Saturday, September 22, 2007

3 Days and a Wake Up...

... before Yan is officially ours - before we will leave the Children's Home for the last time with Yan. While we couldn't be more excited for that day to come, we are sure it will be filled with many mixed emotions for all three of us. Hard to say if he can understand the permanence of what it means to leave the Children's Home, his friends and those that have cared for him the last two years. Our focus will be on Yan and making his transition as easy as possible. A transition that only begins on Tuesday and will likely go on for months if not years.

In the meantime, we continue to prepare for the final "leg"of our journey. Today we will go to the travel agency to reserve our plane tickets to Kiev for Wednesday. Tomorrow (Sunday) our translator and driver are taking us to a local market to get a few changes of clothes for Yan to get us to Kiev. While Yan is not allowed to go with us on Sunday, one of his caretakers was kind enough to list out his sizes in advance to help us with our shopping spree. We were also able to reserve a suite with an additional bed in our hotel for Tuesday night as Yan will be with us the night before we fly out of Luhans'k. So it seems like things are coming together.

We were also finally able to get the mailing address to the Children's Home. It is as follows:

Special Regional Comprehensive Boarding School in Lutugino
126 Lenin Street
Lutugino
Lugans'k Region, Ukraine
92000

e-mail: school@cci.lg.ua

For the last 4 weeks, we have enjoyed our (almost) daily e-mails from our niece Monica. She is 12 years old and makes a point of e-mailing us before she goes to school almost every day of the week (thanks to a bus driver that is usually late). In addition to her words of support and excitement to meet her new cousin, we also get important updates on what is happening at school with the "popular nice girls", what new fashions her teacher is sporting and what is "on tap" for the upcoming weekend. Our "flowergirl" e-mails have become part of our daily ritual - something we look forward to very much. We recently had the chance to talk to Maggie and learned that Monica is going to make organizing a clothes drive for Yan's Childrens Home a project for her Girl Scout troop. We couldn't be prouder and the kid's in Lutugino will benefit greatly.

We just had a huge thunderstorm pass through and the sun is coming back out. Hopefully, it will be another nice day. We are headed to the supermarket now to get our water for the weekend and later to the Travel Agency and finally the Children's Home to see Yan. We hope you all have a great weekend. K&M

(unable to post pictures today due to some technical difficulties in the internet cafe - should be back up tomorrow)

4 comments:

Grandma said...

And the countdown starts, can't wait, You are in my prayers.
Thank you for the blogs, again Michael has proven he is the best.

Love you,

The LaMonica Family said...

THE FINAL LEG!!!!! THANK GOD!! I am closing my eyes, saying my prayers and wishing you all of the best and all of my love.

keep up updated please!!!

pipes

Jackie (your favorite cousin) said...

You guys must be on the edge of your seats. All will go well and you will have your liitle boy with you always.
I look forward to seeing more pictures and updates.
I'm going to hate not reading the blog when all is complete and you three are home. What will a read? A book mayby? I look forward to reading the blog on a daily basis even if there is nothing new on it. It is just so exciting to hear what is going on and everything you two are going through to have your special child. He is a lucky littl boy.
I keep my mom updated as does yours. We can't wait to meet your son.
I better stop I could ramble on and on.
Love Jackie

susan/chris said...

Dear Karen and Mike:
You are on the home stretch, things should move smoothly. we are thinking about you and wish you the best of luck. Look forward to the next email.
love,
chris and susan