The Milk is Going Bad

My wife is wonderful. She has so many little things that are so neat about her that I could never mention them all. One thing that she does that I thought of tonight is that she starts getting excited about birthdays when the date on the milk that she buys is on or after the birthday. I checked the milk that is in our refrigerator. None of it will last past our date to leave yet. But since it has been spring break, she has not been to the store recently either. I would expect that the next time we go to the store to get milk, the date will be after April 10. It gets closer and closer everyday now.

Are we in trouble here?? Tonight at the supper table, Caleb had a friend named Nathan over to spend the day. Katie announced at the supper table that Nathan was her boyfriend. Nathan proceeded to announce that he has another girlfriend too. (Nathan is 6, Katie is 5). Katie, not to be outdone, makes a big production about her having a boyfriend at pre-school. (This is news to us.) She has all of us try to guess which boy in her pre-school is her boyfriend. Well, none of us could guess so she finally announces his name. As soon as she says his name, Caleb says, "Isn't that the one that you say gets in trouble all of the time?" Stacey and I couldn't stop laughing.

It probably isn't as funny reading about it as it was when it happened, but it was pretty funny to us.

The only things that we have left to do (besides actually pack) would be to get our Guardianship and Power of Attorney documents notarized before we leave. My parents are helping us with a lot of that this weekend. Stacey's parents and Aunt Dawn are helping too. Both of our immediate families have been real supportive of our efforts this far. God is leading this effort because I can see how He has positioned others in our family to help us out with things that we need. A lot of times, He has known our need and provided before we even knew what we needed. It is awesome to be able to watch our God work.

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with our adoption. I am not really even sure who these kids are. At first, they look like our kids but neither one of our kids wears glasses. Their teeth are clean and straight and their eyebrows are nowhere near that heavy.

I have learned the last couple of days how to make DVD's on our computer. I have put together a slideshow or two of our kids and added music to the background to take with us. I don't know how much we will watch it while we are gone. I have trouble watching it now. I have not convinced myself that it will be in my best interest to watch it while I am half a world away. Caleb has a loose tooth. He is very excited. I hope that he doesn't lose it while we are gone. It is not very loose so there is a chance that it could hang on that long. We will be sure to leave a note and directions for the Tooth Fairy just in case though.

Growing Kids God's Way

We just finished up our third trip down this 18 week adventure. We had two really good couples stick it out for the full class. Stacey and I took the class about 4 years or so ago and have since facilitated (more like hosted) the class two more times since then. It is a great class that gives Christian parents a lot of things to think about and practical applications to use while trying to raise moral children. It is a good course and I would strongly encourage anyone that has children and would like to try to be a better parent to consider taking it before they your children get too old.
In just about 2 weeks, we will have an answer to the question that we probably get most often and that is "Do you know what you are getting?" It is kind of a funny question because we know we are getting a child (or children). We have filled out our paperwork to be able to get up to 2 children that are between the ages of 18 months and 6 years old. Of course we have had day dreams about what we might get but we have tried to stay open minded about it up to this point. Our approach has been the same as if we were actually delivering the baby. We will hope for a relatively healthy child, boy or girl, or both and we will love with all of our heart any child that God provides. If we were delivering a child, we would not have any say so about the health of that child so we are trying to put it all in God's hands. Really, what else can we do?? We haven't decided when we will announce what referral we have accepted as a result of the appointment. I am sure that we will be anxious to share any news that we may have but we will also want to guard our enthusiasm until we actually meet the child/children.
We leave in 13 days. We need to start packing (or at least get a dry run going). The pile of stuff that we are taking is geting bigger and bigger. Not too big yet but we haven't packed any clothes yet. The advice that we have gotten from several that have been is take about 2/3rds of what you think you will need. I have seen the pile of stuff we take for a single overnight at Grandma's house so it will be interesting to see what we end up with.
Please don't be afraid to post a comment or to send us an e-mail. Especially while we are gone. We are anticipating a severe case of homesickness by the time we get over there that probably will only get worse the longer we are gone.

