What lies ahead...

Today, the court offices and offices of vital records re-open from the holidays. Our wait-period was over on Thursday so things pick up today. We hope to be out of Odessa by Wed/Thurs, then up to Kiev. It will probably be Wednesday at the earliest of next week before getting home. We are ready to be back. As you know, the kids have
been with us for three weeks. Their time with us has been extremely
valuable, but has been exhausting. They need constant attention and we have
been giving it to them. We can't wait to get home to establish a slower
routine. Again, we can't wait to get back. At the missionary worship last
night, we told the missionaries how much we loved them and loved being with
them for a while, but we hoped not to see them again until our next missions
trip. It has been great to be with them.

We have just found out that the judge is ill today.....so we have to wait
another day to get the court papers. We can proceed toward
getting passports, though.

We got our petition for the kids' passports completed and signed at the notary's office. A notary in Ukraine is almost a lawyer with several years of extra college type study.

Tomorrow we leave the flat at 8 AM to start all the paper work. To be quiet honest I am not sure what we have to do but I will do whatever our facilitator, Sergei, says! Sergei has returned from the holidays with his family to finish up the week with us. We have to get old birth certificates, present them for new ones with our names as the parents of Christina and Kolya. Although both were born in Odessa, they were born in 2 different regions so we have 2 office of vital statistics to go and apply for the birth certificates. Also need their tax number, kind of like a social security number. We need to apply and get the passports. We also need to be officially presented by the inspector - at this point I am not sure which inspector it is - the kids at the orphanage and the kids will pick up their belongings.

Darlene Quaterman has offered to take the kids tomorrow for us as it will be very tedious for them. THANK YOU, DARLENE!!!

Kolya has already packed his bag and his back pack. They both are going around the apartment asking what is going to America and what is staying. I finally was able to have Sergei explain to them today that only what fits in 4 suitcases, 4 carry ons will go to America. When we took down the Christmas tree today, they were a little sad that it was not going to make it to America. But when we explained the difference with the electricity, this was done by showing the 2 types of plugs not with a lot of words, then they were happy to pack it up for Sergei to take home for his family.

It was rainy today. It was Christina's turn to go to the magazine - grocery store - with me. We find it easier to separate on shopping. We have a list that she carries. She gets to push the cart, which by the way goes in sideways as well as forward and backward. When shopping you have to decide how much you can carry and prioritize in that way. If all 4 of us go, we buy more. If just 2 of us go, I have to carry it all so we buy less. I really will miss walking to shop. I really do like it!! Strange!!

We also separated when we went shopping for shoes. Kolya and I went first. The shoes are very nice shoes but in the stores you do not pick a style you find your size and see what style is available. Fortunately the shoes Kolya picked out were in his size! Then we went over to the back packs and had a fun time picking out his back pack. As I have stated at another time, the kids like to watch Cars in Russian and that is the back pack he chose. We returned home and then Dan took Christina to get her shoes and back pack. They were very excited to get shoes to wear on the airplane to America. The shoes have velcro, not many laces here. Both Christina and Kolya have snow boots but that is all. So this was really big in preparing for coming to America!!


Thanks for everyone who has been praying for us. Many have emailed or facebooked us to encourage us. It is working. We had a good day today. Starting to see them working at their anger and resisting a tantrum. Also the word "skate" came up again and was met with "no" again. They did not even try to fuss. Dan and I have agreed to no ice skating here however we know there is a rink in Kiev and if it works out we will try it again with out the rest of the carnival to distract. The kids had really improved from holding onto the side all the way around to going around without any help at all!! So we will probably try again in Kiev. More pics to come!!

In Him Alone,

Leslie