We're off.....

This will be our last post from the states! Although our day was kind of crazy, it was great! Luke and his team won their first ball game of the season. It was great to watch him playing out there again. It was also nice to be surrounded by great friends and well wishes.

Thank you Nancy Kay and family for the DS game for Luke. He loves it and hopefully will keep him busy on the long flights we have tomorrow. Thank you Pool family for the gazillion movies! They will be a God send when all of the TV we see is in Russian! Even more, thank you for the saints on the ring that will guide us and look over us on our journey. I will hold it in my pocket as a good luck charm every day. Thank you Paula and Clay for staying at the house and looking after my first daughters (dogs). They are in the best hands!

If all goes as we have hoped and prayed, this will be the last time in our home that we are a family of three. My stomach is a bundle of nerves but good nerves....like my wedding day. Think any of us will get any sleep tonight? Or for the next month for that matter! Ok, maybe the next 15 or so years if we are lucky! This is all so surreal!

Pray for us and the daughter that is supposed to be ours.

Time Crunch

This time next week we will know about our referral and hopefully have visited her. We have 2 full days before we leave and let me tell you, they are jammed packed! It seem like every minute counts right now. I have checked the weather for Sunday in New York for our connection and it looks great so that should not be a problem. Hopefully the weather warms up in Kiev by the time we arrive.

House is clean....
Laundry is done....
We are packed....
To do list is nearly complete....

I will admit, I am stressed because there is still so much to do. Scared of the unknown. Nervous about our appointment with the adoption center. Worried that we will all be terribly homesick. But....I am thrilled to finally be going! Excited to take this amazing journey! Grateful for those who are praying for us, including a deacon! Thankful for all of our friends who helped make this trip possible. What a ride this is going to be....

Up, Up and Away...

Luke had such a great time at the bithday party he went to yesterday but the birthday boy didn't. He was sick and went home :( They went to a place called SkyVenture and the boys were given an hour of instructions on how to "dive" and then they had an hour in the tube! It was so fun to watch them. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much!

In The Motherhood

Ok, my husband stumbled across this website yesterday and the web shows are hysterical! http://www.inthemotherhood.com For those of you who are in Ukraine right now it will give you something to watch!

How It Will All Go Down

Many people have asked us what will happen when we get there and how the process works. Here is our generic itinerary....

• Leave March 9 and arrive in Kiev on March 10
  
• March 11 we will catch up on sleep and tour Kiev some. We have a meeting set up with a western trained doctor (Dr. Yuri) who will go over some common diagnosis we will encounter while looking over the files of the children.
  
• March 12 is our appointment with the adoption center where we will look over files of children who are available for adoption. The appointment is only about an hour and we will be given a lot of information to absorb. We are requesting a girl between 14 months (when they are available for adoption for foreign citizens) and 7 years old. We will select a child to visit and wait for the paperwork from the adoption center that will allow us to visit the child. We will take a plane, train or car to the orphanage depending how far away it is. Dr. Yuri will either travel with us or meet us there. The paperwork could take a couple of days to complete.
  
• March 13-14 or so we will meet with the orphanage director and inspector to gain approval to visit the child and go over her medical, and if school aged, her educational files. They keep files on every cold, flu and sniffle the child has ever had while in the orphanage as well as any information they have on the child's family and when she came into the orphanage. Dr. Yuri will examine the child for us. If we decide to adopt the child, we will submit paperwork to the adoption center and wait for a court date. This usually takes at least a week. During this time we will be able to visit our child usually twice a day for an hour or so.
  
• Hopefully we will have court on March 20th or so. Court can be as quick as 15-20 minutes or as long as an hour. I have heard people being quizzed about what is in their homestudy and why they want to adopt this child and why they chose Ukraine. After court there is a mandatory 10 day waiting period for any family member of the child to contest the adoption. I will not say this has never happened but it is very rare.
  
• Our ten days will be up around March 31 or April 1st. After the wait is up we will need to get her new passport and birth certificate. If she was born in a different region than where she is in the orphanage we will have to travel to that region to get her birth certificate changed.
  
• We will leave the region and travel back to Kiev where we will need to get a medical evaluation from the US and her visa so she can come home with us. Once she steps off the plane she is automatically a US citizen!

Our return ticket is scheduled for April 15th and I hope we are fortunate and make that date. Most adoptions are taking between 4-6 weeks.

I am sure I am forgetting some part of the process and other things will come up but this is the gist of the process.

8 days to go.....

Wow, the time is flying by! I know as busy as we will be over the next week it will go even faster. Here is what is on our agenda for the next few days....

Tonight: Luke has his first scrimmage game for Little League.

Saturday: I need to shop for gifts for our facilitator. I was told she likes candy. We were also told she has an 8 year old daughter. I want to get her some "smelly" stuff from Bath and Body Works. I also want to get her something from Disney since Disney World is right in our backyard!

Luke was invited to a really cool birthday party for a boy in his class. They are going "sky diving" in a tube. We were supposed to meet the parents and 11 other boys for the kids to all go to the sky dive place together then out for some Japanese table cooking. I couldn't let Luke go to this awesome place without me following him like the paparazzi I am! So we will take him over and watch them "dive" and then I will let him be with his friends. What are these parents thinking having 12 boys in a restaurant??!!! OMG they must be nuts or just drink heavily! LOL He thinks the parents are going to let them have a sleep over too!

Sunday: Luke is spending the afternoon with his God parents and Drew and I will work on updating our will and finish packing. He needs to decide what he is going to wear while we are away day after day!

