Monday, April 28th

We are beginning to settle back in as last night was the first night since we have been home that we didnt all meet back in the living room at 4:00 a.m. one by one wide awake :) Grant went back to school today and was excited to see all of his friends. Jason will be leaving out next Monday, May 6th back to Ukraine to get started back on paperwork procedures. He will be well taken care of and guided by our facilitators and specifically in NovoGrad-Volinsky by our facilitator/translator Sergey (He will be with Jason the whole time). We are very hopeful that we will be able to bring the children to America around May 21st. Of course, this is our estimate of getting everything done and could be shorter or longer. We are still praying and making the decision on whether Grant and I will be able to go back to meet up with Jason and finish out the process there. There are many factors to be considered. Please continue to pray for us as we make these decisions. Right now, we are getting everything ready for Jason to return and the things that the kids will need and preparing our home and their rooms here. At the same time, trying to recover a little bit ourselves :)
Well, once again we are in awe of God's hand at work! We have had specific things come up while in the process that were out of our hands and that we knew that if God didnt move a mountain this adoption process would not be able to go forward and we can think of 7 specific things that we want to share with you later that He did. We have learned to be thankful for our weaknesses, because without them we would not be able to see just how powerful God is. The most recent thing being the generosity of our church family. When we arrived to church yesterday, it was announced that our church body had given an offering to help with our adoption. It was at such an amount that would cover the expenses at home for the time that Jason will be out of work. Wow...we again are blown away and want to thank Christ Community Church and body for all that you have done...it was great to receive so many hugs and kisses too...we missed you! Thank you to everyone for all the "Welcome Backs" we truly feel welcomed back :)

Pics:
1. Jason, Mel, Grant, and Anna
2. Vitali picking a flower
3. Vitali and Jason
4. Grant wrapped up for the cold

Back Home!

Well, I had an awesome dream last night that we were in Prattville and the weather was really warm and then we walked in our house and looked in the pantry to find snacks that we love even written in English, and in the laundry room was a dryer to dry clothes again, and then we took baths in clear water and then....OH WAIT...that wasnt a dream..IT REALLY HAPPENED...WOOHOO!!!!! Really, it was funny, it is amazing how you can forget what your home looked like just being away for 40 days! We all 3 walked in and our house and it seemed HUGE to us and totally different than before. Everything seemed new and we kept telling my mom that she had to have done something different to it, because it just seemed new to us. Every inch of it felt so comfortable and although we already miss some things about Ukraine, especially our friends there, we all are glad to be home even if it may be just a short time. Grant was so sweet this morning, he was so excited to have waffles again that he made us all breakfast in bed this morning. We are now trying to recover from the jet lag and get back to Alabama time, but Trish G. you were right the flight is much easier coming to Alabama than going to Ukraine! I think we will recover a little quicker this time. I will post again soon, but for now just wanted to let you know that we arrived home safely!!!
Mel

The New Halls!

Meet Vitali~



Meet Anna~




We are so excited to finally get to share pics with you! Thanks for all the Congrats, prayers, and sharing in the excitement with us! Even though we have not always had the chance to respond back to each comment, we have loved hearing from each one of you...friends, family, fellow Alagasco employees, friends/fam of The Hoods, other adoptive families, and so many more.........we have cherished each message! The process is here in Ukraine is not over yet and we will continue to blog even at home and back in Ukraine again :) We have so many pics to share too! Today, it is rainy and cold in Ukraine. We have been at the American Embassy today taking care of paperwork and everything went real smoothly there. There were lots of people standing in the wind and rain waiting on applying for Visa's to go to America, but we didnt have to get in that line today thank God. We got to go straight through and take care of our paperwork!
Well, tomorrow we fly out of Ukraine back to Alabama to continue with our plans that I shared on the earlier post. Our flight leaves out at 10:50 a.m. Ukrainian time and will go to JFK and then to Atl. Our total flight time will be 14 hrs and then a 2 hr lay over in New York. We will arrive in Atlanta at around 7:40 p.m. if everything stays on schedule. (Although still a long flight...we gain time this time in Alabama...YEA!) In my mind, I already have on a tank top and flip flops! In Grant's mind, he is already eating at Longhorn Steakhouse, In Jason's mind...he can't believe it is reality until we actually step foot in Alabama! We will post to let everyone know that we made it safely!!
Luv~ Jason, Mel, & Grant

Court Day!

