Homeward Bound

We arrived back to Kiev yesterday morning. We recieved Alec's passport and have completed requirements in Kiev now. Tomorrow we will pick up his visa and will be on the airplane home first thing Friday. Stan and Kim arrived to Kiev yesterday. Today we all went to TGI Fridays and had a nice lunch. We wish them a quick adoption process and a quick return back to America.

Yalta

Things went well in Dzhankoy. Alec was very excited to leave with us. I cannot believe that he is finally with us. The last month has gone by very slowly as we waited and waited for appoinments and court.

We have completed all of our paperwork in Simferopol and now we are waiting again to travel to Kiev to do more paper work.

Today we have traveled to the city of Yalta. We are staying at Hotel Yalta, it is on the Black Sea. Many of the employees even speak English. That is a huge bonus. Next to their swimming pool is a pool where they do dolphin shows 3 times a day. Alec and Meghin can not wait to see the show tomorrow. The countryside is very beautiful down here. We really enjoyed the car ride from Simferopol to Yalta. Will write more later.

Pictures

I forgot to mention that I will add more pictures when I get to a computer that comes up in English. When I log onto this blog website the only thing that shows in English is what I am typing. That makes it a little hard to use since I haven't learned Russian yet.

Hello from Kiev

Yesterday August 24 was Independence Day for Ukraine. They had huge celebrations and fireworks here in Kiev. It was great to see. I haven't seen so many people in one place in a long time.
Tomorrow we travel back to Crimea by train. We are getting used to the train rides now. At first when they told me 15 hours I was worried, now we get in our compartment and make ourselves home like it is just another trip. We are going to pick up Alec first thing, then travel to Kerch to get his new birth certificate. (That is the town he was born in.) Then we will travel back to Simfropol to apply for his passport. The waiting begins again. They say it is taking approx. 10 days at this time, so we will keep our fingers crossed. We are hoping to stay at a resort down at the Black Sea for most of the wait, so that will be nice for a change in scenery.
We enter a update as soon as we find internet access in the town we will be in. We miss everyone............

Court date

We had our court date on Aug 16th. Everything went great, we were granted the adoption. We pick Alec up in 10 days. He is very anxious to come to America on the airplane. We are waiting our 10 days in Kiev and then traveling to Simferopol to wait with him for his passport to be issued. Ukraine seems to be restructuring their passport system as the USA has and it is taking longer to process passports.

Dzhankoy visit

We are back in Kiev. We visited Dzhankoy Mon thru Thurs. Everything went great. The kids are healthy and happy. The day we arrived we had lunch with them. We really enjoyed spending time with the kids. We have traveled back to Kiev to wait until our court date on Aug 16th. We are excited that everything is moving foward so nicely. We will enter more later.......

Pictures of Independence Square