We Made the Call

I haven't been sleeping that well for the last couple of weeks. I don't know why, its not like I have a lot on my mind or anything. However, this morning, it served me well. I got up this morning and called the Ukraine Adoption Authority to confirm our appointment date that is now just three weeks away from tomorrow (Thursday). Needless to say, I am not that experienced in making international telephone calls. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, especially at 4 in the morning. After I figured it out, I finally got through at about 5:45 am. The conversation lasted less than a minute. I gave the lady on the other end of the phone our registration number and our date and she said OK. I asked her if that meant that we were confirmed and she said yes. And that was it. She didn't ask my name and I didn't think to ask her if she knew what time the appointment was. It was all kind of like a weird dream.
We are expecting to get our airline tickets in the mail any day now. They were a little bit more expensive than we expected but they are very flexible which I believe will be worth it when we are trying to make our return home. Our flight leaves at 2:30 on Tuesday 10 April so we will probably try to get to the airport before 1 on that day. We don't get to Kyiv until 4:35 PM the next day. They are currently 6 hours ahead of us but I don't know if they will be changing time soon or if they even change time. For the return trip, there are some days where we can leave Kyiv and get back home all in the same day. There are other days where we would have to overnight either in Amsterdam or another American city. Folks that we know overnighted in Amsterdam and were unable to get into the hotel that is in the airport (the child is a Ukrainian citizen and needs a visa to leave the airport so you are pretty much stuck there). They speak of being miserable overnighting in the airport. We don't want that.
Stacey and I both got to go to church together for what seemed like the first time in a long time this past weekend. Somebody had been sick or something the last couple of weeks and it just seemed like it had been a long time. The worship team did a new song that is now my favorite song. It seemed like the words were speaking directly to me. I liked it so much that I e-mailed church to find out the name and the artist and downloaded it off the internet. It is "You are God" by Charlie Hall and the only place I could find it was on Passion 07 Live Part 1. The words go like this: You are closer than our troubles, more present than any danger, more grand than gold or silver, You are God. You're the joy of man's desire, You are Father, satisfier. We are stunned with wide-eye wonder, You are God. You fill our hearts with love and faith, You fight for us, You make us brave, You are God. You walk with us, You lead us on. Faith, hope, and love wakes up with dawn, You are God. Life flows from God.
Several people have mentioned to us that they are thinking about us and praying for us. We really do appreciate it. We need it. Our kids need it. The child or children that will be joining our family needs it. Thank you for praying for us. Our God is awesome.

What To Expect

In this picture, the kids are protecting us from the "White Blanket of Death" from earlier in the winter. I am practicing putting in photos in case the opportunity arises while we are in Ukraine.

We had our "travel" meeting on Thursday night. It was mostly travel tips and lessons learned from previous trips. Lots of good information about traveling but not much information about the adoption process. Our expectations are that the details of what is going on will not be explained to us, we will be along for the ride once we arrive in Kyiv.

Speaking of arriving in Kyiv, we have bought our plane tickets, sort of. I talked to the man that is supposed to buy them for us and he was supposed to e-mail us the itinerary but he has not done that yet. I will probably call to check on it today.

I have found myself explaining to a couple of people what we expect the process to be once we arrive in Kyiv, so I thought that I might include that here. Once we arrive in Kyiv on the 11th, we will be greeted by our facilitator at the airport. This person will be our voice on the ground in Ukraine and will stay with us the entire time that we are there. Our appointment is on the 12th. We will go to the SDA (Ukraine Adoption Authority) and from there we will select a child (children) from photos and bio's. In the old system, prospective adoptive parents used to look through books and books of available children, but we have heard that with the new system, they try to pre-select 4 or 5 matches for you based upon your request. We have requested a relatively healthy child/children between the ages of 6 years and 18 months.

After we select the child that we want to go and visit, we must go to the region where that child's orphanage is. This could be relatively close to Kyiv or it could be a 12 hour train ride away. Once we get to the orphanage, get local approval to visit the child, and actually visit the child, we will have to decide if we would like to proceed with the adoption of the child or not. If not, we would have to travel back to Kyiv for another appointment. If so, we would have to wait for a court hearing in the region of the orphanage. We hope that we will be able to get that court date relatively quickly but that is just a hope. After the court date, there is a mandatory 10 day waiting period for the adoption to be finalized. After the court date, one of us could possibly come back home but we are in this thing together so we expect for both of us to stay together. At the conclusion of the 10 day wait period, we get custody of the child, and must get new birth certificates, etc. in the home region before traveling back to Kyiv and the US Embassy to complete a medical physical as well as complete the immigration paperwork process. Once that is complete (or once the end is in sight for it to be complete,) we will make our arrangements to come back home. There are Ukrainian holidays on May 1, 2 and 9 where the local government offices as well as the US Embassy will be closed. We are praying that those holidays will give the folks that we deal with a sense of urgency to get us completed instead of an excuse for us to have to stay longer than is required. Then the best part, we get to come home to a bigger family.

We are hoping to be back home some time the week after the Derby. Katie has a Angel's Wings recital on May 12 that we will be very disappointed about missing.

