What's next?

What an incredible journey so far. We arrived at the airport in Kiev on Monday around 1:00 pm. We flew through customs; which was quite opposite of what happened last year. There were a lot of people that got off the plane before us and then we went to the restroom. By the time we walked up to customs, every single booth was empty except for two booths and nobody was checking in through customs....nobody. We walked right up. They basically asked where we were coming from, where we were going and why. He then stamped our passports and we were on our way.

The next thing that happened almost seems miraculous to us. There are two lines to go through after checking in through customs.... The red line (if you have items to claim) and the green line (if you do not have anything to claim), so we walked through the green line. There was one gentleman with two small suitcases and he was stopped by customs and his bags were checked. We walked right past him with four huge suitcases, a computer bag, a purse and two backpacks (yes, we feel like we packed everything except our kitchen sink) and it was almost like God caused all the 'guards' to not even see us walking past.

We spent Tuesday afternoon walking around Kiev a bit, ate dinner at Solo Pizza and then Danny had some coffee; which he loved! We came back to our apartment exhausted! Coby went into the room to read his book and literally fell asleep reading it!

Wednesday, we all slept in! April and Danny awoke at 11am and April had to wake Coby up at noon. We ate lunch at a buffet type restaurant, went to the Roshen Chocolate Factory (yum!), went to the Apple Store (expensive!), more coffee (this is probably going to be a theme throughout my blogging), had ice cream (they were all closed last night so they must have gotten the memo that I was coming!!!!) and then for dinner went to the Shashlik Restaurant next to McD's! We actually sat Japanese style and had to take off our shoes. That was fun and the food was yummy. We spent $5.30 on ice cream, the buffet lunch was $14 and we spent $37.50 at dinner - this included tip and is actually quite expensive but oh so worth it! Besides, not too many restaurants three adults can eat at for $37.50 including tip in America.

Tomorrow is our SDA (State Department of Adoption) appt where we will get "referred" to Lilya and Alex. Not exactly sure what happens or what to expect at that appt but I will blog about it later.

Then, we have to return to the SDA on Thursday to pick up our referral and will get on an overnight 12 hour train ride to Zaporozhye. Vil'nanys'k is the small town outside of Zaporozhye where the kid's orphanage is located. Pastor John with New Hope will be picking us up from the train station Friday morning. He's a Canadian Missionary that helps aging out kids. We will definitely be spending some time helping them and are looking forward to it.

I will update more as things progress. If you think about it, please pray for us on Wednesday. Our appt is at 2pm (7am EST), we have been told once again that the kids are available - so thank you for praying already! We'll update again tomorrow!