We are here!!!

Hello Everyone!
We finally made it here in Ukraine. We had a great flight and we were even 1/2 an hour early. The flight was alittle over 9 hours long and we had great food. I apologize for posting late. There are just so many emotions running high and I didnt even think to use the computer. Right now Im using the computer where we are staying. It is inbetween a hotel and an apartment. It very nice and clean. The ladies here are very friendly. I have already begun to try to speak alittle Russian......well inbetween hand signs and a few small phrases we understood each other! Our facilitator had a "VIP" waiting for us in the airport. (thank God!) It was kind of funny because he only knew afew english words and I knew only know afew Russian phrases, but he was a big help. We would have been totally lost without him. H ebrought us right outside and we met our facilitator. He was very pleasant and we had a nice conversation in the car. Shortly after we settled into our room, we met a wonderful lady and her sister. She is doing a single adoption. They are from Ottawa. We have had many great conversations and we have been basically supporting each other. When we arrived in Kiev, it was raining lightly and all the snow is gone. In the evening we watched a movie and tried to fall asleep. We were both very nervous about the next day at the NAC. Philip was alot more nervous then I was and didnt end up having much sleep. I slept quite well. For some reason I felt this calmness in the middle of all these emotions. Well that was yesterday..........

This morning we had an appointment at 10:30am. We waited in the famous "long hallway". Boy were we nervous. We were finally brought into a room with about 5 other couples. They made us write down and sign a paper saying we were aware of the adoption process having a temporary close due to the old ministry finally moving to the new ministry. This apparently will happen after this Friday. They also told us that if we didnt choose a child to meet today that it would be very difficult to obtain another. PRESSURE!!!! was certainly on! After this we were brought into another room and shown a few albums of children, but they all had medical problems that were not correctable. Mine and Philips hearts were sinking as we thought we would not find our Sara. After being there an hour we finally came across alittle girl! She is going to be 3 on May 27th. We will travel after tommorow to meet her! We are so happy. We will be travelling to Lugankts.(look it up on the map) I know I spelt that wrong! It is 900 km away from Kiev. We will be travelling by car. We cant wait to meet her! I am so glad we got over this hurdle!


Hi kids! Looks like mom and dad found your sister! I hope no problems arise. Please say a prayer that she will definitely coming home with us. We miss you very much. I wish you were here. Be happy because we will be home as soon as we can. Just think about how much fun we will have when we get home with little Sara! Oh I almost forgot! They call her Anastasia! That is one of my favourite names! Tommorrow we will have a phone number with us so we can talk alot on the phone. We send you lots of hugs and kisses and we love you Anthony, Marina and Rafael. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

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One more day!!!

I can't believe we are finally leaving! I'm so excited and nervous ! Philip is especially nervous! I pray that everything so smoothly and quickly. Your prayers would be so very appreciated. Right now we are praying for, finding our little Sara right away, the process going smoothly and coming home as soon as possible. I've talked to our adoption agency a few times now and apparently our facilitator has already booked our apartment for us. He also confirmed that there would be no more appointments for April. I also asked about the possibility of this Ministry transition causing delays for us while we are there. He seems to think we will not be affected by it. I hope so !!! We are looking forward to finally holding our little one in our arms. At the same time I hate to be leaving the kids behind. I'm really going to miss them. Tonight Philip and I had a bunch of our good friends come by to say goodbye to us. We had a good laugh,good conversation and a glass of wine! Boy did I ever need all three of those things. I didn't realize how stressed out I really was! Thanks so much guys for coming by. I would also like to thank my niece & her boyfriend for coming by and many many thanks to all of those coming Sat. evening! This simply makes the beginning of our travels more memorable.

Well we are about 3/4 packed. We now have to pack the majority of our clothes which I have already laid out to pack. We will be rolling all our clothes as apposed to folding them. This gives you more room to pack things. It really is difficult to pack lightly for this journey but we are almost done. The next time I post we will be in Ukraine. Look out Ukraine here we come! WOOHOO!!!

I'm Back!

I finally got back from Florida today! Whew! What a long drive home. I think I was just anxious to get home as soon as possible. We have only 6 days before we leave!!! I still can't believe we are actually going. Everything is happening so fast! We had a great time with the kids in Florida. We all got burnt to a crisp. We still had fun anyways. We travelled with some good friends of ours. We visited with my parents and my sister-in-law, her sister and daughter came to spend a whole day with us and it was great. There were so many children of all ages. I couldn't help but watch kids that were about 3 or 4 years old. I would daydream about the little girls being our child and thinking....maybe she has dark hair and eyes or light hair and eyes or maybe a mixture of both! I enjoyed watching them very much. I tried to also study the Russian language with my booklets and C.D.'s. Especially on the long drive there and back. I also went onto FRUA to see if there was anything new happening. Apparently there has been a new law passed in Ukraine that gives the old NAC jurisdiction till the end of March. The New Ministry takes over on May 1st. It seems like they are going to use all of April to do the whole transition over to the new Ministry. Everyone (including me) is worried about how this will affect people who have end of March appointments. I suppose we should prepare for any delays. My understanding is that April is to be used to finish adoptions for people who are in Ukraine at that present time. I pray that ours will be done before the New Ministry takes over. I will really have to concentrate on leaving all the worrying to God and just trust in him totally. Things will work out exactly the way they are supposed to in order for us to unite with our daughter............Sara.

