March 9th

Thanks to everyone for all the prayers, encouraging comments and emails! I received emails that some of you were having trouble leaving comments and I wish I knew more about trouble shooting, but I can tell ya that one of my sisters was also not being able to leave a message the first time and she went back through the registration part the 2nd time and for some reason it started working. If anyone has any other blogger trouble shooting info for this, we would appreciate it.

We are in the final preperations before leaving and I just get so excited at the thought of the day that we head out to Atlanta! Yesterday, as I was driving the thought came to me that there is a child somewhere in Ukraine going on with daily activities with no idea that there is a mommy, daddy, and brother packing right now to come and get him/her. I also thought of how many times each of us as we are going through our daily activites that God who knows everything must look down at us with excitement because He knows something wonderful that is going to happen in our lives that we are not even aware of yet. Just a thought!

We have had several questions regarding the adoption over time and I thought that while we are waiting to leave, I would try to familiarize you with the Ukraine adoption process in the easiest terms possible. So in a nutshell....

Our agency and others that have adopted from Ukraine will tell you that a Ukrainian adoption is a HUGE walk of faith more than any other country. They say this basically because of the unpredictability of the adoption process there and the constant changes. Also, because in most countries you receive a referral for a child and before you leave you have their medical information and pictures, but in Ukraine, you are not given any referral until the day of your appointment in Ukraine. For example, referral that we receive the day of our appointment will be of a child that became registered to become available for adoption on that day. If the appointment goes well, then you leave with a referral of a child to visit and hopefully, travel to the region of their orphanage in Ukraine within a couple of days. It has been a huge walk of faith even already, but we have kept sight of our calling and strongly feel that we are in the will of the Lord in this process. We have a WONDERFUL adoption agency that I can't say enough about, an AWESOME social worker here, and when in Ukraine we will be traveling with a team of facilitators/translators, a Pediatrician that will evaluate our child on our initial visit, and a sweet nanny for Grant for the 3 appointments that he cannot be with us on. What a blessing!!!

Questions that we have been asked by friends and family:
Q. Are you getting a boy or a girl? Good question...we will find out :)

Q. How old will the child be? Another good question...we will find out :) The youngest available in Ukraine is 14 mos, but this is very rare to get a referral for the youngest right now (All things are possible, though :)

Q. How long will you be in Ukraine? more than likely, somewhere between 2-6 weeks- there are several parts to this process...visiting the child, paperwork, court, child medicals, visa for the child- it just depends on how quickly all of this moves along.

Q. I have had a lot of questions about Grant and if he is excited- Let me just tell you, he talks about it constantly and just today he is having a hard time being still for very long because of his excitement. He has so many fun questions and statements about the trip...I will try to share some funny ones with you as we go along.

Talk soon!
Melanie