WE ARE HOME! Wouldn't you know after having been up more than 24 hours yesterday. I am the first up. I guess that's what we moms do when we bring our children home for the first time (only mine aren't newborns- but in my mind they are, because everyday is a beginning!) And life goes on..........

Terri

This will be our last blog here in Ukraine. We will be home tomorrow night at 6:30 pm on Delta in to Birmingham (from Atlanta) We are so very excited. We are staying very close to the underground mall and tonight we walked there and the kids said they wanted Ukrainian food for the last time. I promised I would learn how to make borsche, David doesn't like the red base just white borsche so if anyone has a good receipe for me please send my way. Ashley really doesn't like borsche, she likes the cold soups as she says- so I probably need help there too. I really hate saying goodbye anytime to anyone- so it was really good to visit our good friends Marina, Nina and Yana and they helped us so much with the adoption and were so close to the kids over the last 4 years, but it was really hard to say goodbye. Of course I cried. Tonight we said goodbye to Sasha, he is not only our facilitator but our very good friend and a very Godly man . I often tell him that he is my brother (I didn't have brothers only two sisters) and so I would like to thank him for helping to make the adoption possible, for listening to me with all of my frustrations over the last 4 years and not once did he ever leave me with a discouraging word that there was not hope of adopting. I would also like to thank my family and friends for also listening and praying for us. Good night from Ukraine.

Terri

Kiev is a beautiful city. The architect is just absolutely breath taking. Today has been a lazy day here. We are truly counting down the minutes until we leave. Yesterday we bought our return tickets and we fly out on Tuesday from Kiev to Moscow, Moscow to Atlanta and Atlanta to Birmingham (flight #5086-arriving in Bham @6:30 pm). We found out from the Delta office here in Kiev that the Kiev to JFK flight will cease from mid Sept. and start back again in March. They didn't know why but anyway all return flights on Tuesday were booked up so we were able to fly through Moscow pretty cheap and besides we have David and Ashley who speaks Russian and can help us in the Moscow airport. We caught up with all the football scores this morning, congratulations to Jerry Hoods Clay Chalkville team on his first victory as their head coach and sorry to hear about Oak Mountains loss. We look forward to coming to some games and hopefully it will convenience David that he can like American football and Soccer-I think he believes it has to be one or the other . He was excited to hear that Ryan Hennessey plays both for Oak Mountain. I know your day is just starting out but it is evening here and the kids are going for a swim before we call it a night. I love the night time because it means another day behind us and closer to coming home. David McKnight, I just want to tell you that you are so funny and actually there is a professional soccer team staying at the hotel, I really wish Andy would have taken the iniative to talk to the coach's which were sitting in the lobby for awhile this morning as we were sitting there passing time, but you know how shy he is! Have a good day everyone.

Terri

We are set to come home this Tuesday night @ 6:30 pm on Delta into Birmingham. DJ says the days are going so slow here-I totally agree. Our time here has been alot shorter than most though and just so thankful for that. Have a great Friday night High School football tonight and we will see you soon!
Terri

I know it has been a few days since our last blog but it has been a whirlwind. Tuesday we were gone from 9:30 am until 9:00pm but we finished all the necessary paperwork in order to come to Kiev on Wednesday. The orphanage was our last stop. The kids were just getting back from camp when we arrived. Larissa (the director) was meeting with the older group in the dining room (which has been completely redone for those of you who have been there-it is so bright and beautiful). We sat in the hallway waiting for Larissa and pretty soon Davids friends showed up to say goodbye. We saw Sergey B. coming out of the dining area and stopped him. He is so cute and grown up-he stopped long enough to take one picture and off he went. Then we saw Tolya and Yulia both adorable. Tolya is at the University now majoring in Sports training. Masha is still in Italy until the 29th. Ashley went upstairs to visit her friends but quickly appeared back to us. (she probably figured after 4 years of waiting she would not let us out of her sight again.) When it was time to leave Larissa walked us out to our car. After many tears from me (the kids were fine) we headed back to our apartment exhausted from the long day. Yesterday we flew back to Kiev. We had our drive Oleg take us from Zap to Dinepro to fly back to Kiev-again as we were leaving Zap I begin to cry-just thankful to the Lord for allowing this to happen. I believe that David is going to be a fan of country music because he loves to listen to my Rascal Flat cd and as we were leaving the city he was sharing the headphones with me and we were listening to the song Broken Road ( I think is the name) and I thought how appropriate to us because it says God bless the broken road that led me straight to you and He surely did-along the way of this long 4 year journey the road seemed so broken, dead ends at times, but He knew that it would lead straight to our two kids -9000 miles from us to where we are today , a family. We will most likely be home on Tuesday night. I will post tomorrow the exact schedule after we purchase the tickets. Have a great Thursday.

Terri

Could we possibly be down to our last week in Ukraine? Tommorrow begins our adventure to obtain birth certificates, tax id, and passports. Hopefully we will get this all done in one day-their birth certificates are here in Zaporhoyzha-good thing! It really is a process but depending on what time tomorrow we can get the neccessary documents to the passport office will determine when we may be able to come home. It will either be Saturday or Tuesday. We will travel to Kiev on Wednesday and stay until we come home. Yesterday we spent the day with Suzette and Alexandra and of course we had to make our McDonald's stop. After that we all went to the soccer fields and while David played with some boys that were there, we all sat around and talked about Mexican food! We decided we would have a party when we get home with a Mexican theme. Alexandra said her mother makes a mean fresh salsa dip. We finally had to stop talking about it because we knew there wasn't a Taco Bell in site here. (Hey, who likes Taco Bell anyway, but we would have walked right in if there was one here) Last night we had dinner with Sasha, Nina, Suzette, Alexandra and two sweet Moms from Anniston. On the way home, David asked me if we were going to adopt more children like Mrs. Kim Kemp. I said no just him and Ashley for us to which he replied that when he grew up he would come back here and adopt children into his family. Wow-life is so sweet!

Have a great Monday!
Terri

Celebrating David's birthday was such fun! I know he is a Garver kid when he started pressing me for his birthday present a day early, but I didn't give in and told him that he had to wait until his birthday, he never asked again unlike my kids at home would have done. I woke him up yesterday at 10:00 am- after all you can't sleep all day on your birthday and gave him the presents- a soccer game, batman coloring book and a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Then off to the big amusement arcade. I tell you I love to go to Chucky Cheese because I love to play arcade games-so I am not sure who was more excited, me or him. Suzette, Alexandra, and Yana went with us. Then we ask David where he might want to eat, he chose Rodeo because of the great borsche. We had already eaten there when we first came so off we went. Really good borsche and everything else! We came back to the apartment and spent some time digesting our fiesta of food , enjoyed Suzette and Alexandra being here (Yana had to go home, foot hurting) and then Andy says "Cake, anyone?" Of course you would have thought that none of us had eaten all day with the way we ate cake and ice cream! Sorry we missed some of your calls, but thanks for the happy birthday messages sent by email. We are loving Suzette and Alexandra being here. Tonight Sasha comes with two ladies from Birmingham and once again we all plan to eat! Have a beautiful Sunday.

Terri