No beating around the bush…We have finally been invited to travel to Ukraine for our second adoption!! As I mentioned in my last post, we were hoping to travel to Ukraine in late fall to begin the local process to adopt Lena. Well, ever the literalist, God has organized the timing so that we travel in the final week of fall—we leave on 13 December, just a week before the first day of Winter. As with Masha’s adoption, the first step of the process is a meeting on Wednesday, the 16th in Kyiv with the State Department of Adoptions (SDA). […]

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After a lengthy hiatus to attend to life, the Niles Blog has returned!! As many of you are aware, we have begun the process to adopt again! Over the next few weeks, I’ll fill in the gaps over the past year, and share where we are in the process and what we expect to happen over the next few months. But for those of you clamoring for an update…. The Cliffs Notes Version: While we were in Ukraine to adopt Masha in June 2007, we met her best friend, Lena. She was a very sweet and soft-hearted girl, always there […]

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Winter is heaving-to. It has clearly decided that it’s not going anywhere, and in the meantime, it’s going to have a bit of fun with us. In typical Midwest fashion, we’ve experienced the battle between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, throwing their separate weather patterns at us and laughing as they wreak havoc on our lives and plans. After a couple of 55-degree days a couple weeks ago, accompanied by flooding worthy of a live remote on Good Morning America, we are again looking at a blanket of fresh snow and sub-zero wind-chills. God has thumbed his nose at […]

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Snow is an overused metaphor, but as I watch the flakes dance to the ground on the first morning of 2008, I see a clean white palette. A year of possibilities, opportunities—life, just waiting to be written. As you can imagine, busyness got the better of us this fall. After meeting with the guidance counselor, Masha entered 6th grade on 16 August. Although she is slightly old for 6th grade, we hoped that easier, repeat content might give her the opportunity to focus on developing her English skills and acclimating to the American culture. Looking back, we definitely made the […]

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It’s days like this that make life worth living. This morning, as we ate breakfast and bid my father and step-mother goodbye, Maria announced that she would like to go to Extreme Park. We told her that it might be a little expensive to fly all the way to Ukraine to go to Extreme Park in her hometown, but that we could maybe go to Fun Spot in Angola if she wanted… School starts next week, so we were thinking about a last hurrah already. When she offered to pay for her own ticket out of her allowance, we realized […]

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