Sad news

It is sad, although not permanently sad. Ukraine has closed for international adoptions. We have no word at this point as to when they will reopen. Adoptive parents with dossiers already submitted will be allowed to complete their adoption, but the NAC is not accepting any new dossiers (such as ours!).

We got our apostilles on Friday; however, three of our documents were missing our notary's stamp, so they need to be stamped and resubmitted. We had ~30 documents notarized at once, so I'm not surprised a few got missed! :) We'll get those apostilled the beginning of this next week and then send our dossier on to our facilitator in Ukraine. But why? Isn't Ukraine closed? *grin* Yes, it is closed. But by the time our documents get there, and get translated, it could be open again! Who knows? So we will send everything and trust that God will get all of it to the NAC at just the right time.

For those who are interested, here is a list of documents included in our dossier (if you're not interested, skip this and the next paragraph):
Petition for adoption
Letter of obligation
Certification of INS approval letter
I-171H
Color copies of each of our passports
Copy of our marriage license
State background checks for each of us
Employment letters for each of us
Medical forms for each of us
Copies of the medical licenses of the doctors who did our physicals
Home study
Copy of our social worker's child placing license
Copy of our social worker's clinical social worker license
Power of attorneys for each of our facilitators in Ukraine

All of the above are either notarized or are certified documents, and all of them must be apostilled. It was 40 documents that we had apostilled (thank you to Missouri for having a $100 cap on adoption apostilles--it is $10 per document normally)! But, that's also because we are putting together two complete dossiers--we will send one to Ukraine and take the other with us when we travel. Recently, it has not been necessary to have a second dossier when adopting two children, but we would rather be prepared. :)

We purchased wallpaper border for the kids' room today. We have chosen to decorate, although we were hesitant at first! We have chosen a moon and stars theme, because the moon and the stars are constant wherever you go around the world. We will be taking fleece blankets with the moon and a couple of stars on them when we go to Ukraine, and we can show our kids the moon and stars in Ukraine and then when we get home as well. We're hoping this will give them some point of consistency when everything is so new and different. :) Our decorating will still be very moderate--nothing on the walls, very little in the room--for at least a little while after we return home.

We will do our best to keep you posted as we have more information. Please keep us but more importantly our children in your prayers.

Woohoo!

Yes, I know, excellent English for my title. :) We now have our social worker's license and all of our documents! They will all get notarized tomorrow evening, and Mark will be taking them downtown for the infamous apostilling on either Wednesday or Friday. What does this mean, you ask? Our documents will be heading to Ukraine this week!! Thus, our "woohoo" as a title. It will be even a bigger "woohoo" when they're actually sent off. ;)

We have switched facilitators. This really is a matter of little consequence in the big scheme of things, but we have been praying about this a lot and feel very comfortable with our decision. Oftentimes, adoptive parents switch facilitators because they've been swindled in some way, and they are now out some money with no child in sight. This is most definitely NOT the case for us. We were very happy with our previous facilitators, but due to some circumstances they were not able to assist us at this point in time. Our new facilitator is a Christian man located in Ukraine who comes VERY highly recommended from numerous adoptive families. Our cost should end up being very similar (possibly even cheaper!).

Thanks for all of your prayers!! We will post again when all of our documents have been sent. :)

Busy times!

Unfortunately, not busy due to our adoption! :) School has started again for Mark and we have been very busy with life in general. So, as an update...

Texas once again was the master of speed with our apostilled and certified marriage license! We had expected to receive it last Friday (Sept 2) at the very earliest. We received it last Wednesday (Aug 31), and that was after it was delivered to the wrong address and then redelivered to us! Those Texas folks are amazing. So where are we at now? Well, the social worker who did our home study is licensed in the state of Missouri, but her license expires at the end of September. She is waiting for her renewal license, and we are waiting as well. If we send our dossier to Ukraine now, by the time everything is translated and submitted they would reject our dossier (and send it all back) because one document is expired. So we need to wait until we have a copy of her new license (notarized, of course!) before we can finish up. Once we have that, we will take all of our documents to downtown and have everything apostilled at once. Missouri has a cap on apostilles for international adoptions. Normally it costs $10 per document for apostilles, which can get pretty pricy! But for adoptions, Missouri has a limit of $100 for apostilles, even for multiple children (as long as they are being adopted at the same time). This means we want to take all of our documents at once, so we can only pay the fee once.

Please pray that our SW would get her license soon, and get it to us! Please also pray for the many children recently orphaned by the hurricane. Pray that they would find relatives and/or homes quickly.