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.