Hurry up and wait

Well, this is the first post of what will likely be a very active blog in a few months. We are hoping to adopt a little girl from the Ukraine and are currently awaiting the Ukrainian government's approval to do so. We have a facilitator there named Luba, and she has received our dossier of required documentation, translated everything, and is in the process of trying to get it presented before the appropriate authorities - a process that will likely take a few weeks. Once they have deemed us to be fit adoptive parents, we should receive an invitation to fly out and meet with them (typically about 6 weeks from our approval, so we've been told). We're expecting to probably travel sometime this fall.

Our goal is to adopt a little girl age 4 or under. Once we are in the Ukraine, we will be presented with a number of case files to choose from. Upon deciding which child we'd like to meet, we will travel to the orphanage, which may be in a completely different part of the country. Assuming we want to proceed with the adoption after we've met her (it's pretty tough to imagine otherwise), the legal wheels start rolling. The adoption has to be approved and finalized by the local Ukrainian judge (not necessarily a quick process), then, following a mandatory 10 day waiting period (during which family members can come forward to contest - not likely to happen since most of these children have been abandoned), we travel back to Kiev to finalize everything with the U.S. Embassy to gain approval to bring her to the States.

There it is in a nutshell. The whole process can take anywhere from 3-8 weeks, so we're praying for a smooth ride each step of the way to minimize our time away from home. My (Steve's) mother is going to travel up from Pennsylvania to take care of our kids for us (recently retired and blessing us immensely with her willingness to help). We've kicked around the idea of taking the boys with us - it would be an amazing family adventure and probably a real eye-opener for them regarding just how fortunate they are compared to so much of the world - but with the current backlog in passport approvals (it takes about 4 months right now), we probably couldn't get their passports in time. Then, of course, there's that little detail of taking them out of school for that long - not a minor consideration. I think we'll be sticking with plan A.

We'll update the blog as soon as there's any new development, which we assume will be the receipt of our approval and appointment to travel.