We're in Ukraine

Tay says goodbye to Uncle Daniel - they sure will miss playing with each other this summer!

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Well, David told people to check our blog for updates on how we are doing in Ukraine, so I figured that I better get started. I have much more time to blog here - no house to clean, no kitchen to make food in, no dictations to type, not many English speakers, etc... so maybe I'll actually get up a few good posts for once!

We lucked out on our flight to NY and nobody sat in the seat next to us...so Tay got to use it for a bit :)
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Well, our trip here was a long one, but it went really well considering we have a 10 month old baby. We flew to NY on Friday evening and then left on a direct flight for Ukraine on Saturday. Tay did awesome on the first flight (4.5 hours), and then on the Ukraine flight (almost 10 hours) he actually slept 2 different 2 hour chunks and then only actually cried for about 15 minutes one time. Needless to say, we were still exhausted when we arrived here because it was 2am our time but 11am here and we had kind of skipped our night on the flight. We are still pretty tired, but are feeling much better after a night of sleep last night.

He really didn't sleep a ton on the trip, but I took pictures of him in his 2 makeshift beds. The first one was waiting for our Ukraine flight, & the second one is in the basinet they put up for us in the plane - soooo nice!!!
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We are staying with another Mormon family in a room in their apartment. There are actually 2 young LDS families here and each have little boys who are both about 8 months older than Taylor. Also - the bishop of the Ukrainian Ward and his wife live about a 5 minute walk away and they have an 18 month old son also. The bishop's wife speaks English really well, so it will be nice to have her to help me get around. Also, the family that was our contact in finding this place to live is pretty close too and the husband and wife both speak English well and they have a 3 year old boy and 18 month old girl. So there are lots of little babies for Taylor to play with and there are a few people for me to talk to as well.

I tried to get as much of our room in the picture as I could by standing in the very corner each time and holding the camera above my head...these are the best shots I could get. :)

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Well, I have had lots of herbal chai 'tea' in the last day and a half and also some delicious homemade Borscht and some really good bread-looking thing with apples baked in itthat I have no idea what it is. One of the Ukrainian wives that we live with made it and offered it to me today, but she doesn't speak English so I couldn't find out what it was - I will have to wait for David to get home to translate. We had a fun time together eating it and sipping herbal tea and watching our 2 boys play. It is amazing that I was able to sit with someone for 2 hours and say almost nothing, but it wasn't awkward at all. Hopefully my Russian will improve soon so I can communicate a little bit more. :)