Feb. 21

Hi!
Sorry about not posting yesterday, but we couldn't get on a computer at the internet club.
The past couple of days with him have been interesting. Overall, he is a pretty happy guy, loves music and playing with cars. We gave him a little piano keyboard and its the first thing he grabs when he sees us. He also loves to play with cars. We need to work on his throwing skills :) Language is always a barrier, but we are getting better at it everyday. He has lots of energy and is wearing us out. Yesterday we were able to see his whole groupa sing us some songs, they were so cute! He loves singing. We are doing OK here, but we reallllly miss pizza.
Bye.

Feb. 18

Hello. We have 4 visits with him over the weekend and 1 this morning. Yesterdays visits were a little rough, we had no translator, he was in Kiev. Communication was a little frustrating yesterday, nobody in the orphanage speaks English. But, we got thru it somehow. Today went much better. We brought him some juice and cookies and that was a big hit. I had to teach him how to drink from a sippy cup, I don't think he has ever seen one before.
We are getting around the town a little more every day. Found a store today that sells crayons and coloring books, so we will give that a try tonight. We brought a little puzzle with us today, and he knew exactly how to put it back together again. Other than being a little homesick, things are going very well for us. We are eating some very good food, and are not starving to death. Natalie has fed us very well. Please pray that we get a quick court appointment and can come home quickly.

Shannon and Scott

Feb. 16

HI! We finally found an internet club. Sorry it took so long to post.
We are in a town called Whitechurch in the Kiev Region. It's about an hour south of Kiev. We had a very good appointment, the meeting went well, and we decided to visit a boy named Andre.
He is 4 and is very healthy physically and mentally. We have visited 3 times already and he is warming up to us a little more each time. We are staying with a very nice couple, Natalie and Yuri. Natalie is the music teacher at the orphanage. It's directly behind the orphanage, so we don't have far to go.
The first few days we spent in Kiev were fun. We walked around a lot. We found the underground mall, and the McDonalds. Our apartment was right down the street from Independence Square.
It's a nice city, and I look forward to visiting it again when before we leave.

Our flights were pretty bad, we didn't get into Kiev until 10pm tuesday night. Our luggage was lost and we didn't get it back until Thursday night. I had to comb my hair with a fork :( not funny.

Ostap, our facilitator is doing very fast work. He has managed to convince people to get their end of the paperwork done quickly. We were able to visit Andre on Friday instead of waiting until Monday. I hope all the paperwork goes that quickly.

Now that we found an internet club we will be posting more often, so check back!

Shannon and Scott

Lost in Europe

I would like to be able to say that we have arrived in Kiev, safe and sound...but, currently we are sitting in Vienna, waiting for our last connecting flight. The flight out of MSP was delayed because Chicago grounded all their planes yesterday for some weird reason, so we missed our original flight out of Chicago and had to rebook a later flight to Frankfurt. We could have made our original flight from FRA to Kiev, but we sat on the runway in Chicago for over an hour while they deiced the plane, so we also missed that flight. So, when we got to FRA, we had to rebook a flight to Kiev, thru Vienna. The Vienna airport is nice, its more like a mall than an airport. Scott refuses to buy me anything from Swarvoski ;(
I hope everyone reading this realizes that I did not use any swear words at all. It's 4:00pm here and our flight leaves at 5, so that's it for now.

Shannon

room is done...

Happy New Year......

Scott started the deconstruction this weekend. We have 42 days to completely sheetrock and paint and

decorate his room. No problem.





I want to wish everyone a happy and blessed New Year.

Shannon

hi.

Really not a lot going on around here lately. We haven't started his room yet, the plan is to clean out the room this weekend, and then tear out the old sheetrock. Scott has been really busy plowing snow this week. I started Christmas shopping this week. For my niece and nephews who read this blog, I found some great deals on underwear and socks. ;) I also bought a dvd player last week. We plan on taking our laptop so we can watch movies, but considering some of the movies Scott likes to watch and the movies I like to watch, for marital harmony I just bought a dvd player. If anyone out there would like to borrow us some movies for the trip, that would be great.

This weekend I plan on baking christmas cookies and some fudge (yes, the thud you just heard was my mom falling out of her chair laughing.) I am not a baker. I'm going to give it my best shot.


On the adoption front, we haven't even bought airline tickets yet. I stay busy reading adoption blogs, and making lists of things we have to take with us. I add something to the list everyday. The blogs are great for information on what to take and what not to take. I posted a few blogs in the sidebar of couples currently in Ukraine.

That's it for now.

Shannon