SATURDAY JUNE 23, 2007


WE ARE THE PROUD PARENTS OF THREE DARLING CHILDREN J

We picked up Alex (age 4) at the orphanage in Donetsk at about 9:30 am. He was in the hallway waiting to go play with his “Groupa” when we walked into the main entrance, & bursting through the crowd, he ran up to Laura and gave her a big hug as if to say “Yay! You’re here-Let’s go!”

It took us about an hour to finish all the orphanage paperwork, get him changed into his new clothing that we had brought along, donate other clothing, give our “gift” to the orphanage and then we were off to lunch at, where else but McDonald’s (They have standardized clean bathrooms there)! There, we found out that he didn’t like his Chicken McNuggets and only used the French fries as a tool to scoop up the the sweet sauce that came with the McNuggets. Then we were off on the hour & ½ trip to Kramatorsk to pick up Michael (age 7) and Stephanie (age 5).






When we arrived at the orphanage in Kramatorsk, we went through the same routine, but this time it was a lot shorter process, and they brought Michael & Stephanie in to us and their younger brother. There were great big smiles & hugs from both of them, although none of them seemed to remember each other. In fact we think Alex was a little afraid that we were going to leave him there & take the other 2! They are all blood related siblings, but were separated over a year & ½ ago. We had them change into their new outfits as well, and then we were off to Donetsk again. Picture a small Chevy compact with our driver & facilitator up front, and 5 of us in the small back seat! Let‘s just say it was interesting for an hour & ½--but really, it didn‘t seem that long because we were all so excited, and we did get to stop on the side of the highway twice for 2 little boys who had to go to the bathroom (little did we know, that was only the very beginning of hitting every bathroom, everywhere we go!), so the trip did go by fast! Did I mention that when you bring kids into McDonalds they give them a balloon on a stick? That was with us in the back seat as well, & it did eventually pop & give all of us a heart attack in the car, so we had entertainment too! Then we went back to the apartment we had rented there to pick up our luggage before going to the airport & wait the two hours for our plane from Donetsk to Kiev to take off. It was great getting acquainted with all of them again and we had fun watching them all playing & yes, running in the airline terminal. One thing we must mention here: We had one of the kindest, patient drivers we could have ever hoped for in Donetsk. He took care of us from our first trip down to Donetsk, waited with us during the long paperwork chase, helped us with our (much too heavy) luggage & groceries, he even took us to a great supermarket & helped us pick out good food/brands to buy that we needed since everything was in Cyrillic! He really became a friend to us rather than just a driver, & we had lot’s of laughs with him. When we were leaving Donetsk, we were so touched & surprised that his lovely wife & handsome son met us at the airport to meet the kids, wish us well & even gave us 2 lovely gifts! We will write to our dear friends there to let them know how we are doing, & send them pictures!


At 6 pm we were on the plane and the kids got their first ride in an airplane. Michael was glued to the window for most of the trip, Stephanie would watch everything and Alex fell asleep ( very over tired) . When they served the snack onboard (small roll, butter, sausage, cheese, ham & olives with a cookie and a small juice container), they ate it all and Michael was going to save his to eat later (the hoarding syndrome that we had heard about). Our facilitator told him that he had to eat it now and that he couldn’t take it off the plane, so then he understood & really was hungry--he wolfed it down happily..




We landed and were met by two drivers to take us (& all our luggage) to our new apartment in Kyiv and get some groceries. The apartment was old and only had a small bed for the kids. We told our facilitator to get us another apartment for tomorrow (Sunday).

Sunday June 24

We moved to a beautiful apartment about a block away. All of the kids had a melt down when Ed went to get the other bags. They thought we were leaving them there. We then settled down into the new apartment. After a little nap we took them to the playground up the street where they burnt off some excess energy.


At about 5 pm we decided to take a walk down to Independence Square for dinner and exchange money. We tried McDonald’s again and all three enjoyed their cheese burger happy meals. Since Alex didn’t want his French fries the other two fed them to the pigeons. 3 more balloons were given to the kids at McDonald’s! Fun-Fun!




Monday June 25

Today was spent getting the kids medical exams for the US Embassy. This took us almost 3 hours. Then it was off to British Airlines to find out that there were no early flights out of Ukraine till July 3rd (which were our original tickets). They put us on standby for July 3rd . The only other tickets were to Heatrow and then a bus to Gatwick and stay overnight till the morning of the 3rd and fly out. The hotel was about 500 British pounds a night (approx $600 USD). No way with three kids and 4 suitcases!!! Our appointment for the Embassy is at 11 am on Tuesday.


Tuesday June 26

British Airways called and said that they got us on the direct flight to Gatwick, England then directly on to Florida and HOME!!!!

The Embassy was another lesson in “hurry up and wait“. We filled out the I-600 forms and went over all the paperwork with the people there. After waiting another hour (almost 4 hours total) they said the Visa’s will be ready at 4PM. So off we went to McDonald’s for another quick meal (and another 3 balloons) and then back to the Embassy. Guess what? They were not ready and they said maybe they’ll be ready in an hour “or so…” or they would have them ready for us by 9:30 the next morning. After waiting with 3 kids for ½ a day, fighting traffic to give them lunch at 4PM & then fighting traffic to get back to the Embassy by 4, we were not pleased to hear this!!! Then, because we didn’t have the kids passports (The Embassy still had them), we couldn’t go to British Airways to get the kids tickets.

By the way: Thursday and Friday are holiday’s in Ukraine for Constitution Day. So all banks, Gov’t. offices & of course, the US Embassy are closed. So we MUST get the visa’s and tickets in the morning.


Wednesday June 27


We were up nice and early to get to the Embassy by 10 am. Once we were there it was another 20 minute wait till all the paperwork & visa’s were finished and handed over to us with instructions about handing the sealed envelopes over to Customs once we land in Florida. From there we went to the British Airways office and got the three additional tickets for our flight home. They were great at British Airways and very helpful including putting in for kids meals on the flight out of Ukraine and to Florida. Very nice people to work with! Then we went back to the apartment, ate lunch and the kids took a nap (which they are used to but have been missing these past couple days). We then walked to the playground to wear them out againJ


Actually, we were all worn out after these last couple of days and got a good night’s sleep.