Tickets!

We purchased airline tickets this evening. We'll be leaving on Friday afternoon, August 6th out of Chicago. We are using Lufthansa's special deal for adoption trips. They allow multiple changes on the return ticket with a minimal penalty. We have just one layover on both our trip out and our trip back. On the way out we'll be stopping in Dusseldorf and on the way back in Frankfurt.

What happens next?

Before we go much further on this countdown to our appointment, I thought I'd step back and give you a rough idea of what often happens in an adoption to Ukraine. Here's what the next couple of months may have in store for us:
1. We travel to Kyiv for the appointment. At that time we'll be interviewed and have about an hour to look at the files of children who are available to adopt. We'll select a file of a child or children and travel to the region where their orphanage is located in order to meet them. If there is some issue that leads us not select the child/children to adopt, we would return to Kyiv and apply for another appointment.
2. We begin the legal process of adopting in Ukraine when we feel like we've found the child/children that God would want to add to our family . We would most likely be staying in the town where the orphanage is located and visiting our child/children once or twice a day while the paperwork was being processed.
3. Adopt the child/children in Ukraine. A local Ukrainian judge has the authority to legally declare us the parents of the child/children we are hoping to adopt. Following that decree, there is a required in-country waiting period of 10 days. Most children remain in the orphanage during that time.
4. Following the waiting period, we would return to Kiev with our children to finish up in-country paperwork. Additional tasks in Ukraine include physicals for the child/children at the U.S. Embassy and obtaining their Ukrainian passports.
5. Fly from Ukraine to the U.S. As soon as the child/children sets foot on U.S. soil, they will become U.S. citizens.
6. Settle in to a family routine. For the first few weeks, we will spend a lot of time at home together as a family. We don't plan to be out and about as much until we see the kids getting comfortable in their new home and family.

We have an appointment date!

We received an email from our agency today with the date for our appointment in Kiev: August 9th at 10:00 am. I have to admit that after all this waiting time, this hardly feels real. Not much has happened in this process faster than I've expected. Getting our news before Wednesday and having an appointment that is so near is amazing. August 9th is an interesting day for our appointment because it's also our wedding anniversary. Thanks so much for all your prayers!

Recently we ordered a fresh bunch of adoption books that I've been working through lately. Don't Touch My Heart was a quick read that both Stan and I went through first. It's in story form which made it enjoyable to read, even though the topic was a tough one. I've mentioned attachment disorder in my posting on Deborah Gray's book. Although this current book gave us less information about attachment disordered kids than Deborah's book, the story made it easier to imagine working through the stages of healing that kids need.

Two Week Waiting Period

I just got an email from our agency today. It appears that our paperwork was turned in and we are now in the waiting period. The government of Ukraine has two weeks to review our papers and either reject our petition or give us an appointment date to travel to Kiev. As far as I can tell, there are no public holidays for Ukraine in July. Since the papers were submitted on June 30th, we expect those two weeks to be up by July 14th.

No News Is. . .

Our submission date came and went this week. So far we haven't heard anything from Ukraine - good or bad. I'm just grateful that we haven't gotten word that one of the documents needed to be redone in a rush. I hope that means all went as planned. After all this time this adoption might really be happening! I wish it was getting easier and not harder to wait.

We have a submission date!

Our papers were delivered to our facilitator on Thursday. He has confirmed that they all look fine, and today he turned in the home study and was given an official date to turn in the entire dossier: June 30. It was important that the date fall before July 6, since one of the papers expires on that date. So we are officially farther than we ever got with the two previous dossiers. Also, we are getting a break from constantly working to keep the process moving; it's out of our hands now.