Court was successful today!!!! A little recap: Sergey dropped us off at 9:45 a.m. and then went picked up the rest of the crew that joined us in the courtroom. We got started on the hearing and the judge began to call out all members present and oops found out there was one juror missing....So, he called a recess until the juror showed up and we got started back again. All in all everything went well and we were done by 12:30 with a final decision that the court of Ukraine approves Jason & Melanie Hall to adopt these children and announced them with their new name:
Alexander Vitali Hall & Anna Christina Hall
We may begin to call him Alex eventually, but right now he goes by the name Vitali and it has kind of stuck with us too-
pronounced Vi(short i)-tah-lee.
And the little girl's name is Anna.
We were able to take Anna to Vitali's orphanage today and they got to meet. It was a real sweet time. She did get a little dissappointed that he didnt warm up to her right away, but we explained to her that the more time that she gets to spend with him, the more he will warm up and also that they woke him up from his nap to bring him out to us today and he was still really sleepy. Once he woke up a little, we played and even danced a little to some music we brought. We have some fun pictures of this. When it was time to go, he did give her and all of us a sweet hug and kiss goodbye as we left. We took Anna back to her orphanage and gave her a picture album of all of us and our home in Prattville, the calendar of dates to check off until we will be back, and a portable CD player with a Ukranian/English words CD and believe it or not, a Steven Curtis Chapman CD...she loves this CD, so we left it with her. Now, we are back in Kiev, so that we can take care of paperwork at the American Embassy here tomorrow morning. It is getting late, so I will have to finish my post for tonight, but will post pics of the kids tomorrow! Thank you for all your prayers! God is so good and so faithful!!!
Mel

Court Tomorrow!

We have had a very busy 2 days! Yesterday, we had great visits with the kids and today we had to leave out early this morning for the main city in this region to do more paperwork and then headed back to Novograd-Volinsky or "Big Novo" as we call it to do more paperwork and notarizing. By the time we finished everything it was past visiting hours at "A"'s orphanage, but her orphanage staff was very sweet to let us visit her for a little while...we had about 15 minutes and then had to head to "V"s orphanage before his visiting hours were over. Today, "A" came running out and was so excited to show us what she had learned at school. She came around and touched each one of us and said, Mother, Father, Brother, & Sister in English, except for it was so sweetly pronounced, "Maza", "Faza", and "Braza". We have been working on her English and our Ukrainian at visiting times some. (A little side note for those who are coming to Ukraine to adopt an older child that can read already. We found a GREAT picture book at a store called Children's World in Kiev. It has a lot of the basic words that they will need to know written in Russian and English and written in Russian how to pronounce each English word. It has been great for her! By the way, we will be sending out a post soon of more info like this that may be helpful to anyone adopting...we have a lot of info that we would like to share, just waiting for the first chance to post it :)
Tomorrow is our court date (Tues)! We are very excited! Court is at 11:00 a.m., but our facilitator is going to drop us off at 9:30, so that he can pick up the directors at both orphanages and the inspector for this city to bring to court also. We don't know how long it will last. Sometimes it can be very quick and sometimes an all day afair. After court, we will get some more paperwork signed and we will take "A" to "V"s orphanage to meet each other. She is so ready and wants to meet him so badly! Every day when we leave, she walks us out to the fence (that's as far as she is allowed to go) and when we get almost to the car, she yell's out bye to us again and says, "Don't forget to tell "V" that I love him"! So, that is exactly what we do! She and Grant also have a great time together and are bonding well also. They spontaneously give each other hugs the whole visit and play great together!
Well, like I posted before, there is about a month left in this process before we will be allowed to take the kids back to America. We knew before we left that if the process took longer, that we may have to go home for a short while and with the waiting periods and holidays coming up, we have made the arrangements to fly home on Thursday of this week and let Grant finish school and us catch up on some things at home and prepare for the kids coming home. After a short period at home, Jason will fly back to finish more paperwork...passports, birth certificates, etc...He will be with our facilitator Sergey the whole time and we just love him...We have spent so much time with him here that he is like family now :) Grant and I are hopeful that we will get to come back at the end when we get the kids out of the orphanage and fly home with them, but we are working to see if that will be possible right now! We have explained all of this to "A" and I made her a calendar tonight of how many days until she should be able to leave the orphanage, so she can check them off until then. I know that it will be hard for all of us, but we really feel that this is the best decision for now and we all talked about how once this wait is over, we will all be together forever...no more visiting for 2 hrs and leaving...She had a HUGE smile on her face when we said that! Oh, I just remembered a sweet thing that she did on our visit yesterday. We brought sidewalk chalk (Thanks to Marianna) to play with outside and she drew a huge heart on the sidewalk and wrote in Ukrainian, "I love you because you came here to me".
I have had a few emails about the kids sizes and honestly, I am not sure...everyday that I check their clothes, they have on a different size. I traced their feet on paper to try to find shoes at home to bring back (I got this hint from another adoptive mom). I think a lot of their clothes have been donated and they are sizes from all over the world, so it is almost impossible to tell by the tag. When they leave the orphanage, they are not allowed to take anything with them and you are supposed to bring clothes to change them into before they leave, so tomorrow I am going to try to get their measurements for sizes.
By the way, we will continue the blog even at home and we will have a chance to send out more pics with our post! Please keep us in prayer tomorrow for the Big Day!!!
Luv~ Mel

