Hey friends! It's 5:16pm Friday here (10:15am there) and we are just chilling with our boys....all 3 of them. It has already been wonderful...and difficult...and great....and crazy....and we have had them with us about 6 hours.

We'll start with yesterday (Thursday). We had walked down to our local favorite restaurant (Misleevitz--the Hunter) and Andrey (our facilitator) called. He had made it into town and was going to head to the passport office to begin the process. A little bit later he called us and said that he had bad news. Passport office was closed for new passports...those are only processed on Mon-Wed-Fri. He said he was coming to pick us up at the restaurant and head back to the passport office to try to "negotiate" getting it done a day early. So, we went back....no go...the chief of the office had not even come in yet. So, we head over to the notary office to do something else on the paperwork...no go...the notary was out of the office with someone who was buying a home. So, we head to the office to get their ID number updated with their new names. This is kind of like our social security number. I was literally going to burst into tears if that person was out of the office too. Fortunately for me, and for Greg, they were there and we were able to get that done. Then back to notary office where we got that done. So, we came back home and waited another day to get our boys.

This morning, Yari came and picked us up about 10:30am and we headed to the orphanage to get the boys. We got them all changed into the clothes we had brought them and headed out. The director and all their friends were trying to tell them goodbye, and they just ran. We couldn't even get them to turn around. It was pretty cute...I'm glad they don't seem like they will be sad at all about leaving the people they have lived with for the past few years. That may change and we will deal with those emotions as they come. Anyway, we took them to the pizza place for lunch and everyone ate like champs. Pizza, fruit, juice, and ice cream with chocolate for dessert. We were hoping for no upset tummies and so far, so good! We then spent a couple of hours in the car while Andrey was working on the passports. God blessed us today by having the old passports available in this region. Praise Him! We now have their passports in hand and are ready to leave Zhytomyr for Kiev on Sunday. We could have even left today, but felt like the kids (including Jackson) needed to decompress a bit and we didn't want to have to rush packing since we can't do anything further in the process until Monday anyway. But, we have a big prayer request. Our original return flight is set up for Sunday, March 15th. Obviously we are not going to make that flight. So, I called Air France to try to change it. Bad news there...the earliest flight is March 24th.....Greg and I don't think we can stay here that long. They have found us some earlier flights on Wed. and Thurs. but will cost us a good bit more. We just need your prayers in deciding what is the best option for us. We also need your prayers for our relationships and communication with each other. Pray for good rest for us all...we will need it! As always, we love you and miss you and thank God for your friendship and love!