Recent Happenings

We were told on Monday that we had to move out of our apartment on tuesday and so we moved to a hotel for the last few days here in this city. It has been a nice change of scenary and we are closer to downtown so we can walk around more without having to call a taxi to go everywhere. We are also enjoying the AC here. You would think that the beds would be more comfortable at a hotel but aparantly here in Ukraine they just use the box spring as the bed mattress.....seriously that is what it feels like! Unfortunately our internet here is wifi and not near as fast as our connection at the apartment where we had a wall connection and wifi so it is taking forever to put together a blog post, but we will make it work.


Ok, usually around here pictures have been our lifesaver because we can point to what we want at a restaurant or try to figure out what something is at the grocery store based on a picture. Well not today.....

While walking through the hall at the orphanage we noticed there are a bunch of posters with what appeared to be safety tips and instructions. Some had CPR instructions some had fire escape routes, but then there was this one.....what could this picture possible be talking about?

Mia and I tried out some self portraits today while dad went to grab water at the nearby store....Mia was a little unsure what she was supposed to do

Now let's see, how do I get these glasses to stay on?

Almost got them.....

will they stay?



Ta-Da!!!


I think mom wears them like this alot
We looked EVERYWHERE for childrens sunglasses for her and no body had them, so the only ones we could find are really not made to fit kids but she has still enjoyed playing with them.


Yesterday we went to lunch with the italian couple that is here adopting from our same orphanage.


It was really nice to talk in english...thankfully they speak it too. We were talking about the adoption process for them, because they came here on a blind referral. Meaning that they didn't know anything about the child they would be adopting until they got here. They were told they were too old to get a young child and so they would probably have at least a 7 year old. Well to their surprise they are adopting a 2 year old little boy. They have never been able to have kids so they were thrilled to find out they were getting a toddler. It was interesting to hear them tell us about how the blind referral worked. They said they got here to the referral office with their facilitator and the facilitator had a stack of files of children available for adoption. She started going through the files and immediately decided yes or no on whether the child was good for this couple or not. The first child she started to say, "oh yes this one will work for you" but then she changed and said "oh never mind she has health issues and is deaf so nope" and she put her file in the no stack. She then went through a few more files by taking a quick look at them and saying no. Until she found this little 2 year old and then she showed the couple his picture and said "yes he will be good for you, he is cute right?" It was so interesting to hear them tell how they didn't get to look through the files, the facilitator did and she decided whether or not the child was even worthy of being shown to the family at all. Fortunately this little guy fits this couple perfectly and they are madly in love with him now.
(Mia and Thomas)

We ate at a yummy italian place and laughed about all the stresses we have both had through this journey...at the time, some of these experiences we shared were not so funny, but talking about them now, we had some good laughs. The lesson we have all learned about this process over here is "never be surprised" and "just go with it". This couple is from Rome Italy and they kept saying how much they would love to live in America and how much they have loved it there when they travel. So we exchanged info in case one of us ever gets to visit the other....I would be up for a trip to Rome!

After lunch we went to a kids store that they had found so we could get a stroller for the trip home for Mia. We were hoping to find a cheap $10 umbrella stroller but after combing the city ( no walmarts or targets to save you) we have found that apparantly those don't exist here. So the cheapest one we found was basically the quality of a cheap umbrella stroller back home but it was $40 here. I am sure we will be glad of it when we are traveling with little miss curious though! Not to mention it looks great on Kris's shoulder!

It is starting to get really warm here and the kids are coming out of the wood works at the orphanage lately. We have seen lots more kids out on the grounds the last few days. Today we even saw of few of the kids with special needs outside. There must be more special needs groupas besides Mia's because these kids were not in her group and we unfortunately have still never seen Spencer, who the Coxwell family is coming for soon, so he must be in another groupa as well. When we tried to ask about him, we were told we weren't allowed to inquire about other kids.










Mia always wants to interact with the other kids outside but most of the ladies aren't too fond of the kids stopping to visit.
We ventured over to another side of the orphanage today. We think this may have been a little kiddie pool or some water feature at some point.

Mia enjoyed dancing in it and exploring and we enjoyed that she was trapped for a few minutes so we could sit still.....she was on the move today!
Miss Mia giving kisses to her sisters



We only have ONE more day of orphanage visits.....YAHOOOO!!!!!!!!