Still no word from my men. They left Kramatorsk on the train and spent the day in Kiev, but the place where they are staying apparently doesn't have Internet. *sigh* It's 2am in Kiev right now, so I need to give it up for the night. In a few hours (their time) it will be Tuesday and they will finish up at the airport hotel that night where I know from experience there is Internet.

FAITH is not always easy...

Well, Mark, Erik and the caregiver Mark hired from the orphanage are on the train to Kiev!!! Mark hired the lady to help on the train ride until Tuesday night when she returns back to Kramatorsk. It will be money well spent. With Mark's MS, he really needs his sleep, and the help of a caregiver will help with stress a LOT.

You have NO IDEA how badly I wish I knew how it was going!!!! Those trains are NOT easy to sleep on, but it can be done, in the best of circumstances. With a "sturdy Ukraininan bahbushka (how Mark described her) and a new 5 y.o. who's never been outside of his orphanage walls, hard telling if ANYONE's sleeping!! LOL!!

Mark has his laptop, and we can only hope that he can access the Internet at the hotel in Kiev. Or in the Frankfurt airport, where he and Erik will connect for 7 hours on Wednesday. It's so hard to have NO contact of any kind!! But I know God is watching out for them. After all, I asked Him to.

That's all I know for now. The boys and I are just doing our "thing", waiting for them to return. It's the calm before the storm...

Well, I'm alive, anyway!! I haven't posted much because I've been traveling for 12 days, though I'm told it was only 2 1/2 days... (Feels like 12!)

Monday evening after court, Mark and our facilitator dropped me off at the train station for the overnight ride to Kiev. Boy, was THAT hard!!! I didn't think it'd be THAT hard to say goodbye!!! I felt like such a traitor for leaving! It just felt WRONG. But my brain knew it wasn't, even if every other part of me thought it was. It was horrible leaving. I wanted to jump off of that train soooooo badly.

Anyway, after the train arrived in Kiev at 8am, I went to the Embassy to sign some papers so that Mark could finish up when his turn came in 2 weeks. After that, I did some souvenir shopping (I love shopping!)and then went straight to the hotel at the airport. Got there by noon, but without air conditioning, and the temps outside around the 80's range, my room was so hot I couldn't sleep!! So I pretty much laid there and sweated until 3am when I gratefully went down to catch the shuttle bus to the airport to catch my 5:30am flight.

Met a really nice Ukrainian-turned-Canadian lady who was fascinated by my story about Reece's Rainbow and Erik and now she wants to adopt!!!

That flight took me to Frankfurt where I had a 7 hour layover (yes, 7 hours). I met some really sweet kids in the Ukraine airport while waiting for that flight. They were from CA and spent the summer in Ukraine visiting their grandmother. Delightful kids! On that flight, imagine my surprise when my 2 seat mates were a mother and newly-adopted son from Ukraine! She had an interesting story: she and her husband went to Ukraine to adopt 2 teenage girls. When they got there, they found out not only that they had a 12 year old brother, but that the girls decided they did not want to be adopted after all and they ended up with the brother!! Took 2 months and lots of headaches, but they were on their way home to AZ and they happened to be my seat-mates! Cute boy, seemed like a really nice kid.

Normally, I'm pretty shy and keep to myself when I travel, but this time I made so many friends! LOL I even sat in Frankfurt with my Ukrainian-Canadian friend and had lunch! Ha, ha!

After a LONG 10 hours, we made it from Frankfurt to Orlando and I was HOME!!! Mom and the boys were there to meet me, and it was sooooooooo good to be home. The streets here are very smooth, BTW!!!

I had 1600 e-mails waiting for me, hardly any of them junk - just mainly stuff from the child amputee group I'm with, and the Reece's Rainbow group. And, of course, a pile 2 feet high of regular mail!! Included in the regular mail were several letters from Natasha, which was fun. She sounds like she's doing GREAT! She sounds really happy and like she has a purpose now. For so long in high school all she did was party, and no doubt she knew she was going nowhere, with no direction. Now, she has a purpose and a plan and I think she's really happy about that. :o)

I am going to try now to put up a video montage, if I can figure it out. Wish me luck!!!

Greetings from Kramatorsk!!! WE MADE IT!!! We actually had 3 very smooth flights (BIG HINT: If you are planning on traveling a long distance by plane and are overweight (especially if BOTH of you are overweight) ... LOSE WEIGHT! Mark's tailbone and my hips will never be the same, especially after the long flight from Philly to Frankfurt! Those seats are NOT designed for "big boys and girls"!! LOL But our flights were on time, good connections, and Mark tolerated the flying pretty well. He hasn't flown in decades by choice, and he did great! He was adorable on the first flight, gripping my pinky finger for support, yet with his nose plastered against the window looking out at the clouds, all hyper from excitement and fear. He was so adorable!! By the third flight, he was a chilled as the rest of us.

We arrived in Kiev in the afternoon on Tuesday and were taken straight to our apartment, where, if I remember correctly, we stayed until the next morning. We were BEAT. At noon the next day, we had our SDA appt. and the lady who interviewed us was so nice!!!! It was not a tense meeting by any means! Very relaxing. We saw a picture of little Sergei (Simon) taken 2 years ago. Not a great picture (we have a lot that were better) but it is always fun to see a picture we've never seen before! We agreed that we wanted his referral and a few hours later we picked up the letter (whatever that was) and we were off to the train station! THAT FAST!! The bad part is that we didn't get to see any of our Reece's Rainbow friends like we were hoping to. UGH. Maybe a little too fast?? We arrived in Kramatorsk this morning (what day is this?? Thursday??) after a rather long night on the train. The train itself was fine (and the bathroom not THAT bad!!) but our systems are SO out of whack that it was hard to sleep. I didn't dare take a sleeping pill that night but you bet your boots I will tonight!!

Whoops! Gotta go! Time to go to the orphanage for our second visit and our facilitator will be meeting us in a few minutes. Gotta get down there to meet her - more later!!!!!!

Well, we leave tomorrow!!! Mom's here to house/dog/kid -sit, we had dinner with the Cornishes , our bags are 95% packed, our nerves are shot, and our e-tickets are sitting by the door!!

We leave tomorrow out of Orlando at 1:55pm connecting through Philadelphia and Frankfurt to Kiev!! We arrive in Kiev (supposed to, anyway!) Tuesday afternoon at 1:20pm (no, it's not 24 hours, remember to subtract 8 hours for the time difference). Our appointment to get the official "referral" for Simon is Wednesday and we hope to travel on the overnight train to Kramatorsk Thursday night. We meet Simon on Friday!!

I will check my e-mails in the morning, but probably not do any blogging until we are in-country!! I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to tell.

PLEASE PRAY FOR US for smooth traveling and energy enough to enjoy it! LOL

I'll post again as soon as I am able and have something interesting to say. :o)

So until then, Good-bye, and dasvidanya!!!