18 More Days!!!!!

Hello All!
Wow! We have just 18 more days till we leave for Ukraine. I'm getting more anxious as each day passes. Some days I feel totally terrified and other days I feel as giddy as a young school girl. All I pray for is that Phil and I get through this in one piece (emotionally). I pray that we find our daughter right away and the process goes smoothly and quickly. This week I have been going crazy trying to wrap things up and do as much preparing as possible. Call me crazy.......but we are going on a mini-vacation to Florida with our kids, Anthony, Marina and Rafael. It will be their March break (1 week) from school. We are all looking forward to this trip. We want to have alot of fun with the kids before we leave for Ukraine. We will be gone for so long. We could be gone from 4 to 6 weeks. We are really going to miss them. I hope they will have a good time with all who are caring for them. I hope they won't be too much trouble. I am so grateful that we will be receiving support and help with the kids from family and friends. You really get to see who really and honestly care about you and your family. Anyways, now I'm getting all sappy on everyone. I've been feeling alot of "sappiness" lately too. This reminds me of when I was pregnant with the kids and I would change and feel different emotions like crazy!
Well we are off to Florida on Friday morning. We will be driving down. We will be back on the 18th or 19th. This will certainly speed the waiting time up!
Today we had the last of our needles. Phil is very happy about it because he can't stand needles. If he can avoid it, he will! We had the 2nd needle in a series of 3 for protection against Hepatitis. The 3rd needle is done in 6 months.
I suppose the next time I post will be after we come back from Florida. Unless I come in contact with a computer down there. Until next time ....PAKUH!!

Plane Tickets

We received our package today! Yahoo!!
We received the package today from our adoption agency. We now have our plane tickets, travel insurance and our original notorized documents. We will be hand delivering the documents to our facilitator when we travel to Ukraine. Oh my God! I suddenly felt a "surge" of reality hit me! Just looking at what I just wrote and seeing the tickets infront of me.........we are really really going!! Today makes 23 days before we leave. (didn't I just write 33 days somewhere???) WOW! This time is flying faster then I thought. I better start writing down a list(s) of things I have to do, so I won't forget anything. I also will be starting a second journal for our little one. The first one begins at the very beginning of our journey when we first decided to adopt. In the journal I wrote about every step we took including what we were feeling and how we felt about different things. The second journal will be all about our travels, when we first met and basically what we felt and all about what went on while in the Ukraine. I really enjoyed writing in a journal because it helped me alot with the rollercoaster of feelings I had in our journey to Sara.............

March update

Hello everyone!
Not too much going on right now. There's just alot of preparing! Well I guess thats because we have 3 children at home and they do often keep you on your toes! All I'm worried about is making sure our kids are taken care of when we are gone. This is my only big worry. I'm really going to miss them. I can just see me blubbering away in Ukraine because I miss the kids terribly and they'll be here having a blast with everyone! To be honest....I hope it will be that way. It will make it even worse if I know the kids are missing us too much. This week I plan on placing 3 separate calendars on the kitchen wall so whomever is with the kids will know exactly what is going on with there agenda's. I'll also be cooking up a storm making pre-cooked meals and filling up the freezer with that. I'm trying to make it as simple as possible for the wonderful people staying with our kids. We are so very greatful for you all!!! We are also very happy for everyone who will be with the kids on the weekends!! I'm sure this will be a fun distraction! Thankyou everyone!
Today I received a phone call from Elena at the adoption agency. She told me that our plane tickets, travel insurance and original notarized documents (she sent copies to our facilitator) were all ready and she sent them by priority post today to our home address. We also talked about the director of the NAC . She spoke to our facilitator today and he said that she is apparently in Spain! Nobody understands why she has been gone for so long! It is very frustrating for everyone because she is the only one who can issue appointments. It doesn't make sense at all. I also have a favour to do for our facilitator. Apparently he gives a cell phone to the adoptive parents to use during the whole trip.This makes for easy communication. Well one couple forgot to return it before coming home and I will be bringing it back! Talk about a travellin' phone!! Well I guess thats it for today!