Catching up

We've been running around Kiev now! :o) On Monday we got Nicholas' medical done fairly quickly...it was longer waiting on the cashier than it took to get the paperwork! Then Christmas Day we gave Nicholas a little Matchbox type police station (which he loves!) and a little rubber ball that lights up. We play a game where we throw the ball between the 3 of us and we either count or say a letter of the alphabet each time we catch the ball. He gets a kick out of it and actually brings the ball to us saying "ABC".

Then we went on a car tour of Kiev. We were really worried because of his motion sickness but we gave him a pill and he was fine the entire day. And when I say entire day - I mean it - we were touring for 10 hours!! But 3 of those hours were spent sitting in a traffic jam. I have never seen such an awful traffic problem as they have here. There are streets which have no traffic lights and no stop signs - it's just a system of whoever can play "chicken" the best. They just stick the noses of their cars in the intersection and inch along until their car makes it through. I've never seen anything like this before! And when the traffic gets too bad - they drive on the sidewalks and front yards!! Holy cow!! We drove across a couple yards and down one sidewalk.

On the tour we went back to the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra which is the monastery that has the caves. Yelena helped us and we actually made it to the entrance of the caves this time!! We were shocked by how big the caves are! We went for lunch at a really cool restaurant that was decorated in traditional Ukrainian decorations and the servers were in traditional dress. Then we went to the St. Andrews Church (which is the church right beside the SDA for those of you traveling).

On Wednesday we went to the USA Embassy to turn in our paperwork for Nicholas' visa. It all went smoothly and we were scheduled for the interview on Thursday. Then we walked to the department store to get Nicholas some more clothes. We were on the second floor and we found some pants and a new sweater. I went to the next department and found some PJs. I started to walk back to the department where the pants were and I was told off by a clerk. Apparently you have to pay for each item in that department.

On Thursday we went back to the USA Embassy and had our interview. It was painless and our interviewer was so nice. Actually everyone there was so nice to us. The interviewer was from Colorado so we ended up talking quite a bit about CO - so I think our interview was much longer than anyone else just because we were shooting the breeze!

The visa would be ready for pick-up at 3:30 so we went to a kids play center (kind of like a mini Dave and Busters). Nicholas had a lot of fun on the enormous play set (it was 3 levels high!) and then we played laser tag!! What a blast!! :o) It was Mike and another little boy against Nicholas and me.

We then went back to the USA Embassy and picked up the visa!! Thank goodness - this is the last hurdle for the adoption.

We are booked on the BA flight to London for Sunday. We have an appointment with the British Embassy for 10:45 Friday morning. Since Nicholas is not a USA citizen until the plane lands in the USA - we need a British visa to get Nicholas out of the airport so we can visit Mike's parents. British Airways agent told us that the USA visa would be good enough - but we want to check as we cannot find anything on the web to support what she told us. If we can't get the British visa in one day then we'll be camping out at the airport for 21 hours...ugh. Hopefully it will all work out.

We'll be back in the USA and Nicholas will become a USA citizen late New Year's Eve!!

Love to all...