Hey everyone! 4:37pm here Sunday (9:37am there) and we are in Kiev! Can't believe it...I really can't. Everything cam together perfectly. Of course, we scrambled a bit to get packed because we were told our transportation would be there by noon and he got there at 10am! So, the rest of the stuff I had not packed is literally THROWN into our suitcases and I don't care! And for those of you that know me at all, know that I am a meticulous packer. I normally can't stand not knowing exactly where something is....and I don't care!!!! That is how excited I am! The boys slept great last night...only about 15 mins. to wind down this time! Then everyone got along fairly well while Greg and I were running around trying to get us out of Zhytomyr! The ride to Kiev was the biggest blessing! Philip and Ryan didn't complain a bit! In fact, Jackson complained the most because we did not prepare to leave at that time and didn't have anything for them to snack on handy! But, Philip fell asleep almost immediately after we began the drive. We thought this was odd because we had only been awake for a couple of hours. After we arrived in Kiev, we realized he had a fever! I gave him Ibuprofen and it did help, but we are of course worried that it is something more serious. Please pray for him, and for all of us to stay well! We are staying in Kiev in a 1-bedroom apartment...it's about 1/3 the size of our place in Zhytomyr and it costs about 1&1/2 times as much as our house rent was per night. And I still don't care!!! We are coming home in 3-4 days and I am just so ready!!! Please continue to pray for a smooth rest of our journey. We go to the American Embassy tomorrow for the required medical exam for the boys. Hopefully, they will also be able to help us out if Philip is worse! We will decide tomorrow whether we will be able to fly out on Wed. or Thurs. based on what the Embassy tells us. We will keep you all posted.

I had not gotten on the computer or the blog at all since my last post, so I read the comments right before this post. Debby and Donald, your posts made me cry. Something about what both of you wrote just set me off today! Thank you both! But, really, thank you all for following our journey, for all your posts that we could not wait to read each day, and most of all for all your prayers. We have definitely felt them. God has certainly stretched us farther than we ever imagined on this journey, and somehow I don't think he is through stretching us yet! We are so, so, so thankful for each of you and your presence in our lives! As always, we love you and miss you and can't wait to see you!!!

Hey folks! 9:08 pm Saturday here (2:08pm there) and we are watching one of Jackson's movies and getting ready to wind down for bed. We all had a nap today, so we are letting them stay up a little later tonight. We have had a much "easier" day today. I put that in quotes because it was still somewhat hard. The language barrier is so huge, but we are seeming to be able to work through it with our version of sign language. On a big positive, both boys are very adept at washing themselves and getting themselves dressed. They can both brush their teeth too, but Momma is a little bit too anal to let them. All 3 boys slept well last night after about 45min. of playing and us trying to get them to wind down. Greg and I didn't sleep very well, but you can imagine the excitement/doubt/worry/joy/fear/anxiety/etc. we are going through. I'm certain we will have more sleepness nights throughout their upbringing. What parent doesn't? Ryan had a pretty good crying spell last night, and that was just different for him because neither of them ever cry when they get hurt. We know that it was probably just him missing his life and the only home/family he has ever known. No crying today though, so we are very pleased. I have been doing some packing off and on today because we leave tomorrow before noon for Kiev. Sasha has rented us a place to stay there and Monday we will visit the American Embassy to begin the final processes before we can leave. Monday we will decide if we can get done and fly out on Wed. or if we will have to wait until Thurs. We are just so thrilled that we don't have to spend another weekend in Ukraine, so either day is fine with us. Pray for Wed. though because that day would be the best, obviously. Jackson has been such a champ throughout all of this...even the part where they have come in and just started acting crazy. We are very proud of him and just keep explaining to him how much we love him and how God has given us enough love for all 3 of our boys! We are going to try to do something special with just him soon after we get home and his birthday party will be on the books as soon as we can get back and get settled. We'll keep all of his buddies posted about that special day! Well, I will go for now! Love and miss you all!

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!

Hey everyone! 7:53pm Wednesday here (12:53pm there)! It's Jackson's 6th birthday today! Happy, Happy birthday to our precious son. We are truly blessed to have him and praise God every day for entrusting him to us to raise! We love you, Jackson!

Tuesday was a long day of travel. We went to Kiev to get Philip's new birth certificate. After spending a couple of hours in the car and fighting through Kiev traffic, we finally made it to the office we needed to get to. Once there, we found out the director of that division was off and wouldn't be back until today. So, Andrey (facilitator) just left all of our paperwork with them and set up to come in this morning. We headed back and had a bright moment at the end of our day when we got to talk to Mary, Starlette, Matt, and Eli on webcam. That made the not so great day so much better.

Wednesday started off rough. Sasha and Andrey drove here from Kiev...with no birth certificate. Turns out there is some new "red tape" the director in Kiev was requiring. Sasha said he has been doing this job for 10 years and has never had to go through this for a birth certificate. However, he was able to accomplish what the director required while Yari, Andrey, Greg, Jackson, and I went to Yi-mil-chee-no for Ryan's birth certificate. It was another 2+ hours on a much worse road to get there. But, we made it and got the new certificate. And Sasha got Philip's and faxed it to the office in Yimilchino, so we got both certificates legalized. I praise God for ending up working the certificates out for us in the time we were praying for. Now, we get to go ahead and start on passports tomorrow. Plus, best of all, we get to bring the boys home with us tomorrow for good. So, we ask that you pray for the old passports to be available in Zyhtomyr---the old type takes about 2 hours to get made. If no old are available, we will have to do new type, which will take 2-7 days. Also, pray for all of us as we officially begin the adjustment to a family of 5! It will be different for us all! As always, we love and miss you!

