We arrived in Kiev today after a thankfully uneventful plane ride. Aside from some turbulence and mild nausea, we landed in Kiev around lunch time. We breezed through immigration and customs without anyone even looking up at us and were greeted by our driver. I am certain he is used to bleary eyed half asleep Americans because he took over and helped us exchange money and go grocery shopping before settling us in with cell phones and internet at our apartment. We were hungry enough to eat cardboard and call it steak, but were pleased to find that the lunch meat our driver selected for us to make sandwiches with was delicious. He also helped us buy, jam, chocolate, butter, eggs, sliced cheese, milk and juice.

After lunch we were fighting sleep (we only got about 3 hours of sleep on the plane) so we decided to go explore the city. It was snowing and beautiful...enormous fluffy snowflakes. We walked about 10 minutes to Independence Square and explored an outdoor Christmas market. We finally had to return to our apartment to thaw out and prepare for our big day tomorrow. We have out government appointment tomorrow where we will officially agree to meet our new son.

End of the Rainbow

On January 14th we board a plane to head to Easton's country to meet him for the first time. This is such great news that it deserved a post all of its own.

We have his bed all ready and waiting for him!

Reluctant Blogger

I am indeed a reluctant blogger.  I love the idea of capturing family memories on a blog complete with corresponding photos, but the reality of my life is that I am to busy actually living it, to blog about it!  That being said, here is the catch up post...

We all tried a selection of foods from Easton's country. It is readily available where we live, but unfortunately, it just might be the one international cuisine that we all would rather not eat ever again! Elijah and Anna are troopers and agreed that we would all eat it for as long as Easton wants to until he is comfortable with American food. I am so proud of them!

We spent a non-traditional Thanksgiving in the City so that we could get up at the crack of dawn and watch the parade. We had a great spot right at the front! We followed this by lunch at a deli and then a trip to see Santa at Macy's. This was the kids first time seeing Santa since we have lived overseas almost every Christmas where there just wasn't a Santa available. They were both pretty intrigued by the idea, especially since we watched "Miracle on 34th Street" before we went.

December 9th brought us to Elijah's 8th birthday. (How did he get this old!) It was a crazy house full of little boys and so I don't have the best pictures. :) At one point his little friend came up to me holding a play sword in one hand and a bloody front tooth in the other, and announced, "My tooth fell out!" I was seconds away from a heart attack when he explained that his tooth had been loose for weeks.

Christmas this year was low key...just the way we like it. We are much more about quality time and family trips than big gifts. We went to see THE tree in the city and then baked a bunch of cookies together. On Christmas morning we had a annual crepe breakfast and a slow morning of opening gifts and hanging out. Perfect.

Hoping to Travel in December

We just received word that we MAY be traveling in December.  Of course we are living in international adoption land, so we are trying to balance our frantic last minute planning with a pinch of don't-get-too-excited-this-could-all-change-tomorrow.  :)

Here's to hoping and praying that we get to eat borscht and pierogies and sour cream for Christmas!

Up and Away

Our Dossier has left the building!

This post is actually a little late...we mailed it on Oct. 28th, but it arrived in our yet-to-be-named son's, yet-to-be-named country this week.

We also wired $500 for it to be translated and processed in what is hopefully a timely fashion.

For those of you who have donated to our adoption fund we are forever grateful...and for those of you who have yet to donate, now is your chance!   We ask that you consider giving even a small amount toward the cost of "Eastons" adoption.

We don't have a huge following for our blog...about 230 this past month.  But, if each person felt led to give just $5, that would add up to $1,150!  Little amounts really do add up!

It is difficult to sit still after the last few weeks of paperwork craziness, but sitting still is about all we can do right now.  Our next step is to wait for a travel date to go get "Easton" and bring him home!

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!

Well, fighting like crazy to not be late is a more accurate statement.

Each year, the he-who-shall-not-be-named country that we are adopting from closes for the winter.  We have an unofficial deadline of October 17th to get our backsides in gear and get everything to them by then. 

We are so close...SO CLOSE.

We just had the our fingerprinting appointment (3rd times the charm I hear) and now get everything notarized, county sealed and apostilled.  We thankfully live in NYC where all that can be done in one day if you are willing to run around like a crazy nut from one end of the city to the other all day.

Pray that our USCIS letter comes in a few days like its supposed to...it is the only piece that is out of our control.  Nothing like a little out-of-control-ness to add to the excitement of our lives and stretch our faith and invigorate our prayer times.
 

Put Off Long Enough

I have been putting off this post for as long as I could...

About a month and a half ago, we found out that Brandon had much more severe needs than previously thought.  After prayerful and frankly gut-wrenching deliberation, we realized that we are not the family that is equipped to give him what he will need.  We had to give back our referral request for Brandon. 

This does not change the fact that Brandon desperately needs and deserves a family of his own.  We are praying that God brings this about soon and we hope that those of you who read this and have blogs of your own would consider taking a minute to pray and advocate for Brandon.

We are moving forward with our plans to adopt and feel like God is asking moving our hearts to adopt Easton.  He will be 5 years old on October 30th and has CP.  I will add pictures soon, but you can see him on the following Reece's Rainbow link  http://reecesrainbow.org/sponsorwall.