It was another hot day today (93 degrees F). The morning meeting was a little rough for Max since he was tired and cranky but the afternoon meeting was real nice. That is typical. Our morning meetings are at 10:00 am and he is generally tired then and ready for a nap. The afternoon meetings are usually better (3:30 pm). They are all valuable bonding times so we are happy to take what we can get. We will only get one meeting again this Saturday, none on Sunday and only one on Monday since it is a holiday (Holy Trinity Day). We had some success finding clothes for Max today. We had some time around lunch so we went to the open market. We were not pleased with what we saw there so we decided to go eat at McDonalds. After that we walked toward our flat and not far from the flat we discovered a small clothing store. The window display showed a mixture of adult and childrens clothing. We decided to check it out. Once inside we found some "nice" outfits for max at much more reasonable prices. We ended up getting him 5 outfits, socks and pajamas all for the same price as one in the other stores (~80 dollars).

Hello everyone. The comments have been great. Keep them coming. Isn't this picture cute? They have finally started to dress him for the weather. When we first started visiting they would dress him in three layers of clothes to go outside. The weather is unseasonably hot here (92 degrees). Olga told us that the news explained that it is the hottest it has been in the last 100 years for this month. It is hot but nothing unbearable for us. It seems to affect them more. I guess they aren't as used to it as we are. Maybe I should tell them it is not the heat it is the humidity. Ha Ha. It would not translate well so I won't. As you can see we have found yet another way Maxim is going to fit into our family. He is just as accident prone as the other three. He fell again and scraped his face pretty good. He also has a little bit of a stubborn streak. Good thing we have plenty of practice with that. He is pretty independant. No doubt a product of his environment. He is slowly starting to understand more. Today he was walking away from us (doing his own thing) and when we called for him he came back. He is consistently calling us Mama and Papa now. He still calls the caregivers mama as well. It may take a while to break him of that. We have learned a little more Ukranian. One of our favorite words is Kiss (sounds like tsuee). Sometimes it works with Maxim and he will give us a kiss. Most of the time we are just hugging and kissing him. He loves the fruit snacks we brought him. They are his favorite treat. He said bite for the first time yesterday when he wanted them. We have been working with him every meeting to learn english words. It will be much easier when we get home and that is all he hears. We went out to eat a celebration dinner the night after court. We found a mexican restaurant called Tequilla Boom. It was pretty good. I would say a mix between Tumbleweed and On the Border. No such thing as free unlimited chips and salsa or drink refills. Overall the food has been cheap compared to America. The clothes are a diferent story. Every childrens shop we have been in shopping for clothes has been outrageous. Between $50 and $60 dollars for an outfit. We did find a cheap pair of tennis shoes today at the grocery for about $8. All of the shoes we had were also around $60 dollars. We plan on going to the open market this week. Olga thinks we will have better luck finding reasonable clothes there. We just need a few outfits to bring him home in. The last picture is of a typical Ukrainian fire engine. Just thought some of you would be interested in seeing it. Several people have asked when we are coming home. Of course there are no definates so things can change. Currently we are planning on flying back to Kiev on June 1st which is a Friday. We will have to wait until Monday to finish some work at the adoption center and Tuesday at the Us Embassy. Which would mean we could possibly leave Wednesday morning June 6th. We will keep you posted on our progress.

I know many of you have been waiting for pictures of Maxim. HERE HE IS! You can see through the balloon right? Ha Ha! Well if you can't see through balloons then just scroll down a little farther and you can see him for real. We have great news. We had court today. Another surreal experience. I will save the details for when we get home. Needless to say it was not like an American court. Never the less we are officially the parents of Maxim. Amber, Coleton and Donovan you have a new brother! We still have to wait for the official court decree until after the ten day wait. Since there is a holiday during our waiting period we have to wait longer than the ten days. So guess when we get him... On June 1st, My birthday. What a wonderful present. We want everyone to know that we can feel your love and prayers and there is no way we could have been so succesful with out the help of God. Thanks to all of the prayer warriors. We never doubted and God has rewarded us all for our faithfulness. Maxim is going to be a blessing to us all. We can't wait to get him home so everyone else can love on him. The picture under Maxim is the entrance to the orphanage. Below that is a nearby river and also a water foutain. We like to go for walks when we have some spare time and these are some of the sites. Sorry if we do not answer all of the questions specifically. We promise to answer all of them when we get home. Don't let that stop you from adding comments. We love you all very much.

We ended up needing to get some information from the US Embassy web-site so we decided to post today. Here are some more pictures you may be interested in. The first one is a statue of Aptema the founding father of the city. After that is a picture of us standing in front of what we believe is a World War II memorial. Then there are some pictures we took while walking around the square during the Miss Donetsk contest. The first is a statue of Lenin. The next is of a street performer. The last picture is just looking down the main city street named after Aptema. We did not stick around long enough to actually watch the pagent. We saw a little bit of the pre concert. There were two main singers one male and one female. The crowd seemed to like them. Although it was packed and many people were drinking it was under control. There were a lot of families with small children walking around and there was even a place with small rides like you would see at a county fair. The law for alcohol use only applies to hard liquor for which you must be 21. It is weird seeing youth walking around in public drinking beer. Olga says that although there is no law most parents would be very angry to see their children drinking. That is all for now. We love everyone. Talk to you latter. Thanks for all of the wonderful comments.