Hey everybody! It's 7:30pm Monday here and due to no DST in Ukraine we are now only 7 hours apart. So, it is 12:30pm there. Well, we have had a good couple of days. Our driver did not want to work yesterday due to it being Women's Day, so we just had a lazy morning. Then we got dressed and walked to "The Hunter" for lunch. It was all decorated with balloons and even a balloon "8" for March 8th holiday. They gave me a tulip and a glass of some beverage (I'm sure they told me what it was, but in Russian of course) that was pretty good for Women's Day. We then walked over to Furshet (the market) and shopped around in there for a while. We walked back and played with Jackson a little bit and watched "Surf's Up" with him. After he went to bed, Greg and I started season 1 of "24". For all you fans out there, this is one intense show. We watched 4 episodes back-to-back and finally decided we should head to bed! It was hard to stop watching, though!

Today, we got up and Yari picked us up to head to the orphanage. At the beginning of the visit Yarik was able to get Ryan to tell me "Happy Birthday, Mama!" It was super sweet. Philip still would not say it. However, I was trying to say the Russian word for Monday...then I said "Angleeski Monday" and he said the Russian word then said "Angleeski Monday". I almost cried....I know the language stuff will come, but it was music to my ears! The boys were especially rowdy today and Ryan cried when we left. I think they are as tired of us just visiting there as we are. We tried our best to explain to them that we would come in 3 days and take them with us forever. I actually can't believe that special day is almost here! But, today is my birthday and thanks to all of you who have already mentioned it to me.... It has certainly been the best birthday ever as I am getting the wonderful gift of 2 new sons. But, it has also been one of my loneliest! Greg and Jackson have done their absolute best to try to make me feel special today and I do.......but, I miss all the rest of my nearest and dearest. I just wanted to tell you all that this time away from you has just made me know how much I love you all the more! So, I can't wait to see you all!

Please pray for us tomorrow and Wednesday as we will be traveling a good bit to get the boys' new birth certificates. As always, we love and miss you all!

Hey everyone! 7:30pm Saturday here (11:30 am there) and Carol should be somewhere over the Atlantic. She is set to arrive in Birmingham at 5pm-ish today. Sasha came to pick her up about 9pm last night and asked us to go to dinner with him before they left. So, we went to our favorite traditional Ukrainian restaurant and as always it was good. I'm glad we went because none of us had been able to eat much dinner and Carol had not eaten anything because we were just busy getting her ready to go. She had a tearful moment before leaving us....she didn't know if she was sad, scared, or excited. But, she was very emotional either way. We will be glad to get a call from her about 1am our time letting us know she made it safely! We loved having her with us for so much of our journey and we will certainly miss her!

We had a great morning just relaxing and then we had our driver pick us up for lunch and market. After that, we went to visit the boys and as usual here lately they did not want us to go. It is so hard to continue to leave them there, especially since today was our 10th day of the 10-day waiting period. They are completely ours now. However, we are not going to take them out of the orphanage just yet. Monday is a holiday as I mentioned earlier, so none of the final "stuff" can be done that day. Then Tuesday and Wednesday we will be getting their new birth certificates with their new names, birthdays, and us as their parents. One of them is in a town about 100km from Zhytomyr and the other is in Kiev, 100km the other way. So, it will take both days to get them since we will do 1 each day. Then Thursday, we will get the boys and begin the passport process. They will leave the orphanage with us on Thursday...finally! It has certainly been a long journey, but one that is about to come to an end....at least the Ukraine part! Praise God for His gracious provision! We love and miss you all!

Hey everybody! It's 4:30pm here Friday (8:30am there) and we are just slowing down after a very busy day. But, first off, yesterday....we visited the boys and had a great visit with them. They were both loving and seemed like they didn't want us to leave. We had our driver tell them it's just a few more days until they can come with us! Afterward, we had lunch at McDonald's (Carol's request, not Jackson's if you can believe it) and walked around the mall ("Caravan") for a bit. We got a few more toys for the 3 boys (puzzles and magnet-art--so cheap) and got a sweater-jacket thing for Greg. Now he will fit in better with the Ukraine men! We found out some not so great news that because of a Ukrainian holiday ("Women's Day--if you can believe it") that falls on Sunday, March 8th, business will be closed on Monday. Yet one more day of sitting and waiting for us to get to start our paperwork to leave. God is really growing us through this whole experience! Anyway, today we got to the orphanage and it turns out they were having a program for "Women's Day". It was so great to get to be there for that. I got lots of pics and video that I think our boys will love to see for a long time to come! The older kids Philip's age were all dressed up and did various songs and speaking parts. Of course we didn't understand a word of it, but it was still great to see. And Philip and Ryan were both dressed so cute for it! It was a very fun visit...once again they didn't want us to leave! After lunch at the potato house we headed back home and quickly got to work trying to make arrangements for Carol to come home early. You heard me right....this morning she came down and told us that she loved us very, very, very much but that she had made the decision to go on home. So, we told her we supported her and appreciated all she had done for us so far. So, she will be arriving in Birmingham at 5pm tomorrow afternoon! I did tell her that I am a little jealous! Greg said that Jackson and I could come on home and start getting things ready there and that he would get Philip and Ryan home by himself. But, honestly Jackson and I don't want to leave Greg, Philip, and Ryan. So, we will stick it out together and still pray for God to get us home as soon as possible. A lot of you have been asking for dates and we honestly don't know. We think that at the longest we should be here would be leaving on Saturday, March 21st....and believe me I think that is the longest. We are very prayerful for Tues, the 17th or Wed, the 18th. Please keep us in your prayers....our spirits are very tender right now. We have such moments of elation and such moments of sadness back to back! As always we love and miss you all!