Children's Day in Ukraine - our day 13

Hi,

It is Friday June 1st which also happens to be Children's Day here. The orphanage had a special pageant for the kids today. Brady and Lucas were not in the pageant but they were spectators along with the rest of their age group. The next group up (older) were the performers and quite a performance it was!! The kids were dancing to Ukrainian music, waving pom-poms and having a good old time. We took some video and we look forward to watching it when we get home. In addition to the pageant the kids also received candy and sweet bread this morning as a treat. In typical fashion our boys were at the front of the line with their hand's out!!

Olga continues on with her stellar work. She is pressing forward at the court as we speak trying to get us a date - right now it is looking like the week of the 11th. If all goes well we would have court that week and then be subject to a mandatory 10 day 'appeals' period. This brings us close to the 22nd of June. After this we would still have about 2 more days of paperwork here in Dniprodzezhinsk and then we leave for Kiev to deal with the US side of the equation. Bottom line...it is looking like the best case scenario would be June 27-30 for us to board a plane and head home.

We have hit one snag on the US INS paperwork that we are going to try and track down later today. We don't think it is anything major but any snags over here could mean delays - stay tuned.

We have started teaching the boys English. They know 'sit' (in order to get treats), they know 'more' (as in more treats), they know 'no' (as in don't pull momma's glasses off) but whenever they hear it they just laugh at us! They also understand walk, swing and slide and maybe a few other words.

Both the boys like piggy-backs or shoulder rides on pappa which means I will definitely need a trip to Dr Woodcock (chiropracter) when I get home! It is a struggle to keep them occupied and out of trouble when there are 30 other kids running around. Andrea and I keep getting reprimanded by a cranky old caregiver when the boys get dirty or scraped. I feel like telling her to "stuff it" but I don't!!

A boy Andrea and I call Hercules (real name Maxim) has been referred to a Spanish couple. He is a cute kid built like an mini-NFL linebacker. He is probably about 3.5 but is about twice the weight of Lucas. He is also an entrepreneur - we often see him facilitating the exchange of a dirty broken toy for food. It is a riot watching this unfold.

With this Spanish couple in the mix there is now a couple from Canada, Germany, two from Italy and us. No wonder the kids are confused as there is 4 or 5 different languages being spoken on the grounds. We are confused ourselves!!

We are going out to dinner with the couple from Winnipeg tonight. They continue to struggle on as they still do not have their court date. They have now been in country for 9 weeks - we feel so bad for them but they are doing ok. I think we are giving them an outlet for expressing their frustrations which is good.

That is it from here...take care and have a good weekend. We'll check back in with another post early next week.

Chris and Andrea