it's a girl!

Happy little family (daughter still not thrilled about the camera!)

let me out of here!!!

KVAS break!

Granite curbs being put it...what do you think dad (nickel) maybe for your front yard?

How can sitting in a car for the better part of a day leave one so exhausted? We are tired but elated. We are truly celebrating because Ivanna is officially our daughter. Now, we feel like we can exhale. Today, we were picked up at 8:20 and headed off to the court to pick up the official papers from the judge. We waited for a while there then proceeded out to Boyarka to get Ivanna’s birth certificate changed. That took a while (about an hour) then we got the birth certificate copied (line-up and wait there) and then finally ended up at the orphanage where Slava needed to pick up some documents. We got to play with Ivanna for about 45 minutes (she had just had her lunch) then had to take her back to her group (for the LAST time! :) We carried on and we got some other documents from another office in Boyarka. Then we headed into Veshneve (a town between Boyarka and Kyiv) to get some other documents. We made a brief wrong stop (wrong building) then found the correct one and had to wait a while because it was their lunch break. At 2:00pm we went up and signed for the document (I have no idea what it was – though needed for her passport application). We briefly stopped to copy some of the documents for that office and dropped them back off. As Slava was copying the documents, Vadim got out for a cup of KVAS – our guide book describes it as a gingery beer-like soft drink (made from fermented bread). He loves it (everytime we pass a seller on the street he says ‘Kvas-country champagne’ or ‘country beer’ rather lovingly:) He let me have a taste of his and as I was thirsty and it was pretty darn good, Darren and I shared a cup. Slava came out and had one too. A nice little break in the middle of document gathering and errand running! Anyway, we dropped off the copies at the last office we were at then headed into the city. Traffic was crazy. We eventually got to the passport office and when Slava came out she said it would be ready Thursday morning. Yay! We then had some more crazy traffic just getting back to our part of the city (dropping Slava at a metro station on the way). So tomorrow we will get picked up at 8:40 and go get some documents legalized and then head back out to Boyarka to pick up our girl. It’s surreal to actually be at this place. It is slowly feeling more and more real that we actually ARE her parents and that we get to take her home to Canada with us in 4 day. Crazy! We are thrilled everything went well today and that we got to see Ivanna in the middle (we weren’t expecting to). We now plan to head out for something to eat as it is 4:15 and we haven’t had anything since breakfast (except kvas - for once I didn’t have stuff in my bag for snacks – bad timing)! Hopefully, the wi-fi at Mario’s is working.