Its Been a While

Well, its been a while since our last post. We were pretty much just waiting for our immigration approval from Phila USCIS (sent home study to USCIS 12/22/08). We finally received the approval on Saturday February 21. I was so happy, but it also put me in a tailspin because there were still a couple of changes to be made to documents because of changes in the Ukrainian laws within the past month or two. I mapped my plan out for this week and I am happy to report that our Dossier (application for adoption) was sent, via FEDEX to our faciliator Vlad in Ukraine today, February 26th.

This week was crazy and included multiple stops to AAA for some notary work, updated employment letters from work because of wording changes, a trip to Harrisburg Capitol to have documents Apostilled with the PA Secretary of State's seal, some scanning and copying of documents for our files and then finally, with a sigh of relief, a Fedex shipment to Ukraine.

The FEDEX is supposed to arrive on Tuesday March 3, where it will be translated 7-10 business days and then our facilitator and his team will try and get us submitted to the Ukrainian State Department of Adoption. Hopefully, this will happen within the next few months......

At this point, we have no idea about exact timing, but hopefully we will know a little more in the next couple of weeks.

We hope that things go well. I have been continuing to practice my Ukrainian and Russian phrases for children. Andrew seems to have trouble with the words...its pretty funny. I keep buying clothes in various sizes for either boys or girls. We really hope to be able to find two children in the 3-5 year old range.

We are having someone come in and get the rooms ready for the kids with some new drywall and plaster. Then we can paint and get somewhat ready...With our age range 2-8, either gender, its hard to be able to plan and prepare. And of course that drives me crazy, since I am such a planner.

Now that our journey has really started and is "official", hopefully there will be more news to report on a regular basis.

~Heather