Paperwork and Waiting

Well, we had a couple of days of hurry up and wait.  Tuesday morning we headed off to the kids birthplace or "native city" as Luda says.  We left at 6:30am for a rainy and chilly drive.  We enjoyed the drive and seeing more rural parts of Crimea.  We saw a lot of huge flat fields with some gently rolling hills, not many trees to be seen.  The main crop here is wheat.  We traveled along the coast and saw a bit of the Black Sea.  We arrived in better time than expected and were the first people to arrive at the Vital Records Office.  We were concerned because they told us they were having computer problems and you never know how long that could take.  About 1/2 an hour later they called Luda in and she got everything going.  They told us to wait and will call us when they were completed.  Three hours later, we picked up the new birth certificates.  Took a short drive to the seaside to dip our fingers in the Black Sea and take some pictures.  We made it back to Simferopol in record time and dropped off the new birth certificates to be legalized, changed their names on their identification numbers and dropped off the new legalized birth certificates to have notarized copies made.  We didn't get to see the kids after this busy day.

Wednesday we were hoping to apply for the passports, but the director of the passport office was out of the office.  That meant we had to wait until Thursday.  We went to visit the kids and made arrangments to pick up the kids on Thursday morning for the passport applications.

Thursday, Luda went to pick up the kids and Andrew and I walked to the passport office to meet her and the kids.  Luckily its just down the street from our apartment.  We applied for the passports and the kids had their pictures taken.  They were all hamming it up.  The Director of the passport office said that Mollie looks like her mama and she thought the boys were twins at first because they were sitting on Papa's lap.  Luda asked how long for the passports and she said a week.  We need to have the passports in hand no later than Wednesday or we will NOT make our flight on Saturday back to the USA.  Please pray that everything falls into place and we can get them on Tuesday.  After the passport office we all piled into Misha's car for a quick drive to the local picture place.  We needed to get pictures taken for the kids' US VISA we need to get in Kiev.  We also had our first family portrait taken to give as a gift to the both of the orphanage Directors.  Once again, the kids were excited to have their pictures taken.

A couple of hours later we picked up the pictures and were surprised to see such an "interesting" background on our family portrait.  We were expecting black, white, maybe even blue.  I guess we will never forget we were in Crimea in October/November 2009...haha.

Today we had our normal visiting routine with the boys and then M.  C started acting up as soon as he figured out he was going back to his Groupa.  Only a couple more days and they will never have to go back.  Today was weekly shower day at M's orphanage, so we did not get to spend much time with her.

After we got home we decided to be adventurous and try and find our way to McDonalds, which is a pretty long walk and we weren't sure how to get there.  After a 1/2 hour fast walk, we found McDonalds, wolfed our food down and headed back because it was almost dark.   The food was good, Andrew said the walk was worth it!

For the next couple of days we will be visiting the kids and relaxing.  Everything is done here except for picking up the passports.  Hopefully our next post will be us picking up the passports and kids and having their first plane ride back to Kiev.  At least its a short flight; 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers that we get the passports by Wednesday so we can make our flight!

We added some pictures to the web album of their native city and their VISA pics!