Hunter's First Father's Day...

We had an amazing night Saturday with the international group. Giovanni and Maria cooked us an authentic Italian dinner that was incredible! Utterly “Fantastic” as Giovanni would say! There was great conversation, much laughter and way too much food. We all had to waddle out the door to hail a cab. We are so thankful to have made such wonderful new friends to share this important part of our lives with.

She loves to sit next to daddy and rest on his leg. We put her snack in the pringles can (I think its cereal, it's sold in big bags with a cow on them. They look like cheetos but taste like corn pops).

She is all smiles now when we arrive. What a huge change from just a few days ago. She barrels to the door, ready to go to her “snack and play with the big people time”.

Yesterday, she was fascinated with how big Hunter’s hand was and placed her hand on top of his. So cute.

We took Sunday morning off to rest. We returned to the orphanage for our afternoon visit. Sergei called a cab for us (from his hometown 6 hours away!) and we told him we would walk back after our visit. It’s about 7 miles, but we are in dire need of exercise after our huge dinner last night. Of course, he was at first a bit worried about us doing this, but then later conceded and told us to wear our sneakers and not to take our laptops…such a dad!! The only problem was that we could not remember the way back to the apartment. We have taken so many different routes in the past, that we got confused and after walking for 45 minutes, we decided to be safe and hail a cab. Fortunately, we had our notecard with the apartment address on it and the cab driver was able to get us home safely. So much for that!

Sergei returns to Zaporizia early tomorrow and we are hoping he will have some news of our court date. Once we got to court, the 10-day wait-time clock can start ticking. We are going to try to renegotiate our lease or look for a new apartment closer to the center of town and try to get a monthly rate instead of the daily rate we are paying. We will definitely need to stay another 2 weeks and in the end will cost us 3x more than the other couples are having to pay for their more convenient apartments!!

We have been told there will be another 3 day wait once we get back to Kiev for papers we need from the American Embassy.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!

Blessings, - lauri