in Russian, so we don't talk much.

We didn't realize until recently that we didn't post Kyle's full name. He was going to be Kyle Nicolai, but we felt is was it was a bit of a mouthful, so after a little discussion, he is Kyle Robert, which flows a bit better.

When Oksana was home over the weekend, she found some PJ's with feet in them - made our day. It's funny how you get so used to having choices, lots of them. Target, BabiesRus, Sears, Penny's - any of them would have more PJ choices then we would know what to do with, and we can't even find one pair here! They aren't pink, which we are happy about, they are however like a peachy color, we prefer to think of them as orange. Despite this issue, we would still not recommend buying clothes to take with you. Odds are they wouldn't fit, and you just need clothes to get you home.

Another cultural note, we had packed a BUNCH of Charmin and Puffs-to-go packs. With Rob's serious cold, and Dana's not as serious, but still needing tissues, we were quickly depleting our supply. We went shopping to buy "the softest tissues we could find". Oksana suggested the Polish brand over the Ukrainian one, great we thought- we bought 5 travel size packets. After home, we discover that a McDonalds napkin is softer than these things! To top it off they are scented. We are missing a concept- why would you want an extremely scented rough piece of paper on your nose? Coca-cola made it over here and if you work for Kleenex or Puffs, I think there is a market here that needs to be tapped. To continue our quest, we went to an "expensive" department store and found some pocket tissues that said "tissues" on them. We figured the English printing was a good sign and bought some - TADA!! this is what we are looking for. We went back and bought all they had, which was only 4 more, but it should get us by till Poland. Who would have thought that our Puffs would become one of our most valuable assets in the suitcase. They are now a rationed item, to be used sparingly.

Don't know when we will post again, hopefully things will start moving quickly after court, if that happens our posts will become very abbreviated, but we know you understand :) Our plan at this point is to leave for Kiev on the Saturday night train, so we should have Saturday afternoon to make a final post from here. I think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the place where we have been doing most of our updating from. This cafe has about 12 computers running Windows XP Home and have Microsoft Excel and Word as well. Mainly these computers are used by younger boys for playing games.

This is the main street that Dana and I walk up often for the internet cafe and also McDonalds. This is just to give you all a better picture of Ukraine.

This is the hotel that we stayed in the first night that we were here. We stayed on the 10th floor and rode in very small elevators.

This is a small grocery store where we have done some shopping to get us by until we get to go the big store. Everything is behind glass, so you have to ask for everything. Obviously, we don't like to shop here that much. This is a 5 minute walk from our apartment.

This is the market that is between the hotel we stayed in and the internet cafe. It is about a 7 minute walk from the apartment. Most of the stores are outside, but there are some inside. This is where we bought some of Kyle's clothes as well as the spatula. The gray buildings in the background are the outdoor stores.

This is the apartment building that we are currently staying in. We live on the third floor. It's hard to get a good shot of the building because there are a lot of trees.

It's official - we have been declared parents by the court in Ukraine! Court was an experience that was eventful. You don't need a translator to translate tension and stress. The judge looked like a military officer, he was younger then we thought he would be (maybe 40) and was pretty gruff. The questions were grueling to include things like, what does Caterpillar do? Where is their HQ? He wanted our income figures, as net, not gross. He wanted what Dana's WAS, even though she won't be working and lots more. How long do you plan to care for the child? That one got us, how do you answer that.....till he is 10...What kind of question is that?? At anyrate at the end Oksana said, "that was the worst". But according to the director and the inspector, he was on good behavior, he usually throws things and yells more. Glad he was having a good day :) He approved our adoption and waived the 30 days! :) That's what matters.

Friday was a busy paper chase. Started by traveling to Kyle's hometown to get the birth cert, no problems (about 40min drive), then back to town to "legalize" it, well they wanted something else from the vital records office in his hometown, so back we went. Then we had more running around to do, so we didn't get to the passport office till 2 (we were there before then, but they were closed for lunch). By God's grace we were able to have a passport by 3:30! Only after it was over did we find out that the guy who authorizes them wasn't in today, he just "happened" to stop in for about 40 minutes, so he was able to authorize the passport.

So the plan from here is the overnight train back to Kiev, leaving here Saturday night at 7:30. Kyle's big adventure begins, the outside world, cars, trains and planes! Once in Kiev, we won't be able to get all our paperwork done on Monday, there will be a piece we will have to wait till Tuesday morning for, but we are still hoping to make the 12noon flight to Warsaw, which puts us leaving Poland Thursday -That is the "plan" for today.

Hello again from Kiev! This will be our last post from Ukraine, but we wanted to fill you in on some of the details of the past few days...

