Can't wait til tomorrow....only 3 more days!!

Hi everyone ~

The picture of the street is the view out of our 9th floor hotel room. This street is always busy with cars, buses, and people walking. Never a dull minute. We hear the traffic and horns all night long. We are really looking forward to getting back to the country away from this city life!

We had our final visit with Elizabeth this morning (YEAH!!) and she was smiling before she ever got to the door of the play room and she came running to see us as fast as her little feet would carry her. She was in such a great mood and she has the cutest little personality. She likes her daddy to tease her...but she also likes to tease him back. She loves him to tickle her (see picture) It is so fun to watch!

Tomorrow....Gotta Day!!...FINALLY! and we can hardly wait! It will be such a great day to get to bring her with us forever! Every day it is so hard to leave her there, and finally tomorrow we won't have to leave her, Whoo Hoo!!! We have her little outfit all picked out to take her home in, but we got to thinking that the material isn't very thick and the babushka may not think it is warm enough, ha! so we went and got her a pair of pink tights that have a butterfly on the backside...too cute!! Can't wait to see her dressed in her own clothes with her own little coat, mittens, and hat!!

We just got finished having a nice, long lunch with Sue & Mark, and Bryan & Tamera. We tried to post to the blog earlier this morning, but...no...didn't happen. As soon as I finish here, it's off to pack up everything! Some of you wondered if we need another bag for Elizabeth's toys, but really we didn't buy too many. We gave some things we brought to the orphanage (like bottles, wet wipes, baby toys, etc. that Elizabeth is too old for). We also cleared a lot of space when we gave the gifts out and we had to bring a lot of paperwork with us that we were able to hand over our second day in Kiev....so really we have plenty of room in our bags....well...except all those souvieners (?sp) we bought...that's taking up some room...but I'm so glad we were able to get things for Elizabeth and our family while we were here so that Elizabeth will always know that her heritage was important to us. We plan to check in all of our bags except the diaper bag and one small carry on. That will make it much easier to get through the airports.

I will try to upload the picture from yesterday while I'm here today since the computer seems to be working fairly well, so be sure to check them out! Brenda mentioned that Elizabeth would be raised by a community, you are so right!! We are so, so blessed to have such loving families, friends, co-workers, and church families. YOU ALL ARE GREAT! I also liked Jeanne's comment about Clayton altering his sermon...hum...could be interesting to see what he has to say about that, lol!

In all seriousness, though, I'm sure you all realize that all of this will be very overwhelming for Elizabeth...all of the sudden she will be out of her comfort zone, in a country where she doesn't understand the language (and I can personally tell you, that is very frustrating!), hearing all kinds of sounds she's never heard, smelling new smells, seeing lots of new people, etc. so please be patient with her (and us) and we try to slowly introduce her into the community :-)

We will go do paperwork in the morning...probably won't get to pick Elizabeth up until around 5pm. Check out time at the hotel is 2pm, but we found out that we could pay for 1/2 day and stay until we meet the train...so we are going to do that and share with Bryan, Tamera, and CJ. Sure beats hanging out at the train station or McDonalds for 4 hours, huh?

Well, gotta get to that packing! Will post again tomorrow if time allows!

Love you all very much!

Tom, Valerie and Elizabeth