On Christmas day, we woke up to snow on the ground - a couple of inches. Otherwise, it didn't seem much like Christmas. It isn't Christmas here until Jan. 7. Their big celebration day is New Year's. There are some decorations up and you can buy decorations at the street market - there are stalls for just garland!!
The clinic director wished us Merry Christmas, then his wife came in later and wished us Merry Christmas too and brought us some Christmas cake. It was nice to not be forgotten.
We did get to see the kids. It was just another day for them. We split the kids up today because the older two really wanted to go outside and play in the snow. So Monte took them out and they had a snowball fight and made one big ball by rolling it around in the snow. When it was time to come in, they also had a snowball fight with the Spanish family that is here. There was a Spanish family that came the same day we did and they declined their referral. Then we met another Spanish family and they started way before us and they decided to add another child. They were only approved for one, fell in love with another one, and pretty much started the process over. They are going to court with us today!! I stayed inside with the little too in the "zoo." The hallway we play in has 4 doors and 3 are always open, but we aren't supposed to let the kids run around. So while I was trying to keep Jason from escaping, Jillian wrote black marker all of the chair. One of our first rules was to keep control of them and not mess up any decorations - so is writing with black marker all over a chair messing up the decorations?!? Then we finally played with play-doh (plasteline here) and actually colored in the coloring books. When Monte came back, he had about a sip of water in his water bottle and we started cleaning up the marker with that and some liquid hand cleaner we had. You can barely see it now. Yah!
Anyway, to the big news. (It is 5 a.m. here and I am awake.) God willing, we should be able to go to court today. Our papers are supposed to come this morning on the train, our driver is supposed to pick them up, and our court time is 10 a.m. (with the Spanish family going first). Nothing is for sure here in Ukrainian adoption, but we are praying hard that all goes well and we get through the court process today. If we do, we will have the driver drive us to Kiev and we will be able to keep our flights on Saturday. If we get through the process, I won't be able to e-mail/blog today. We will do that when we get home. After court, we will go tell the kids goodbye for a while - that will be hard!! We are planning to come back here on Jan. 12 to finish the process - we will be here another two weeks approximately to get their visas, Dr. exams, passports, new birth certificates, etc. (Of course, none of this is easy in Ukraine!!)
Thanks to everyone that wrote and wished us Merry Christmas!! That made our day so much better!! I will hopefully be able to answer them all when we get home - I won't have too much time on the Internet today before the director gets here. By the time you get up, court should be over!! But please keep praying, there is a lot of paperwork after court, saying goodbye to the kids, and our travel. We have heard that the weather isn't that great at home for traveling. Hope you all had a great Christmas and hope to see you soon!!
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