Met the kids!!!!!!!

First, let me apoligize that I do not have any pictures for ya'll.  I have been trying to post them for the past hour (we are at an internet cafe), and it is not happening tonight.  :(  I will try again though. 

So, we met our children!!!!!!!!  They are great!!!  Yesterday, we met Dina first.  She was so excited to see us!  She ran up to me saying, "Mama" and I hugged her and it felt so good to finally hold her in my arms!!!  Then Alyssa came up to her.  Dina smiled at her and our translator told Dina that Alyssa was her sister.  They  grabbed hands and just looked at eachother smiling.  It was so cute :)  When Chris was done videotaping, she went up to him and hugged him too.  Dina, she is definately not a shy one!  She talks so much, I just wish we could understand her.  We played for a little while and then it was time to go see Sergey.  They told us that the Measels were going around in his group and 6 were already in the hospital with it.  One had gotten better and was about to be released.  Well, it turned out that Sergey had a cold, so was in a different building seperated from the other children.  When we got to where he was, he was acting very shy, sort of stand-offish.  He was smiling at us though and he finally came and sat next to me.  All of his friends were around and being VERY wild and teasing him a little since his mama and papa were there.  Sergey interacted with Alyssa a little by showing her a dog that was at the orphanage and they were both petting him.  I could tell that Sergey didn't feel well though.  It was time for us to leave, so we said out goodbyes. 

Today we ran around and did paperwork all day, and then went to see the children late this afternooon.  We went to see Sergey first while the other children would still be in class and we wouldn't be distracted.  Well, guess what???  It turns out that HE has the measels now too :(  He is in the hospital and will be there for 7 days they say.  We are allowed to go visit him there, but can only wave to him through the window and send him stuff.  I feel so bad for him............no wonder he wasn't acting himself yesterday.  Poor thing :(  Please pray that he gets better soon.  We then went to see Dina.  The other kids saw us yelled to Dina that we were here.  You should'veseen her.  She ran outside so fast and ran right up to me so fast and jumped into my arms.  Then she ran up to Papa and she threw her up in the air.  There were to chairs where we were and she sat in one of them and saw Alyssa.  She told Alyssa to sit by her.  She actually said "Alyssa", I couldn't beleive she remembered her name :)  She and Alyssa played so good for a while.  I think Dina wore Alyssa out, she is DEFINATELY very active!  Well, I think they ended up wearing eachother out because they both came up to us sweating and sat down for a while.  We showed Dina our pictures of home, family, etc.  She loved to look at those.  Dina downed 3 juice boxes, while Alyssa only drank half of one.  Oh, and since you can't see a picture right now, she is about an inch shorter than Alyssa, and her feet are about a size smaller too.  We measured her, but left the measurements in the car.  I will let ya'll know her sizes tomorrow (for those of you who asked).  I guess I won't know Sergey's for another week or so :(  I really hate that we are missing out on this bonding time with him, but there is nothing we can do about it. 

As far as how long we will be here, the judge is out of town until Monday, October 9th.  We shoiuld have court sometime that week (we are praying for that Monday).  After court, we have to wait the manditory 10 days (the kids should be able to stay with us during this time), and then a day or two (hopefully) later we will be headed back to Kyiv and we will have another 2-4 days there, and then be heading home.  So, we are thinking, hoping, praying that we will make it home before the end of the month. 

We had to "officially" name them this morning.  We wanted to talk to the chilren about it first, but had no choice since the judge needed to know for court.  So there names are

Brayden Sergey and Abigail Elena

Yes, I know, we changed Dina's middle name................We couldn't decide on Abigail, or Alena, so we decided to use both and Chris requested that we changed Alena to Elena (he thought it was prettier) and it is her birthmother's name.  For now, we are still calling her "Dina" and we will probably continue to call Sergey, "Sergey" for a little while until they are with us for the 10 day wait. 

Alright, that is all for now.  I will try to type more detail later, it is just hard at the internet cafe.  Maybe I can figure out how to type on our laptop and transfer it to a computer here. 

Please, please, please pray that Sergey gets better soon and please pray for everything to go smoothly so we can get home with our new family :)

I haven't checked e-mail in a couple of days and I will check all of them tomorrow.

Love,

Chris, Julie, Alyssa, Abigail and Sergey