Shopping for the trip

Today Candace and I went to do all of the shopping required for our trip. In addition to many little things that we bought, we purchased a new digital camcorder. That's one of the rites of passages into parenthood in North America. Finally, we will have someone in our home worth videotaping 24 hours a day. We now have a chance to record someone's life, to share with family and friends ad naseum for the next couple of years...before storing the video away to pull out at a future graduation or marriage ceremony.

Looking at the weather for Kiev it is +7 Celsius today...at the same time that it is -16 C here with a -26 C wind chill. This is kind of neat because it will be my third consecutive year taking a warm weather vacation.

It was an interesting experience shopping for the trip. I feel so fortunate to have had the privilege to purchase Baby Tylenol and childrens' vitamins and cream for diaper rash. People keep telling me that it will change my life once the little one comes along. I have some news for them...it already has.

Making the blog

Tonight was the night I discovered how to create a blog. I spent about 10 minutes figuring out how to set it up followed by an hour messing around with the formatting. If I had known how easy it was I would have done it sooner. You'll notice that I made some posts for earlier days...since we are now ten days into our adventure, I thought it would be appropriate to fill in some of the details up to this point. Earlier this evening, I spent some time checking out websites regarding the Ukraine. One link outlined some tips for cultural etiquette. Note to self...do not place thumb between my first two fingers or shake hands across the threshold of a doorway. I also found some neat resources on the internet to help learn basic Ukrainian.

I was pretty excited about the blog so I went and got Candace out of bed to show her. She was excited too...but suggested I go to bed. I have decided that is probably a good idea. We are heading to Brandon tomorrow to buy all of those things that we need and we don't yet have...or those things that we have that we need more of. I can't wait to get that 220 V adaptor tomorrow...one small adaptor and one small step closer to December 8th.

I just realized that my internal countdown has been for December 8th...the day we are flying out of Winnipeg. Probably a day of more significance would be December 12th which is when we have our appointment at the adoption centre.

Meeting in Winnipeg

I was in Winnipeg for a meeting. Later in the day I visited the agency for about 80 minutes to discuss how planning was going. Everyone has been really helpful and we are so appreciative of all that they have done. I don't know much about the code of ethics for blogging so I am going to hold off on naming anyone without their permission. Let me just say that we really appreciate a couple of people at an agency-to-be-named later.

Later in the evening, after I got home, I spent some time working on my three lists...our shopping list, our to do list, and our packing list. The busier I am, the faster time goes, and the sooner December 8th will be here.