Saturday April 26, 2008 the phone rings at 7:30 am. Joe is already up and answers it. It is Shelli, our US adoption connection, asking if we had seen our e-mail yet. Joe, being the wise, conscientious husband that he is, waited until later to come jumping on the bed, singing (very badly off-key) "We've got a travel date! We've got a travel date!"
We have an appointment with the SDA (Ukrainian version of an adoption agency) on July 21st. Therefore we will be leaving the country July 18th. Now, I was hoping for a June date for several reasons. One; the entire family could stay the entire time, not leaving me there to melt in the heat alone at the end. Our kids start school on Aug. 13th and will need to be back by then. Two; June would be cooler. Three; They do not have air conditioning and the Indiana family that was there last July could not emphasize enough how hot it was with no trees and lots of pollution. (Obviously, I am not a candidate for peace corp!) Four; We have a 10 hour train ride from Kyiv to his town on a train that the windows do not open and again, has no air conditioning. Oh yea, and no bathrooms to speak of, so we shouldn't drink anything before getting on. In additon, there is no guarentee that we will get a court date by Aug 10th. For those who are just tuning into our saga, getting a court date sometimes takes weeks then the Ukraine has a 10 day waiting period after the court date during which time the adoption can be reversed if a family member steps forward to claim the child. The shortest time to adopt in this city is 4 weeks. After the 10 day waiting period, there are documents to get which take 3-5 days more.
Okay, so I need to suck it up and be real about being there by myself. I just need to keep my mouth shut and not complain how badly my clothes smell from wearing them for weeks in 100 degree heat. So much for no curly hair while I'm there.
P.S. We are thrilled to have a date! The faster we get this child out of the orphanage, the sooner he can start his life! Remember, childbirth is an act of nature, adoption is an act of love.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
How our BIG adventure started
The insanity...oops....I mean adventure started when Wendy watched the 10:00 evening news August 2006. They had a segment about a group of Ukrainian orphans coming to Colorado for 3 weeks on a cultural exchange who needed host families. The host family would feed and house the child and provide transportation to and from the activities. Wendy was working part-time and decided this was an adventure she was capable of handling. At this point, Joe was banging his head against the wall asking himself for the thousanth time why he married her (my adventures usually meant pain and suffering in the form of money or lost time on the golf course for him). We have 2 teenagers to deal with, why not cart around another child?
To make a very, very long and frustrating story short, we fell in love with our host child Nykolai (a.k.a. Kolya) Katsy before he even stepped foot in our house in March 2007 and decided if he fit into our bizzare family we would offer to be his forever family if he would take us. The "poor child" was bribed with Wal Mart toys and clothes (clothes which our children would never wear in fear their friends may find out) and "dragged" to Hawaii for a week (a trip that was pre-planned and had already been cancelled once due to a snow storm shutting down DIA......). After the 2.5 weeks of enduring crazy Americans, he decided that he would tolerate us as his forever family and accepted our offer of adoption.
As you can deduce, it has taken us over a year (13 months, 5 days and 4 hours to be exact, but who's counting?) to get to this point where we feel safe enough to develop a blog (where the h--- did they come up with that term?) to inform the limited number of people in the world who are patient enough to listen to our rantings about the adoption process and tolerate my run-on sentences, of our impending trip to Ukraine.
Our Dossier (I capitalize this because it cost us over a gazillion dollars to create and mail therefore it should have it's own identity) has finally been submitted to the Ukrainian government (on March 31, 2008) and they should be giving us a travel date by the first week in May.....2008. We hope to travel sometime in June.....2008, with our 2 teenagers. We are gluttons for punishment aren't we?
Hi, Joe here, I have read and approved the above message. By the way, blog is short for web log. Thank-you.
To make a very, very long and frustrating story short, we fell in love with our host child Nykolai (a.k.a. Kolya) Katsy before he even stepped foot in our house in March 2007 and decided if he fit into our bizzare family we would offer to be his forever family if he would take us. The "poor child" was bribed with Wal Mart toys and clothes (clothes which our children would never wear in fear their friends may find out) and "dragged" to Hawaii for a week (a trip that was pre-planned and had already been cancelled once due to a snow storm shutting down DIA......). After the 2.5 weeks of enduring crazy Americans, he decided that he would tolerate us as his forever family and accepted our offer of adoption.
As you can deduce, it has taken us over a year (13 months, 5 days and 4 hours to be exact, but who's counting?) to get to this point where we feel safe enough to develop a blog (where the h--- did they come up with that term?) to inform the limited number of people in the world who are patient enough to listen to our rantings about the adoption process and tolerate my run-on sentences, of our impending trip to Ukraine.
Our Dossier (I capitalize this because it cost us over a gazillion dollars to create and mail therefore it should have it's own identity) has finally been submitted to the Ukrainian government (on March 31, 2008) and they should be giving us a travel date by the first week in May.....2008. We hope to travel sometime in June.....2008, with our 2 teenagers. We are gluttons for punishment aren't we?
Hi, Joe here, I have read and approved the above message. By the way, blog is short for web log. Thank-you.
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