Thank You all who donated!

We were overjoyed when we got home and saw how many of you contributed to us. Our house was stocked with everything we needed to get started raising these three kids! We were so in need and your donations made such a difference in our lives that we want you to know how significant your gifts were. We are at a loss as to how to express our gratitude.

Two people deserve a special mention for also making this adoption and transition back home happen.

Brian/Jayne Reese attended to all of our affairs while we are gone. We could say so much about these wonderful people but will will simply say we could not have done this without them.

Cindy Henricksen completely organized the all of the donations and set up the kids' room. This was a job of great magnitude, with countless hours working and we would have been lost without her great help.

Life is good at home!

Life is crazy in our house! 5 kids! Our 3 new additions are so excited (and loud) about everything... Imagine being in a circus 16 hours a day! We are enjoying this time and appreciate the great blessing these kids are. Their English and table manners are improving a little each day. They are so excited at meal time but they know we must pray before we eat. So in anticipation they say "A B C D, Amen" and look to me to see if that's sufficient to allow them to eat! They are beginning to call each other by their American names. They love their bicycles and big wheel! Scooby Doo is the favorite show. They sing and dance with the theme song but the only words they get right are when the chorus sings scooby doo.

Funny eating habits: They hate peanut butter and cheese of any kind. They will not eat cereal with milk in it. They love tomato juice but will not drink milk. They love fruit but will not touch crackers.

We took them to school to get registration started and the South-Western school staff (especially Mr. Kennedy) were very generous with their help to us. Hopefully next week they will be attending classes.

We are Home!

We are back home and everything is well!

We are on schedule

We had a great experience at the US Embassy today. All visas and paperwork are in order. We will be leaving Ukraine tomorrow and arrive in Columbus by 9:00 p.m.

Passing time at the park

Getting ready to come home...

It's been an exhausting adventure! We are ready to come home!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNALEISE!

Annaleise is 6 today!

Family time in our flat

Learning the ABC's

We've downloaded some short Sesame Street video clips. The kids love Cookie Monster and the "letter of the day". They are starting to sing the ABC song along with the puppets.

I fixed homemade mac and cheese for our first dinner. It was a disaster! The kids do not like cheese in their noodles! Also, they don't like chocolate chip cookies. For breakfast, we gave them Cocoa-Puffs. What child doesn't like Cocoa-Puffs? We couldn't understand why they wouldn't eat them. The problem was that I got buttermilk instead of regular milk. Nothing is in English, I saw the Ukrainian word for milk, but didn't notice the smaller word underneath!

Here's what we found they like: dried sardine fish and milk soup. These little fish are packaged similar to beef jerky. All three love them! Milk soup is noodles (cooked to death) with warm milk and sugar.

We did make it to McDonald's today. They loved their Happy Meal toys and French fries -- we had to coerce them to eat half their hamburger.

We stopped at a nice park on the way home. They loved playing on the monkey bars and playing tag with dad!

Looking at Tractors

The kids love to look out the window at the construction next door. When I come to see what's going on, they talk a mile a minute in Ukraine. The only thing I recognize is "tractor".

Moving to Kiev

Zhenia found us a beautiful flat in downtown Kiev. We have about 800 sq. ft. for the kids to run around in. It was like Christmas when they saw it! It is fun to hear them laugh out loud and speak to each other as they play with their toys!

Enjoying our new flat in Kiev

Bath time was a success! They heard the water run and jumped right in. Too bad sleeping didn't work so well! Jeremy was still wide awake at 2:00 a.m.

Leaving the orphanage

Due to mistakes in paperwork, we didn't get to pick up the kids until Thursday. We made it to Kiev Thursday evening. The kids are having a great time now that they are back together and have a home! All three talked the whole hour ride to Kiev. Elijah and Annaleise want to be police officers like their dad -- Jeremy wants to be a bandit (among a list of other things)! Their eyes were big looking at all the cars, people, and buildings. We feel so blessed getting to witness many of their "firsts"!

Kiev: Victor and Lena's

We had a great day traveling to Kiev with Zhenia and Victor. Zhenia is working hard to get all of our paperwork in order so that we can bring our family home as quick as possible.

Victor invited all of us to his flat to meet his wife, Lena, and 4 month old baby, Dimitri. We had a wonderful dinner together. Their flat is beautiful -- 20th floor overlooking the new section in the left bank of Kiev.

Thank you to our new friends! We hope to keep in touch after we come home to the USA!

We will be picking up the kids on Wednesday. We thought that it would be Monday, but plans have changed. We will use Tuesday to make all of the filings. When visiting with Elijah this weekend, one of the workers was asking if we were there to take him home. We couldn't understand her, so one of Elijah's friends, who speaks fluent Spanish, translated to Spanish. We were able to communicate through him!

First workout

Dad and Elijah have their first workout together.

Tola met Annaleise and Jeremy today. Jeremy asked Tola if he was there to drive all of us home. He knows it's just a matter of days before he gets to leave with his momma and papa.

The Holcombe's head for Kiev!

James, Penny, Luke, and Micah said good-bye to Bila Tserkva and headed to Kiev. They are going through the final stage of paperwork. We hope to be right behind them!

Here was breakfast today in our hotel. Hot dog, buckwheat, and tomatoes. The tomatoes were delicious! Hot dogs for breakfast crack us up! Buckwheat is not bad but we have had it so much we laugh in exasperation when we see it. It is going to make our American cuisine so enjoyable when we get home. Only a couple of more weeks...

Farewell Party

James and Penny are celebrating their children's last night at the orphanage. Luke and Micah will be leaving Friday morning to make their way home to Alabama. We will stay in touch and can't wait to see what wonderful young men these two will grow to be!

More Party Pictures

Playing with Luke and Micah before the party

Here are some photos from various days here in Ukraine. There are several of playing soccer with Elijah and his friends at his orphanage. Other photos of us at Annaleise and Jeremiah's orphanage out at the playground. Couple of funny things: The caregivers at the orphanage really bundle the little kids up. In some of the pictures it is about 60* and the kids are ready for a blizzard!

All of the kids want to play soccer when we show up. It is hard to turn some of them down but you can only have so many on the field...

Pullup bars are everywhere! There are pullup bars at every school and here I am doing pullups at our hotel. Physcial training is very big here. I saw some old time kettlebells in the museum during our tour. They were very strict about no pictures so I didn't get any. It is called "Herehory" sport and is popular. I saw a guy of about 60 years old out on the pullup bars banging out sets of 10.