We took the overnight train on Saturday and arrived in Kiev at 6am. We decided to travel first class which costs about $20 more a ticket. In our opinion is wasn't worth it. You do get a bigger cabin, a little softer bed, a cleaner bathroom, and a cabin that's not as hot. But all in all, we thought that it would be better (and cheaper) to buy all 4 beds of a normal cabin. We have been absolutely amazed at how well Kyle has been doing. We have experienced together his first car ride, first train ride, first time seeing traffic, first time sleeping away from other children and HE HAS DONE TERRIFIC! We just praise God for answering our prayers and the prayers of our friends and family that Kyle would know that we are his parents and that he would be comforted throughout all of this. Kyle didn't fuss much when we put him in his make-shift bed on the train and he actually slept the whole night! We, however, didn't sleep much because we were worried that he might roll our of his bed.

Kyle had been eating very well and is enjoying the variety of foods of the outside world. We have had a few battles over nap time and food, but we think that's OK. We are missing some of the parenting "tools" such as a highchair and a crib. It's hard to convince a little one to go to bed when he's sleeping on two recliners pushed together and can easily crawl out.

We went to the Polish Embassy today for Kyle's visa and also bought plane tickets to get to Poland. We are flying out tomorrow afternoon on Aerosvit and are so excited to be leaving Ukraine. We have had a wonderful experience here, but it will be awesome to get to "western" civilization again. We are DEFINATELY looking forward to it. Talk to you again from Poland...

Hello from Warsaw, Poland!!! As stated earlier, when adopting now, you no longer have to travel to Poland. We arrived in Warsaw yesterday and have discovered a little taste of what heaven will be like :) We stayed at the Marriott downtown last night and it was absolutely fantastic. It's so wonderful to be back in an environment like the USA. The hotel staff were excellent and catered to our every need. They brought a crib and a high-chair to our room, which is SO WONDERFUL. Naptime and food time have been so much easier now that we have these tools. The breakfast buffet was the best that we have ever had at a hotel, or at least it seemed that way. Kyle was able to eat a huge variety of foods and he liked most of what we put in front of him. I would highly recommend this hotel. It is about a 10-15 minute walk from the American Embassy.

Today, we had our doctors appointment (with Dr. Kruk) at 9:15 and then had our appointment at the US Embassy at 10:15. This appointment was to finalize some of the paperwork and to get a visa for Kyle to enter the US. The Embassy appointment went fairly quickly and we were back at the hotel by 11:30. We then had to pick up the visa at 3:00pm. We then moved our stuff to the new Marriott Courtyard by the airport. It is literally right across the street from the airport, no need for taxi.

We called British Air today to see if we could get on tomorrow's flight (3-18). The gal told Dana that our tickets were not changeable and that we would have to wait until 3-25 to return to the US. OK, that wasn't funny. At $100/night plus food, that would get really expensive quickly. So we put in a call to Dana's parents to report "Houston, we have a problem!" In our frustration, we forgot that the US is about 8 hours behind Poland local time, so we called them at about 1:00am!! Once the travel agency that we used opened, they were able to straighten everything out and to book us and Kyle on the 8:20am flight tomorrow, PRAISE GOD! We knew that God would make a way for us to get home, but we just didn't know when that would be. So if all goes as planned, we should be back in Chicago by 3:25pm. After processing through immigrations and our 2 1/2 hour drive to Peoria, we should be back home by about 8:30pm.

Please continue to pray for us. Our flight to Warsaw was very trying and difficult. Kyle was upset most of the trip because his routine had been completely messed up that day. It took all that we had to keep him quiet and somewhat happy. Please pray the he will be able to sleep on the flight to London and also some on the flight to Chicago. We have a 3 hour layover in London, so hopefully that will help us all. Thanks again for all who have been supporting us through your emails and prayers. We are just so thankful to God for guiding us to our son. We will post more details and pictures once we are home and settled. USA, here we come!

Hello AGAIN from Warsaw, Poland!!! So a wise man once told me that "it's good to have a plan, so you know where you've deviated from." So today, we got up extra early and got all packed up and ready to go. We went across the street to the airport and processed through security, so we could stand in line at the ticket counter. Once we got through, we were told that we had to go upstairs to the office because there was a problem with our ticket. We had talked with our travel agent yesterday and she assured us that everything was straightened out and that we wouldn't have any problems today. Well, that's not what happened. The British Airways office once again told us that our tickets are non-transferable and non-changeable. We had never been so upset, the agent said I need to contact my travel agent in the US, to which I explained it's the middle of the night there, she looked at me very coldly and said "you have 5 minutes until the flight closes", but still would not allow us to get on the plane. So, we loaded up our bags and headed back to the hotel. They allowed us to get back into our room, so that was good. Dana again placed a call to her parents (Command Central), this time with the knowledge that it was midnight and that her mom would still be up. Turns out she wasn't, but she didn't mind. We have left messages with the travel agency and have to wait a few more hours from now to find out our next course of action. Please join us in praying that God will make a way for us to get home as soon as possible.