3 Days Until Court!

Hi~ We had good visits with both kids today. We will use their first initial on the blog until after the court date on Tues. The little girl's first initial is "A" and the little boy is "V". We went to A's orphanage first and it was so cute, she actually saw us pull up today in the front of the orphanage and she came running down the sidewalk to meet us. I guess she was watching out the window. Her orphanage told her on the first day that we met that we were trying to adopt her and we have explained to her also that we are doing everything we can to adopt her. She always responds back that she really wants us to adopt her. They also told her about her brother on the first day we met and that we were trying to adopt him too. Well, today she asked about him and we told her about him and showed her a picture of him on our camera. As soon as she saw it, she took the camera and just looked at it and cried. As she cried, she told us that the only time that she had seen him was after he was born, her mama let her see half of his face and then she never saw him again. She wanted to meet him so badly and we told her that we think they are going to allow us to take her to meet him at his orphanage on Tues after our court date. The director at her orphanage had already told us this. Today, she began to call us mama and papa (this is daddy in Ukrainian) and we all talked about how she would be meeting her brother "V" for the first time just like she and Grant will be bro/sis and met for the first time. A funny thing that happened today...Jason wore a short sleeved shirt today as it was warmer outside and as soon as she saw his arms, she told our translator, "Papa has hair on his arms and then she just examined Jason's face for a long time and said that he had needles (beard stub)on his face like a hedgehog and we have a good pic of her trying to figure out his beard. We think she probably has not been around too many men, never the less she has warmed up quickly to Jason.
Today, we had a good visit at "V"s orphanage. He is in a special needs orphanage because of his delays, mainly because of speech and we got to spend time with the other kids in his group. We tried to bring him a juice box yesterday, but he had no idea what to do with it, so it was funny, he would hold his mouth open and Jason would squirt the juice in his mouth and then he would swallow...today, we brought a cup :)
Today, was a special day for Grant. One day over the past year, Grant asked me to get a mason jar and he decided that he was going to collect money for the kids at the orphanage and that is exactly what he did. He collected a pretty good amount and while we were in Kiev, we exchanged his dollars for Hrynia( Ukraine money, pronounced Grevna) and then we asked him what he wanted to get them and went shopping. He said he wanted to get them a Ukrainian childrens Bible for each orphanage and videos, stuffed animals, and snacks. So, that is exactly what we did. Today, was the big day that he got to deliver what he had bought to both orphanages and they were thankful and said, "Speciba" (thank you). All of "V"'s orphanage loved their new stuffed animals and he was able to pass them out to each one. We are so thankful for Grant's big heart to want to do this!

Comments:
"Crispy": Sounds like a fun B-day...we want to see that video!

Penny: So glad that ya'll are able to pull up the blog at the bay. Tell everyone we said hello!!!

David & Elaine~ Glad to hear from you! Family reunion...sounds great!!!!


Pics:
1. Girl's orphanage
2. Grant on playground at Girl's orphanage
3. Boy's orphanage
4. Doorway into boy's orphanage
5. Bedroom at boy's orphanage (V's bed is the one that is against the wall)

Back In The Zhytomyr Region!

