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). […]

Read More

Tuesday, 29 May So….we’ve been doing a lot of hanging out with the kids, and many of you are probably thinking “why aren’t they doing anything that’s actually related to adopting Masha and getting back home?” Yeah, we’re thinking that, too. In the Ukrainian system, once we “meet” the child, there are some documents to prepare, and then a court date is requested, and the hearing is usually held about a week later. Because we got to the region on a Friday, and we weren’t able to do anything over the weekend, our documents weren’t ready until Tuesday of last […]

Read More

Wednesday, 23 May 2007 We are starting to fall into a bit of a routine, so I want to take the opportunity to provide a Cliff’s Notes version of our trip so far….. We have been in Ukraine for a week and a half, and we are traveling with our friends Fred and Lisa, who are adopting a child from the same orphanage where Masha lives. We left Fort Wayne on Sunday afternoon, and arrived in Kiev mid-day on Monday. We met with the Ukrainian State Department of Adoption (SDA) on Wednesday to obtain official permission travel to Masha’s city […]

Read More

Tuesday, 22 May After the running documents around all day yesterday, today’s agenda was pretty open at the start of the day. Mark took a walk around our neighborhood to check out the shops, and discovered that we have a lot within walking distance, and we made arrangements to be picked up at 10:45 to go to the internet café and spend an hour or so, and to get our laptop connected. We were scheduled to meet up with Fred and Lisa, and to pick the girls up around 1:00 for the afternoon….but things don’t always go as planned around […]

Read More

Monday, 21 May (good day, busy day, long entry!) Up at 8:30 and after a chemically-induced full night’s sleep, we woke to no hot water. We have now learned to shower when you can…a “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em” lesson in opportunity management. Mark had decided after a hot and dirty day at Extreme Park that he’d wait until morning to shower. He made good use of the “personal wipes” that we brought! About 10:15, we got a call from Sveta telling us to be downstairs in ten minutes so we could go to the courthouse to meet with […]

Read More