The "See you laters"

Saying goodbye is tough. We have the advantage of experiencing so many different things, but I'm sure we will have our moments just like everyone else. Ellie had a lot of special time with her friend Francesca, cousin Hailey and all her Aunts and Uncles, cousins and Grandparents. Rylie also had a great time with all of her friends and family; everyone made it special and memorable for them! Time just seemed to move very quickly the last week, what we thought would feel like a lot of time to sit around and visit really seemed to fly by at lightening speed! As the 4th of July ended it was hard to go to the hotel, at that point it felt like if we didn't go to bed the next morning would not come. There is no pausing time though. Now I suppose family and friends are trying to speed up time. The airport was not as bad as it could have been. As the mom, I was still in work mode; making sure we had everything and we all got to our destination with all our stuff! It was nice to have so many people there to see us off and thank you everyone for doing your best at having one nice last little visit.

The Finishing Touches

The 2 weeks before we left for Ukraine was pretty crazy. We relaxed at the Oregon Coast for a couple of days spent time with family out of town and in town as much as possible. We managed to see one more movie at the theater before we left town (Toy Story 3) and it was awesome. Crazy to think that going to that show is what some people in Slavutich earn in 2 weeks! We moved out of the house, which took a little more work than I thought even though the company had movers for us. I had many friends come and help clean, so that went fast. Once again we tried to just do the "see you later" hugs rather than the "goodbye" ones. Uuugh! We spent several days at a hotel and the girls got a lot of swimming in. Between swimming and late nights with family we were all getting pretty exhausted. All the goodbying wears a person out!

The Journey Begins

Tony's Adventures

The five weeks Tony spent in Slavutich was quite an adventure. He had stories of his Dr. appointments that ranged from an EKG (which was more like jumper cables attached to him) to misscommunications that made Tony nearly take his pants down and they only wanted him to roll his pant legs up!

Tony toured many historical sites in Chernigov, St. Catherine's Cathedral, the monestary, the catacoms and much more, in total it was easily 12 miles of hiking on a very hot day, nice though with your own personal tour guide. The day ended with a very large traditional Ukrainian meal which included borscht (very good) and pork fat on bread (not so good). Then he took the 50 minute train ride and a 20 minute walk home for a very good nights sleep.

He is learning Russian, shopping around town, meeting wonderful neighbors, and enjoying great food!

Cottage in Slavutich

Tony is already having quite the adventure in Slavutich, Ukraine! The food has been great, the people very kind, but the Mooskees (biting flies) are attrocious!! He has noticed that some locals don't have as much trouble, it's probably the Vodka and smoking that helps with that. Tony said the biting flies are almost going to drive him to drink the vodka, if that's what it takes (tee hee).

Tony has moved into our cottage. It looks pretty cute, but you have to admit the style is a little different than we are used to.

My shipment to Ukraine left on Friday! Wow, that was a lot of work (thanks to some friends I was able to complete that task on time).

One Down

One big step has been completed. We got Tony out the door and on the airplane to Ukraine today! There were a couple of very sad little girls once we got in the car and left Daddy at the airport. I told Tony that it was very cruel what he did to me, (the two sad little girls calling, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" was pretty awful)! They recovered well and I'm sure we will all be fine. We will miss Tony a lot, but we are praying all goes well for him!

Glasses!

Ellie has glasses. She is near-sighted like her mommy, big surprise. She does look cute though!

I have finally spent some time on my blog trying to make it cute. I had friends who helped me out with that. There are still things I want to do, but maybe I can work on that during our very long flight to the Ukraine. Tony will be leaving May 17th at 9:15am, and he will be traveling for about 22 hours, uuugh!

Anyway, I thought I would post a couple pictures of things going on here lately.