Well, the last week has been a crazy travelling whirlwind that is starting to catch up with me!  We put poor Cole in the car on Monday and drove 4 hrs. down to Oregon to get the girls.  (As if 10 hrs. on a plane wasn't enough for him the day before

Well, we have been home for one night and now we are heading out again!  We will be heading back down to Oregon to get the girls and throw a quick birthday bash for Hadley's 1st  B-day!  We are pretty much exhausted already and I'm sure that the

We made it. Very uneventful flight.....and oh is it nice to be home! Cole is like a kid in a candy store. We will do a better update in the next week.JP

We are in Amsterdam...good flight. We fly out tommorow and are very ready to be home. It is nice to be somewhere where most everyone speaks english. We will update at home.JP

The earliest flight home puts us in Seattle on Sunday. We fly out Saturday afternoon to Amsterdam.....and have a 14 hour layover. They will let us in the country, but not Cole. We had to get a transit Visa for him at The Netherlands embassy in Kiev.

After a long day of travel to get Cole and fly to Kiev....we are here. Cole was very excited to see us and smiled the whole day long. When we went to get airline tickets they were sold out. Sergei called his father-in-law, who called some governmenta

Court is complete and we are officially new parents (for the 3rd time) of our son, Cole Michael Parkinson. He will be 7 on July 1, 2005. We began this process at the start of Oct. 2004, and now 9 months later.....a 7 year old boy! Court was very UNEV

Sergei called and said we won't be going to visit Nicholai....instead we will go to court and make him legally our son! We are so excited. Sergei was very suprised that the NAC signed the paperwork so soon, but luckily had already scheduled our court

Being bored today. Nothing much to tell. We are going to see Nicholai tomorrow....unless by some miracle the NAC signs our paperwork tonight (unlikley). They have up to 5 days to sign off on it and they usually take the whole five days. Then...they o

We made a mind boggling discovery yesterday. We found that if we asked for an English menu at many restaurants they have them....who da thunk. It sure makes reading the menu easier. Nothing else to report on...Just DVD's and shopping. It looks like t

Today we went shopping at the outdoor market, which is much more affordable than the stores near our apartment. The stores near us cost about 3x what we would pay for the same item at home. (I guess that is the cost of importing and popularity) We bo

Hi everyone! Thanks for all of the support! It helps to know that even though we're in this crazy place where no one understands us or our language, that there are people back home thinking of us. Sergei took us up Nicholai's summer camp today and

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We are spending the day resting and looking for some clothes and gifts to take to Nicholai when we visit him tommorow. Nothing new to report.....but it is nice to have a break from driving all over Ukraine 12 hours a day! We will post more after we v

Well today was more of the same. We had to get approval from the regional gaurdian councel of Mariianka, and some other things signed by the judge. Sergei was very happy with how thing went today. We got everything wrapped up and sent off on the trai

We ran all over Donetsk today getting this and that notarized and signed. (Sergei has been great) For those who are deciding whether to use an agency or go indy. I can only say that we couldn't be happier with our team (Oleg and staff) This is not me

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I'll make this quick, as I'm sure that Summer will type about 10 pages on this. We ran all over today.... 1st to the Local inspector in Mariinka. On the way we had some car trouble though. Some parts broke that connected the throttle cable to the car

Just being bored today. We have been watching 1-2 DVD's a day to pass the time. It has been very nice to have them....we brought about 30, so I'm sure we'll end up watching all of them. We look forward to a busy day tommorow and hope that all goes we

There isn't really a whole lot to report.  Jon and I both have colds so we are trying to take it easy today.  We went out to lunch at a cafe today, not quite sure if it was German or Ukrainian style food.  They did have English on the menus but th

Busy day today. We went to get our referral signed at the NAC today (1100 am), packed (1230), caught a plane to Donetsk (330 pm) and arrived here at 5 pm. Alexei drove us all over Kiev to get things signed and buy tickets, go to the airport, etc. Ser

Here are some pictures from Kiev. There are some from the apartment, and some from our sight seeing with Julia. (Steve, I put in a picture for you). JP

We had our appointment today and for me it was a welcome relief.  We had a good experience and spent the whole hour looking at many children.  The atmosphere was not at all what we had read.  We took this appointment very seriously.  Jon wore a s