Well, you might want to grab a cup of coffee...I'm catching up from some of last week too!
We had a great stay with the Peipon's for a few days. It is exactly what we needed! I told Marianna she is going to have to get some beds with the springs sticking out so that we will want to leave! There ministry here in Ukraine reaches out to so many...adoptive families, physicians from all countries, AIDS orphans, other missionaries,. Just staying with them, you realize how many people that they touch on a daily basis. While we were there a guy from Romania came to spend the night who is going to be doing missions work in Ukraine at a music camp for over 1,000 orphans. It was great to get to talk with him over breakfast about Romania. It was wild when he walked in the door the night before and said he was so exhausted because he had been organizing a Josh McDowell conference in Romania before he came. This has just been so cool for us to hear people from other countries talking about ministries that we follow from the states.
Then, we headed back to the small town we were in right past Zhytomyr. The town is called Novograd- Volinsky and we found out an interesting fact that it is the oldest city from the old Soviet Union times. The scene here is very old buildings and village houses. Our hotel window looks over a village and there are roosters at the bottom of our window. It is still very cold here. One thing that we have enjoyed is that everyone has been so friendly here and have treated us wonderfully with all of our paperwork to be done with officials.
About the children that we are trying to adopt...we have visited them several times before we left and today when we got back. The little girl (who will hopefully be OUR little girl on Tues.) has warmed up to us right away. From the 2nd day that we visited her, she always comes running down the hallway to give us HUGE hugs and she and Grant are pretty much inseperable. She walks everywhere holding our hands or holding on to us. She is very energetic and she and Grant laugh A LOT! On our 3rd visit with her, she brought us all paper roses that she had made and even made one for our facilitator who translates for us each day! She is in a huge orphanage of about 200-300 kids ages 6-16. They also go to school there at their orphanage. They allow us to walk around her orphanage, so we have seen many kids there. Sometimes, it is heartbreaking to see that many kids without a family. They are so hungry for a family that when we walk through the halls or go outside to play with her, it never fails they completely stop what they are doing and sit and just watch. One day, we were playing on the playground with her throwing an American football and there was one particular boy that was sitting on the ground very close to us just watching and so we threw him the football and he was so excited and immediately we had over 50 kids run over to play football with us. It was great to get to play with all of them! We have a particular time that we can visit with her and they give us 2 hours a day. Today, we were sad because when we got to her orphanage, we waited for them to bring her for an 1 hr and 45 minutes before we found out that her whole floor of the orphanage was in isolation for one child that had gotten sick and went to the hospital. They told us when we only had 15 minutes left with her that they would bring her down, because she was not sick. We shared snacks and juice box with her and gave her a hug goodbye until tomorrow.
The little boy is in a very small orphanage and he has been there since birth. He is very sweet and smiles a lot. He is very delayed in every way physically, mentally, etc...He is 4, but is on about an 18-24 month level. We believe that it is from being in an orphanage his whole life, but he will have a thorough evaluation when we get home at the UAB International Adoption Clinic. We had learned from this clinic before we left of how children in orphanages could experience severe delays from being institutionalized, so we were somewhat prepared for this. We also learned that there are significant changes most of the time quickly once they are in a family. Also, on our first meeting at the orphanage, we were told that they thought that he couldnt speak yet, but the great news is that we have actually heard him say 3 words since we have been visiting him. He always recognizes us when we visit and smiles and today he cried when we left. When we gave him back to the caregiver to go back in the room, he spread his body out, so she couldnt take him through the door. We couldnt get him to stop crying, so we had to leave him crying today. We were glad to see that there seemed to be an attachment building, but it is also hard at the same time. Tomorrow, we will see him again. I am going to try to post pics of both orphanages tomorrow.
Well, we have prayerfully been planning out our next steps over the past week. There is still another month left at the least in this process before we can take the kids back to America and there are several holidays coming up for Ukraine that the government will shut down and will slow our process down. We still have the court date, 10 day waiting period, passports and 8 day waiting period, birth certificates, medicals of kids, etc... and they cannot leave Ukraine until all of this has been completed. Because we have already been here for over a month, we have had to make some hard decisions about our time in the country and believe me, we have considered every scenario possible. Please be in prayer as we make the final plans over the next couple of days, but it is looking like either Grant and I or Jason, Grant, and I will be traveling home a few days after the court date for many reasons...so that Grant can finish school, we can prepare for both kids coming home, etc...and then one of us will return to finish the process when the holidays and waiting times are over. There is a chance that if we can come on my brother's buddy pass (he works for an airline) that at some point we could all be here to get them out of the orphanage and bring them home. Although we are very homesick, it will be hard to leave, but we know that it is a short amount of time and when we come back we will all be together forever.
We want to thank publicly Carlton & Aimee Weathers and Grace Fellowship Church for all of your prayers and financial support for our adoption. We have just been made aware of what you are doing for our family and we are just in awe that a family and church that has never met us would give to support our adoption in such a huge way. You have been an instrument in showing the Hall family just how BIG our God is! May God bless your family, church, and your adoption process to China more than you can ask, think, or imagine! I can't wait until we can bring our children to Grace Fellowship to meet all of you! By the way, I clicked on your name and read your blog and it is was very inspiring!! I would encourage anyone who will to read it!

Comments:
Channing: Glad to hear from you! We have thought about ya'll several times since we have been here. Thanks for the Hab 3 scripture...I have wrote it in my journal and look at it every morning.

Christy~ 10 day wait starts the day after court date.

Josh G: Oh, we miss Wed night dinners too!!! Although, when we get back, we are either going to have to get a van to go out or I'll have to strap some of you to the roof, haha! Don't worry, we will always have a place for Josh! So, you are a little rusty on the music huh? Well, you best start studying up, because when I get home IT'S GONNA BE ON!!!

Corrie~ Glad ya'll are doing good and the class too!! We miss ya'll!!! Give the kids a kiss for us!!

From Grant:
Emma~ Happy Birthday!
Mrs. Susan~ I eat hamburger, FF, and coke at McDonald's.
McKayla & Austin~ Yes, I am having a good time! Hope to see you soon!

That's all for today! Luv~ Mel