New Jackets and Shoes

Here are the girls back at the orphanage in their new jackets and their new shoes! Very excited!

Hard life in the village

This is a sweet little lady who lives nearby. She has to carry pails of water about 2 blocks, stopping about every 5 feet. This is her going to the market-about 1 mile round trip.

Garrett Found Legos

Now he's happy! We found this for 10.00 at the grocery store! Yes! Grocery store! Ah... Normalcy!

A Day at the Zoo

Yesterday afternoon we took the kids to a toy store near our apartment. Garrett got some action figures, Karina picked out a stuffed Tigger and Ariel doll, and Cassidee chose a stuffed Winnie the Pooh and a different Ariel doll. Karina especially loves her Tigger. She carries it around hugging it all the time.

Today we took the kids to the zoo. It only cost $6 US to get all 5 of us in. Leah wondered how they could care for all the animals with such a low entrance fee. We quickly realized that it is because they do not care for the animals. PETA would have a stroke if they saw some of the conditions the animals were in. We took a few pictures while we were there. The girls had fun on some of the rides they had inside. They got to ride on a horse and pony. We are sure it was probably their first time on a horse. It made for a very fun and tiring day.

We should get passports tomorrow which means we will take the train to Kiev. The girls are really excited to ride on the train! Once in Kiev we will then do mandatory US Doctor check-ups for the girls, visas, and other business.

Our lawyer found us some even better airfares. We now will go from Kiev to Prague, New York, then to SLC. We will not be getting in until around 11:00 pm on Wednesday 9/19. We can’t wait to see everyone.

The Girl's Going Away Party

We threw a party for Karina and Cassidee's group on their final day. We bought bananas, juice, and cookies for them all. They all sat so good and ate their treats. Several of the kids had no idea how to open the banana. We took some pictures of these darling kids during the party and afterwards.

I wonder if the girls will miss their friends and the care-takers. They did spend over two years and Karina would have left for another orphanage on September 1st - the beginning of the school year so they would have been separated. I know that the Lord does thing a specific way and if it was not for all the trials and problems we faced over the last two plus years we would have never found these little blessings in our life.

We will update more tomorrow, Love Greg, Leah, Garrett, Karina, and Cassidee.

The Open Market in the Village

We have visited an open market several days during our stay. It is very interesting commerce. They own these storage shed style steel boxes that open each morning at 8:00 and close around noon. Here are a few pictures of the open market. We found many great deals on clothes and other items. We bought 20 new pairs of underwear, 20 pairs of warm leg stockings - "tights", and a lot of socks for the orphanage. It was all under $35 US. The looks on these little angles when they showed us their new items would just melt your heart. This has been a very touching experience.

One Step Closer

We are now in Kharkov. We arrived here Monday morning. The apartment is very nice and we are close to everything we need, even a Wi-Fi cafe. YEAH!!!

We finished submitting all the passport information and now we play the waiting game. Our lawyer thinks we will have them Thursday or Friday. She left for Kiev today. We ate at McDonald's yesterday so Garrett was excited to "Finally eat some American food". He has been a real trooper through all this. This is a picture of Garrett and Karina by the McDonald's slide. The girls like dad's Big Mac more than the McNuggets. It cost close to what it does in the US to eat there. We spent 115rph which is a bit more than $20.

We will try and update things daily as long as the laptop battery will last in the Wi-Fi cafe. Right now our plans are to return on 9/19. We will leave Kiev at 6:30 am and arrive in SLC sometime around 9 pm the same day. We had to forget about our old tickets for the return on 9/13 and purchase new ones since the fees to change would be more than the new ones. This time we go through Paris to Cincinnati then to SLC.

We will update more tomorrow. Please leave some comments. We sure enjoy hearing from everyone. See you in 8 more days.

New Birth Certificates!!

Today we went to the city where the girls' birth certificates were registered. If you all like thrill rides, just come on over here and ride in the back seat of our driver's car!!! Holy Cow!!! Anyway, we got the new birth certificates which have us listed as their parents and also have their new names on them! yeah!

Tomorrow, Saturday, we go and officially get the girls from the orphanage. We bought bananas, juice, and cookies for all the kids in their group for a goodbye party. Even though the girls are excited I'm sure they will be sad to leave as well. They have many good friends there and great caretakers that love them.

We have grown to love many of the children there and gotten to know them quite well. Even though we are glad to be done with this phase of the process, we are sad to be saying goodbye to some of the kids. There are a few that have really grabbed our hearts.

We have been anxiously counting down the days till we could leave this village, but today as we drove through the town I saw several faces of people we have gotten to know from shopping in their markets or going to the cafe, orphanage, etc. I realized, we will actually miss this place!

Regardless, we are GLAD to finally be leaving on Monday morning, with OUR new daughters! We will stay in Kharkiv for a couple of days taking care of the passports.

Well, got to go to bed! We will keep you posted!

Love,

Leah and Greg

Pictures!!

This is a little church across from the orphanage.

These are some of the darling little boys at the orphanage.

The kids put on a play today, it was really neat even though we only understood a few words.

The bed barely fits Cassidee. Karinas is too short for her.

Karina playing hide and seek in the woods.

Greg handing out sunflower seeds after the kids got out of the pool.

Garrett was invited to swim today- it was good because he is homesick and is sad to have missed the 1st day of school.

Garrett says hello from Krasnokutsk, Ukraine.

A cool caterpillar we found in the woods.