Caleb is awake now and he is giving me suggestions on how to wrap this post up so that we can get on with our day. His suggestions include "We are happy to be adopting" and "Goodbye".

How can I argue with wither of those? Little does he know, we have several tasks that we have to complete today in support of this process so it will not be an all fun and games Saturday. So with that, we are happy to be adopting and goodbye for now.

Hopeful Hearts

The folks that are helping us to adopt run an unbelievable ministry for the orphanages in Ukraine. Their website address is www.hopefulheartsfoundation.org . From their page, I would recommend going to the "Learn" tab and scrolling down to Our Videos and watching one of those if you are interested. I am sure that there are lots of very good and worthwhile adoption agencies out there for parents that are looking for their children, but for Stacey and me, this was the one. (They are not an agency but more of an advisory group that really do most everything an agency would do except charge a fee. They do it as a ministry.) I went to a meeting for another adoption agency while we were still investigating and it definitely was not for us. God just somehow led us to Hopeful Hearts. From the moment that we started that meeting with a prayer, we knew that was where we were supposed to be. I could never do justice to the testimony of the lady that leads this ministry but the long and the short of it is, God led her and her family over to Ukraine on a mission trip. Her husband, a professed home body, was the one that eventually got her to go. She ended up at an orphanage with her daughter holding twin girls. The daughter looked at the mother and said something like, "Mom, we should adopt these girls." The mom replied with something like, "We don't need to adopt these girls" and the daughter's response to that comment was this: "Mom, why is your heart so hard?" Like I said, I could not do her testimony justice but as she described how well off she was, even by US standards, and that there was no reason for them not to reach out to help these girls it was really touching. So she began a journey that took her a long time and mountains of obstacles and paperwork. During this process, one of the little girls caught pneumonia and died in the orphanage. From that point on, she and numerous others have worked tirelessly to help these children. From helping nearly 180 children be adopted to raising funds and mission trips, they have helped a lot of children. There are more that need help. Some are in Ukraine and some are probably in your town.
On a different note, we have our "travel meeting" on Thursday of this week. That is when we expect to learn some of the details of our trip and get put in touch with the folks that are going to help us make our travel arrangements. I am anticipating getting a list of things that need to be done before we leave. Stacey has done a great job of getting the child arrangements lined up for while we are gone. We are so fortunate that both our families and tons of friends have volunteered to help us out. That doesn't really surprise us because we have lots of great friends but it does overwhelm us in a way. God is good. We have actually had more offers of help than we could take. What a blessing.

The Things That Children Say

You can always count on a child for honesty. Not that children are honest all of the time mind you. They are human too. But when a child is being sincere, they will be totally sincere. Since we have found out about our date, the realization that we will be gone for about a month I think has begun to sit in with the kids. I can tell it in their bedtime prayers. For almost the last two years, we have knelt down beside their beds and prayed for the children in Ukraine and especially for those that don't have mommy's and daddy's. We also prayed for the children that He has already chosen for us. We still pray for those things. But the last few nights have been different. For instance, Katie last night prayed "That Mommy and Daddy would be safe while they are gone." To hear those words coming straight from your little one is indescribable. While we were at a gathering over the weekend, we were discussing our trip with some friends and they asked us how long we would be gone. Caleb chimed in with, "Probably four weeks but we are praying for three." Stacey has been taking care of going around and letting folks know at places where we volunteer that we will be gone (i.e. church nursery, school, etc.). When she told Caleb's school teacher that we were going to be gone, she said that she already knew. She said that Caleb had told her that morning. She said that he had held back tears (he is a big guy at school) as he said that he was going to miss us while we were gone but then he picked back up and said that he was looking forward to getting a new member of the family.
Stacey and I were talking about things and we know that God's timing is perfect. We weren't ready for this a year ago. I don't think the kids were ready a year ago. They have matured so much in the last year. I used to think that they were only excited about the possibility of getting bunk beds, but I think it is more than that to them now. I think that they truly are looking forward to getting a sibling. However, we still get some silliness. Caleb, of course, prayed a couple of weeks ago for "A sister that knows how to play football." While God's answer to every prayer may not be exactly what we asked for, we know that God does answer prayers. Even those of a five year old that only wants her parents to be safe while they are gone. That is one of the reasons why Stacey and I will be able to make this journey with less fear than we would expect. Because we know that we have a 6 year old boy and a 5 year old girl at home that are sincerely praying their hearts out to a God that they know that they can trust to answer their prayers to keep us safe while we are gone.