finally

after our week delay, we finally had the appointment with the department of adoption on tuesday afternoon.  our facilitator’s husband alex joked “one week, then 10 minutes”...  and that’s pretty much the way it happened.  the appointment went great & quick.  lots of papers & handwritten ledger looking things & lots of russian or ukrainian (not sure which) speaking, so we just sat there & listened.  information on lena was translated to us & our favorite part was seeing a few pictures of baby lena.  round face & wavy hair!  so cute!  on wednesday evening we got the referral to go to lena’s region.  we crowded with other waiting parents into a hallway & waited & waited until finally a gal, with arms piled with papers, walked down cement stairs and sat at a little desk in the hallway & began calling names.  after hearing our name & getting our papers, we jumped in the van & hurried through kiev traffic to catch the overnight train to lena’s region. 

wow, the train was quite the experience.  our facilitator said, “don’t touch anything!”…yeah, it wasn’t the cleanest thing, but it was a huge adventure & i loved the experience of it.  not to mention, i just couldn’t stop smiling knowing that we were finally on our way to see lena.  13 hours after the train departed kiev, we were in kramatorsk.  our facilitator raced around town taking care of insane amounts of paperwork & paying attention to so many details.  we put our things in the hotel & headed to the orphanage.  most of the folks we ran into remembered us from october & were all smiles that we were back!  being back with lena was amazing!!!  she’s doing wonderful! we played & laughed & sang & tickled…she was all about being tickled & we were all about obligingJ.  she was also very active & wanted to move around a lot.  she’d go from back to stomach, push up on her elbows & seemed to want to be in a crawl position. so we helped her & she rocked in a crawl position, which we think is awesome.  she also did really great sitting up & being upright…she even pushed through her feet as we were holding her like she was trying to stand.   this is something we have been specifically praying for, mainly for traveling home with her & it was so fun to see.  we chased the papers with olga while lena napped & then we got to see her again later in the afternoon. 

11 days away from fayetteville & we have been missing hazel & anders a ton…if you get a chance, maybe pray for our parent hearts.  we knew it would be hard to be away from them & we were right.  however,  we are overjoyed to be able to spend time with lena in the orphanage & this goes a long way for the perseverance in all this.  oh that smile!  this momma will persevere through anything to bring her home!

the family that we stayed with in kiev hooked us up with some american groceries for our long stay at the hotel kramatorsk...we have fridge & hot water pot, but no microwave/stove/oven, so for the next 4-6 weeks we will definitely use all of this that they gave us.  if you have been to ukraine before then you know the value of chips & salsa & pb&j's!!  we are so thankful!

a little ukraine goodness for you...the light switches & plug-ins are always outside of the room they are for...this picture is taken outside of the bathroom...so many interesting details.

across the street from the department of adoption is st andrisky church (i have no idea how to spell that)  & i think the teal & green & gold are beautiful!

our train!

 lena with her daddy... she loves hands, holding them, clapping them:)

giggling with momma...such a beauty!!

our facilitator today said:

 "matt & ginny, you will have to decide & tell me lena's new name for the process today. be ready"  

we have been ready...we decided on her name some time ago & matt would never say for certain (even though we were certain, he's just funny like that).  we wrote it down for her so she could translate it phonetically...can you see it? 

some christmas cheer in lena's group...i just loved this tree & the little vintage figurines underneath, it looks so hipster:)