We are coming home in 5 days!!!!

Hello everyone at home!

Picture #1 ~ Elizabeth absolutely loves it when her daddy throws her into the air! (You know when I say ‘throw’ ….he never lets go of her :-)

Picture #2 ~ Not a good picture of me…but it’s proof that she now RUNS into my arms every morning and I don’t even have to bribe her with a banana anymore :-)

Picture #3 ~ A group picture of us three couples with our little angels (we all used the same agency)… Tom, me, and Elizabeth; Tamera, CJ, and Bryan; Sue, Natalie, and Mark

Picture #4 ~ Weddings, weddings, weddings everywhere! It appears to be common to go to popular sights around town for pictures on your wedding day here. This shows three different couples at the Mirrored Fountain (I told you about this earlier…this is the legend where you can make a wish on any sunny weekend day and your wish will come true). They also decorate all of the cars with ribbons and flowers and drive around and honk horns…no cans tied behind the cars that we’ve seen yet. We have seen weddings on Fridays and on Saturdays. When we were souvenir shopping in the park (imagine that…shopping again!) with Bryan and Tamera, we saw wedding 2 other couples there taking pictures with the cathedral in the background. Today was cold and cloudy, but it didn’t seem to slow down the festivities.

This morning our visit went great! She is such a joy and everyday now she seems so happy to see us. She likes to tease her daddy by pretending to hand him a toy and then when he holds his hand out, she takes it back and laughs! She teases me by acting like she is ignoring me when I call her and then she turns around and runs into my arms and gives me a great big hug! It was such a slow process when we first met her over 2 weeks ago, but not we are bonding by leaps and bounds and absolutely love every precious second of it. The two hours fly by all too quickly!

After we left the orphanage, we went to the notary to do more paperwork to finalize their passport. Vadim bundled all four children (Elizabeth, CJ, Natalie and Brian) up last night and he went with 3 caregivers and the taxi driver to get all of their pictures taken for their passports. We got to see them this morning and Elizabeth and CJ’s both turned out really good. Vadim said they all cried before and after the pictures, but they didn’t while the picture was being taken. He said they all got a sucker when they were finished. I really had hoped we would have been able to go too, since that was probably Elizabeth’s first car ride…but, at least her next car ride will be with us on her way home to the great US of A!!!

Speaking of going home…now for the great news!!!!!!!!!! We are coming home for sure on Thursday, only 5 more days!!!!! We will go to court on Tuesday (just a formality) and then more paperwork to finalize the birthday certificate. Then….finally…the long awaited time…..we will get to go to the orphanage to pick up Elizabeth. That will be a glorious day!!! This is the day that we will call “Gotcha Day” and we will celebrate Gotcha Day on November 15th every year from now on! We will come back to the hotel until that evening when we will catch the overnight train back to Kiev (10 ride, but we get our own compartment with beds). That morning we will arrive around 7am (I think) and Igor will meet us at the train station in Kiev. We will go to the American Embassy at 9am and then we’ll get settled into our apartment or hotel for the night. The next morning (Thursday) we’ll head out early (around 4:30 am) for the Kiev airport to catch the 6:50am flight. We will fly Kiev to Munich, Germany to Chicago to St. Louis. We will gain 8 hours on the way home and should arrive in St. Louis around 5:05pm Thursday evening. (David Cheek ~ we are still waiting the final confirmation on the flights, which we won’t get until Monday, so if any of that changes we’ll let you know ASAP).

We are soooooooooooo excited and we are counting down the days. We have enjoyed seeing Kharkov and getting to know the history and experience the culture that our daughter came from…but quite frankly….we just want to get our daughter and come home!!!! (Like you didn’t already know that, lol!)

Last night at 8pm we heard a lot of commotion outside our hotel window…when we looked out there was a massive display of fireworks….beautiful…appears to be coming from the park the next block over. Today we ask Vadim what they were for, and he said now that they are a democracy, if you have money and desire, you can shoot fireworks whenever you want. He said it may have been to celebrate a wedding, too. After that we ate supper with Mark and Sue in the 8th floor cafeteria. They had their court date yesterday and will end up flying home on Thanksgiving Day, exactly one week after us.

Well, I’ve talked too long! We love you all and we will SEE YOU SOON!!

Tom, Valerie, and Elizabeth