Today was a very trying day for all of us. Kyle was up a lot last night coughing and is consequently VERY crabby today. We didn't sleep much either, so we are all a bit crabby! We put him down for a nap a few hours after breakfast, but he only slept an hour. So now we are REALLY READY TO GET HOME. It's just very hard to live in a hotel with a young baby. We thought we would go to the pool today, but then learned that this hotel doesn't have a pool :( We are definitely missing the Marriott downtown. It was great to be able to go for walks and to have shopping variety right outside the door. Plus, the Marriott also had a pool and an executive lounge that was great.

Hopefully, we will be out of here tomorrow, but one can never tell. Hopefully this will be our last post from Poland.

Well, we are still in Poland, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Our travel agent has been working hard on our behalf, trying to straighten out the mess with our tickets. As it turns out, the people at British Air in the US have said that there is nothing wrong with our tickets and that the Warsaw office is just not playing by the rules. For some reason, she just doesn't want to let us on the plane. She knows that we have adopted, but isn't giving us any special treatment. So, when there's a block in the road, God makes a way around it. Our travel agent, decided to try another route and was able to arrange for us to fly on LOT (Polish Airlines) to get us home. It actually ended up being about the same price if we would have paid the change fees and bought Kyle's ticket on BA. We are leaving tomorrow, we already have our tickets and the flight is only about half full. This is what we were told, turned out the flight was completely booked. We are first flying to Krakow (short flight) and have a 2 hour layover. Then we have a direct flight from Krakow to Chicago. We originally wanted to fly LOT, since we have heard such great things about it, but couldn't work in out, but now we are! We are leaving Warsaw at 9:05am and should get into Chicago at about 3:10pm.

We all had a great night sleep last night. We all slept about 10 hours! Even after that Kyle took an 1 1/2 hour nap this morning and has been in a great mood all day. We have moved back to the Marriott downtown, since there's so much more to do downtown and with the weekend rates, it's quite affordable. For those who are traveling to Warsaw in the future, we highly recommend the Marriott hotel downtown. They have been great to us and nearly everyone speaks English. There is a store called Rossman's that is in the same building as the hotel. They are kind of like a Walgreen's, you can get diapers, baby food, film, deodorant, etc. The big children's store that many people have mentioned (Smyk) is a short 7 minute walk. There is also lots of places to eat. The internet cafe that I'm in right now is across the street from the hotel and is open 24hrs. It's located in one of the underground crosswalks, but there is a huge sign for it above ground.

We bought some swimming trunks for Kyle (5$ from M&M) and are thinking about seeing what he thinks about pools. He likes bath time, but the water will be much cooler. We'll see. We never did get him in the pool, he (Kyle) went to bed early and we took turns using the fantastic pool.

I know that I said this before, but hopefully this will be our last post from Poland! We have actually enjoyed our time here, despite the delays in our departure. Poland is a neat city with lots to do and see. We wouldn't mind coming here again. Until next time...

We made it home! To those of you who have been following our lives like a soap opera, this will be the final episode. Our flight to Krakow was fine, a very noisy prop plane, but Kyle actually seemed to like the turbulence. Our layover was long, as he didn’t nap, but that proved to be great, as he slept very well on the 10-hour flight home. He slept for probably 6 hours of the flight, broken up into several naps. He did very well, at one point, he woke up looked around and started to cry with this look of frustration, as if to say “I can’t believe we are still on this plane”. It at least looked normal for him to cry, but we echoed his feelings. We did end up buying him a ticket, which turned out to be a good thing as the flight was completely full. Immigration in Chicago took about 10min and we were on our way. The 2 ½ hour car ride home was definitely testing to the tired parents, Kyle had no problems sleeping in the car seat, but for us staying awake was a challenge. We all woke up around 3am, had some food, went back to bed and slept till 6am. We consider that a good start to recovery. Now we are all very anxious to get into a normal routine.

It’s wonderful to be back home and see all the clothes you forgot you owned. We traveled light (which we highly recommend) but only had 3 shirts each, and today we plan on wearing white socks “just because we can”. We are enjoying being home with all of its conveniences such as water you can drink from the tap, fast Internet connection whenever we want it, being able to cook our meals, and being able to get in a car and drive.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support, and thank you to those “strangers” in our lives who sent encouraging emails throughout the trip. For those who said so, we are glad this journal has helped you and wish you the best in your own adoption adventure. This experience has been a blessing, we wouldn’t change the outcome at all, we are truly blessed with a wonderful son. We will post some final pictures, once we get our film developed. We hope this journal has helped you if you are now considering adoption. Please don't hesitate to email us with any questions you might have.