Alisa's Birthday

Today is Alisa's birthday. The absolute day that I had to be home from this ordeal in Ukraine. I guess all my wishing and persisting didn't work and Ukraine didn't cooperate. I am so sorry to be missing my cute daughter's 12 year old birthday. We will also miss Father's day on Sunday. Who would have guessed that we would be in this country for both Mother's Day and Father's Day. Good thing we are getting 2 children out of the deal. The experience has been unforgetable. In my experience, memories tend to sweeten in time. Well get me out of here and let the sweetening begin!! It will take a big dose of sugar for this one, let me tell ya!

We have spent the past few days in the back seat of a car (a nice car thank heaven) going from government office to government office to get the documents needed to leave Ukraine with the kids. Vitaly is now good to go but Oleg still needs some documentation that releases him from his obligation and inheritance of an apartment that he will co-inherit someday. We don't understand all the ins and outs and everyone working for us is too busy trying to get it done to fully explain but we have to junp through a million hoops to get him off a list that says he has ownership here so that he can leave. The Corbetts are in the same boat. They are already in Kiev, however, ready to do the medical exams and embassy work and have everyone tickets bought for this Sunday. They will also be spending Father's day in Ukraine and will have to rebook tickets for later.

Oksana was worried about getting a paper signed by the agency that separated the kids that is needed to get Oleg freed from Ukrainian bondage. She was worried because the lady there has been scared by all the questioning that the prosecuter did last week and so she was worried that she would be too intimidated to sign off on it. The lawyer that took Oksana's place today walked in and said that the boss man signed it and so that wasn't as bad as we worried. I will post a picture of the cute girl who is doing work for Oksana today. She is smart and laughs a lot and I like her.

Of course the agency that we need the final signature from today is having a holiday ( I swear that they make these holidays up as a reason to go and get drunk) so we get the paper we need on Monday at 2 pm. I also found out that we are doing all this in conjunction with the processing of the passports and so we are not going to have to wait another 3-5 days for the passports AFTER we get these papers. She said that we just have to turn them in when we pick up the passports which is good news. Hopefully we will get the papers on Monday and the passports will be ready on Mon or Tues and we can go immediately to Kiev. Then on Wed , Thurs and Fri we can do the Kiev work and then go home on Saturday. Please, please, PLEASE let this happen. I know that I have had angels help me at various times in my life and I am praying for them to come back and pitch in for the next few days and get us home.. I know it can be done. Our faith is still alive and well but our patience is.... well... Exercized more than I thought it would ever be in this process.

Some Good news is that our kids had money that they inherit or has been given to them by the government because they are orphans. We decided to give all of Oleg's money to the orphanage at Oksana's suggestion because she thought that it would diffuse any argument that we were adopting these kids to get their money. It was more than we had planned to donate and I spent about 2 hours yesterday wanting to be able to make sure it was OK with Dave to donate the extra but we couldn't get through to home because our internet was broken. We decided to do the donation today instead and it was pretty smooth except for the fact that everyone had to count and recount the money a bunch of times. The whole idea that we would spent thousands of dollars and come and spend all this time in Ukraine and let our businesses suffer and miss our kids and suffer all this stuff so we could get a couple thousand dollars is so ridiculous it makes me laugh. Dave can make more in 1/2 a days work than we could get adopting 4 kids here. We don't even qualify for the adoption tax credit. I would like for whoever wants to accuse us of doing this for money to call me on the phone. I know enough Russian to tell them how it really is.

I will post a few pictures of our last couple of days. I got the post from my mom that made me cry. She will be having Alisa at her house for the week which is a tradtion when the kids turn 12. It is so good to know that people are cheering for us back in the promised land. If you have happened to try to post and it won't work, please email me at hinkson@pcu.net. I would love to hear from you. I hope the kids have fun this week at Grandma's (Alisa) and Pioneer Trek (Devin and Daniel) and work (Dave) We love you and hope you eat a lot of cake for us. I think we will go and get a hot chocolate to celebrate your birthday, Pritt! The cake here is yucky and I haven't seen a cake mix in 2 months.

All is Horrorshow! (sounds like the word "good" in Ukrainian)