Final Thoughts from Poppa

Well, it is 2 am and I can’t sleep. We are leaving the apartment in another 2 hours for the airport. I am always so scared that I am going to sleep in and miss the flight that I can rarely sleep the night before an early morning plane trip. Anyway, since we are coming home soon, I am guessing that a lot of you will stop reading the blog, so this might be my last chance to post. Here are a few quick thoughts. And for those of you who are fair weather Kevin and Krista blog fans, I don’t even know how to post pictures on here, so you can stop reading if that is all you are looking for.
First off, this has been such an awesome and crazy trip. I will remember this forever. So many things (just about everything) were out of my control, that going in not trying to plan or have certain expectations on anything really helped. For those of you who are PAPS (is that the right lingo?), I would say that this definitely helped. Other than the meeting at the SDA where you give the final say on which kids, everything else was trying to get whatever paperwork done that somebody wanted. Things here are so inconsistent, you are at the mercy of whomever wants whatever paperwork that they want. Our judge wanted some things that most judges don’t even care about, but it doesn’t do any good to complain about it, what they want is what they get, and we were doing this for the kids, so you just do it. ( A side thought for you PAPS, I thought most the time Krista was spending reading so many other blogs or reading FRUA was a waste of time until we got here. In our SDA appointment when they were reading all of the health problems, I had no idea what was an actual serious problem and what was something that was so minor they shouldn’t bothered even mentioning it. Had I been there without her, I would have freaked out and probably would have come home with nothing. She really knew her stuff and it helped a lot. Kostya was awesome and I would 100% completely recommend him to anyone thinking about adopting here in Ukraine. At the same time, it was also nice that Krista was familiar with so many other peoples’ stories that she was able to give me a second voice saying that everything was fine and that all of these different things have happened to other people.)
Second, I love my kids. (I guess that probably should have been first) I didn’t think I would bond this fast with them. Each day is better and better with them. We have so many habbits that we need to break with them that it is going to take quite a while to have them behaving the way we want them to. They have been raised by other people up until now, so they don’t have the same morals and behavior as they would if we had raised them from birth. If your kids are not good at whining, send them over for just an hour, we will have them reaching new levels.
Here are a few other random thoughts on the trip. Until you don’t have one, you would never realize how much you would miss a shower curtain. I am so sick of McDonald’s after the past 2 days, I don’t think I will ever eat there again. It was just so quick and convenient. Alina says that I have “little muscles” compared to Kostya’s “big muscles”. Pushing 4 kids on the swings every day is changing that. I have taken the 4 to the part by myself the last 3 days and my body is beat up. For you PAPS, the light blue Bonaqua bottles are “no gas”, not carbonated. The dark blue is. I never knew on the other brands of water which was which, so we bought Bonaqua the whole trip. Taxi rides – everything you might have read about how crazy the taxi drivers are is completely true. Sasha here in Kiev is great, but once you get out of the major city, there pretty much aren’t any rules for driving. They are amazing at turning a two lane road into three lanes. If you really want to lose 10 pounds, adopt kids in Ukraine. It is not that the food is bad, but there were so many times that you were doing things and you had no idea how long it was going to take. There were days where we didn’t eat lunch or dinner because we were so busy trying to get stuff done. At least now some of my shorts will fit me again. If I have to watch Lion King 2 in Russian one more time…..
Thanks again everyone for your prayers and emails during this long trip. They were definitely needed. The emails were great, it was a way of brining a little piece of home with you by being able to talk to everyone. Our 20 some hour trip home is about to begin. Please pray that the kids are ok on the plane. I think once we are on it and we take off, they will be fine. The suspense leading up the that is what is going to freak them out.