Our week will be filled with school, doctors appointments, haircuts, baseball practice and one more scrimmage Friday night before opening ceremonies next Saturday followed by our first real game of the season....go Pirates!!

Fortune Cookie Says....

"You will soon meet the person you admire".

I am a believer in intuition. I believe in my heart that adopting from Ukraine is the right thing to do. It isn't any one thing that led us here but it just "feels right"! Here are just a few little "signs I wanted to share and why I believe my intuition is right.

About a month ago I was working on our packing list and turned on the E! channel. The first thing to come on was a Ukrainian model. How often have you seen a Ukrainian model? Another weird coincidence was Drew had just walked in the room.

In the mornings after dropping Luke off at school I listen to 3 different radio stations(I know this little habit of mine will change instantly when we come home with our daughter. I will be listening to Raffi again!). I never channel surf on TV but do it in the car. When will they come out with the "DVR" for the radio? Anyway, I changed the channel and caught the "Hollywood report" and they were talking about the new Jessica Simpson movie and what a flop it is. But get this....it is number one at the box office in Ukraine!

Today I ate Chinese food for lunch. Like always, I opened up my fortune cookie to read my fortune. I couldn't believe my eyes. Yes, I will admire our daughter. It takes strength and courage to go with strangers to another country. She will be amazing!

Got the loot!

What a funny story this is....I went to our bank and told the teller I needed to order $XXX in new bills. She said "there is only one reason we can order new cash, can you tell me what that reason is?". I said "adoption". She smiled and said I got it right! It was like I was a spy and was telling her the code word!!! It was all I could do not to crack up! So they ordered the cash and it came in yesterday. Luke is already wondering if he can have a brand new hundred dollar bill....uh, no!!!

The boys are going to a Magic basketball game tonight courtesy of our friends Mike and Teresa (thanks guys). I will be unpacking our suitcases to see what I can unload. I know I am so over packed....isn't it our nature to over pack as a woman?

I got our internet connection thingy yesterday from AT&T. I have heard it works well in Ukraine. It will save us from going to the internet cafe's with all of the teenaged boys who are playing war games on the internet! It was really fun to explain the process to the girl who was helping me at AT&T.

Our friends Drew and Rita got a second appointment for tomorrow with the SDA. I am thrilled for them and know they will find the perfect child for their family.

Other families that are over there are getting pretty quick court dates. This is helpful in terms of the amount of time it will take to complete the adoption and come home. Check out Jason and Beth's blog (on the sidebar). They have posted pictures of their childs groupa (kids who are in their orphanage). I want to take them all home! They are just beautiful!! I asked Beth if she could put a couple in her suitcase for us!

Referrals

Ok, I am scared now! There are several families over in Ukraine right now who have had appointments with the SDA in the past week. One was told there are not any healthy girls under the age of 8. This will not work for us. We cannot interrupt our birth order. Another family was shown a dozen or so files, all of which were extremely sick. The child they did go to visit was a little boy who was born with spina bifida. They were told at the SDA that he had a spinal hernia that was repaired at birth. He had several other medical problems that were severe. Another couple was only shown sibling groups that were much older than they anticipated.

It is very disheartening that we are going over with such high hopes for our families and the child/ren we hope to adopt. Only for some families to come home childless.

Still my heart is calm, but my head is scared. Please send prayers and positive thoughts our way for a referral that will work for our family. I am not sure what we will do if we don't find our daughter.....

Being A Couple

This weekend Luke stayed at his God parents house. Since he is an only, we were just a couple for the weekend. Just the 2 of us. Right before Luke was born, Drew and I went away for a couples weekend...Just the 2 of us. We have enjoyed our time alone talking about what is coming...how our lives are getting ready to change again. No matter if God sends us a perfect angel our lives will be dramatically different in a month. I think we are as ready as we could ever be.

Every once in awhile Drew comes home with some advice someone has given him about foreign travel or something pertaining to our trip....it feels so great for me to tell him I have already done it. I really feel on top of it. Ask me in a month how I feel! We are packed and only have a few things left to do:

*buy a cell phone and SIM card that will work in Ukraine

*finish list for Paula in case something happens while we are away (i.e. sprinklers all break)

*order brand new cash for the adoption

*get Luke's school work together

*contact credit card companies

*contact bank

*update our will

I know I have over packed but luckily besides the clothes, and maybe after wearing them day after day I will throw them away, we will use everything there or donate it (medicines). Our load will get lighter as the trip goes on. I have packed a lot of snacks. I am a little worried that Luke will not eat. He does very well here and will try just about anything..This picture is him eating squid when he was 5. I guess I am just being a mom!

We have decided to keep her room as it is right now (it was our guest room). The colors are lavendar so it is feminine. We will put some stuffed animals on the bed and maybe add some other pillows. Depending on her age once we are home we will let her pick. I had bedding purchased but took it back. I don't want to jinx anything. Maybe it is our history that keeps me scared. I can't imagine doing an entire room and coming home childless. That is my head speaking...my heart tells me everything is going to work out the way we want it to.

On a whole other note....Luke tried out for Little League last weekend and the drafts were Friday night. We are so excited that his coach and great friend, Mark was able to pick him this season as well. We teased that we would send Luke in a pink baseball helmet and have him blow the try out so Mark would get him for sure. I think us missing 6 games while we are away was helpful. So this last 30 days will be filled with baseball....as a family we love it!