Here are the pictures of the flat. The first one is the entrance door. The second is the balcony. Next is the living room and then kitchen. The last two are of the bathroom. Although the outside looks rough you can see that the inside is nice and typical of most American hotels for more money. The flat that was 10 dollars less per day was a lot less quality and features. It also smelled like sewer gas. We were glad to pay the extra. We don't get to see Max tommorrow so we might not post. Tonight we will go out and eat and maybe walk around the city a little. There is an open square near our flat and tonight they are holding the Miss Donetsk pagent there. We may walk by there on the way home. It will most likely be very crowded so we will have to see how it goes. This would be similar to the Miss Kentucky pagent. Keep sending the e-mails and comments to the post. We look forward to coming and seeing what is new. Probably just as much or more as you. Thanks again for all of the prayers and love. We love and miss everyone.

We could only meet with Max once today since it is Saturday. The orphanage allowed us a little more time than normal. The morning meetings are tough because he gets tired and is ready for a nap by the end of the meeting. He is getting more used to us with each visit. He had some sort of accident yesterday and they brought him out with a bandaged finger and a sock over his hand. This morning the nurse was talking with Olga (our interpreter) and asking her to have us purchase some ointment for it. Since we were prepared we already had brought some Neosporin with us. The nurse was pleased and took our tube. She said she would use it on him. We have about a half of another tube to use when we get him for ourselves. We have to go to lunch now but plan to come back and post again tonight with some more pictures.

Thanks to everyone for all of the comments and e-mails of love and support. We are getting more confident in our ability to get around and have ventured out more on our own now while the translater/facilitator runs erands for our adoption paperwork. If I had a car I know I could drive to the orphanage by myself. The challenge would be fighting against the aggresive drivers here. I will not have to worry about it since my license is no good here and I don't have a vehicle. The taxi droped us off at the internet club toady and we will walk back to the flat. We plan to stop at a couple shops on the way back. Most of the people we encounter are nice and we feel safe even in the rougher areas of town. That does not mean that we are nieve or that we are not paying close attention to what is going on around us. It is very obvious to them that we ar American. The shoes are the biggest give away. Most all people here seem to wear dress shoes. We have only seen a couple of people with tennis shoes and they were running. If we could speak, read or understand a little more Russian it would be very easy to for us to get around by ourselves. We are learning more everyday. The meeting with Maxim today went well. He already knows to look in mama's bag for a banana and his juice. He plays peek-a-boo with us which they say "cukoo" (like the clock). I apologize if I miss spell anything but the spell check feature will not work over here. We went to the grocery yesturday without the interpretor. To use a cart you have to unlock it with a 50 cent piece which we did not have. We were sent to the information desk and although noone spoke english they had been through the drill before so all I had to do was give them a small bill and they made the change for me. The grocery was layed out similar to an American grocery and had a very wide selection of foods. The perishables were fresher and they don't shop for long periods like we do (usually only 3 days worth) so they don't have preservatives on them. You can actually buy good tasting vegetables (tomatoes) from the grocery. The hardest part is that they don'd have presliced and packaged lunch meet. Since I could not speak Russian I avoided the deli counter because I did not want to draw extra attention to us. We were getting starred at anyway since we had a full cart. We ended up buying a package of uncut ham and some salomi. The cheese was easy since it was already sliced and packaged. We bought 3 liters of what we thought was regular milk but it turns out that it was fermented milk. When we got the groceries back to the flat our translator was thinking wow these Americans like fermented milk. Later she realized what we had done and warned us before we drank it. She likes it so we told here she will have to drink a lot. It has helthful bacteria in it that is good for digestion. I don't thing we will be trying it. Another challenge was picking out condements. They are labeled and packaged differently so it os difficult to distinguish between kethup, maranade, or any other sauce. We ended up selecting what looked like a mustard sauce for the chicken. Turns out it was curry mustard and it was real good on the chicken we fixed last night for supper. We also had some rice and mixed vegetables. Our flat is very nice and much nicer than we were expecting. It is clean and has many of the amenities that we are used to. It is a one bedroom with a kitchen, living room and bathroom. We looked a t a different flat that was ten dollars cheaper per night but it was of significant less quality and features. The one we are in is only $60 per night. Pretty reasonable compared to what you would pay at home. The bathroom has a normal toilet, and even a garden

tub. The kitchen has a stove and oven, refrigerator, microwave and is stocked with dishes and utensils. The living room has a couch with a fold out bed (where the interpreter sleeps). Bye the way her name is Olga and she is very nice and has been very helpful. She has a good since of humor so we have been able to joke around with each other. She is about our age so that makes it easier for us to relate. The living room even has a stereo slash DVD player. Both the living room and Master bedroom have TV's with cable. Of course there are only a couple channels that are in english, one of which is the BBC. We will post some pictures of the flat maybe next time. I have not taken pictures of it yet. Needless to say it is much nicer than we had prepared for and we are very pleased with our good fortune. The first picture is of Iris standing next to the NAC entrance on Kiev before we went in for the referal meeting. The next one is us in Detroit. The one after that was taken in the airport in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The statue in the back ground was called "Two fat black snowmen sitting". We had to take a picture. You can only see one of them from this angle, they are sitting back to back. I know every one is anxious for us to post pictures but we want to wait until after court. We don't want to risk someone from here finding it and getting mad at us. They seem to frown upon it and we want to wait until after court next week. We need to get going for now or we will be late getting back to the flat in time for the taxi to take us for our afternoon meeting at the orphanage. We love everyone.