Before we start our post, I want to mention something that has been in the news lately. If you live close to the Louisville area, you may have seen a story about a young lady and her three children that were killed in a car accident earlier in the week. That accident happened about 1 mile away from my parent's home at an intersection that I have turned from many a time. Granted, the small towns around there are somewhat bigger and busier now than they were then. I probably had only spoken about 10-20 words to that lady in her life time but I knew her. Her dad and my mom had taught Math together at the High School for as long as I can remember. Her family went to the same small church as I did growing up. One of her older sisters was just a year behind me in school. I believe, but am not sure, that she (or her twin sister) helped at the Springfield Baptist Church's Vacation Bible School recently as a teacher in Caleb's class. Regardless, I know that it is a HUGE loss to such a small community. When national tragedies occur, you always think that there is probably a family and friends that are left behind to grieve. But in this case, I know that there is family and friends and an entire community left to grieve. Springfield Kentucky might be a sleepy little town that has not changed much in a long time, but if I had to go through something like this family is having to go through, there is no place on earth that I would rather be than in Springfield. We pray that God will provide sufficient support and love for that family during this truly difficult time. We know that He will.

As for us, the days keep passing by. Today is actually day 8 of the 10 day wait. Monday will be the end. However, because of the holidays, we will not have the required paperwork to be able to take Coy until Thursday. Once we get him, we will head to Kyiv to take care of paperwork at the US Embassy before coming home. Please be in prayer that all of the paperwork will go smoothly and that we will get to come home quickly and safely. We are hoping to be able to post this weekend about an expected time home. Of course, if any of the paperwork doesn't get completed, that could throw that date back some.

Stacey is leading in the Rummy Challenge. We have played 13 games of Rummy to 500 and she has won 7 of those. We have scored over 13,000 points together and the difference in our total scores is 5 points. We have a lot of free time on our hands. Maybe on the next post, I will provide some additional Rummy statistics.

Some good news that did happen to us. Since we are concerned about the van ride, we decided to try to hunt down a DVD for Coy to watch in the van. Our DVD player plays region 1 DVDs while almost all DVDs sold here are for Region 5 DVD players. Every once in a while, you may come across a DVD that plays on all DVD players, but not often. In our search, we had found a single Buggs Bunny DVD that would play on ours but we hesitated because they can sometimes be fairly violent and we weren't sure that was a good thing for him to watch on a long car ride. We did not purchase the Buggs Bunny DVD but decided to look around. The other day, on our way to the orphanage, we decided to go ahead and get the Buggs Bunny DVD. But we were running late and were not going to have time to go to the store where we had seen it before so our facilitator suggested that we try another store that sold the same things. We stopped and walked towards the door and there was a man outside, selling DVDs. At first glance, we did not see any children's DVDs but then Stacey found one towards the bottom that said Walt Disney so she picked it up. It had pictures on it from almost all of our favorite WD/Pixar movies (Cars, Toy Story 1 and 2, Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Monsters Inc., A Bugs Life) 14 in all. The DVD was made to play on all regions. We asked the guy if these movies were all on the DVD and he said yes. The cover said 14 cartoons. The cost, $4. We bought it. For the rest of the afternoon, we debated as to what was on the DVD. Was it clips from these movies?? Was it the music?? What exactly could be on this DVD for $4?? When we got back to our apartment, much to our surprise and amazement, all of the movies were on the DVD and they were in Russian. Some of them have the Russian over the English, but some, like Cars, Monsters Inc., and The Incredibles are only in Russian. That should provide hours, and we mean hours, of entertainment. Between that and food, perhaps we will make it to Kyiv after all. Someone (besides us) has obviously been praying for our trip home. We truly appreciate it.

This photo is of Coy telling some story. He tries to talk a lot and must be pretty good because our facilitator can understand what he is saying. We asked the caregivers to write Coy a note for him to read when he gets older. One of them told the lady writing the note to be sure to tell us that we had gotten one of the best boys in the house. They also told us that he likes to be the leader. That could be interesting.

He has sat in the van a few times but only for snacks. We think he will be OK once he settles down. Stacey and I are getting better at communicating with him and settling him down when he gets upset, so we have faith that we can make it. He gets upset now when it is time for us to leave. We used to think that it was just that he didn't want to stop playing with the toys or something else but even now when all we are doing is walking around outside, he gets upset when it is time to go inside. That is good and bad. It is good that it appears that he is forming an attachment to us. It is bad because it is hard on us to watch him get upset and be taken away and know that it will be several hours or days before we see him again. He is always glad to see us and acts like he genuinely enjoys the time with us.

We are heading to the circus tomorrow. This photo is the building where the circus will be. That will help to pass the time since the morning visit is all we get on Saturday. It is next door to the Circuit City, so we will probably get a new CD made with new pictures on it too.

As always, if you see Caleb and Katie, please give them an extra dose of love and grace while we are gone. It has been just as hard on us as we had anticipated it would be so we figure that it has been hard on them as well. They may not have completely understood what it would mean for us to be gone for so long and on the outside, we know that they are trying to be Big. But we know that on the inside, they miss Mommy and Daddy and we miss them too. Thanks for showing them love while we are gone.