Answers to your questions

Thanks for all the comments and questions--I love those! :) I'm going to summarize some of the questions so if I don't answer exactly what you wanted to know, please leave me another comment and I'll try again.

Do the boys know?
Not exactly. We've talked about bringing more kids into the family and they are very excited about that, but they won't know about the girls until we get a travel date (at the earliest). Too many things can change with Ukraine. :)

Have the girls been available for adoption for very long?
I don't know how long they've been registered, but I know they are registered as there have been 2 or 3 families who have been referred to them and then opted not to adopt them. You might very well have seen their profile, Diana!

What other information do you have on the girls?
I do know what region and orphanage they are in, but I will not share any of that publicly until we have actually had our appointment and are in the process of adopting them. Other than that, we pretty much know only what is listed on Reece's Rainbow. We have, however, talked with another family that adopted from the same groupa as one of the girls so we have a little more information there.

Do you think Ukraine does bait-and-switch on prospective adoptive parents?
No, because Ukraine does not advocate for its children internationally. Do agencies do bait-and-switch...most definitely! Any agency that has photolistings for Ukraine is acting illegally, as Ukraine does not allow for children to be pre-selected for cost. The exceptions to pre-selection are learning about children through hosting programs, mission trips, and through other families that have adopted. Even in all of those cases, the SDA will not necessarily hold a child for you (particularly a young, healthy child). Reece's Rainbow gets all of their information from families who are adopting--so the information on the girls comes from families who have adopted from their orphanage. There is no money exchanged for any information and RR does not act as an agency. They simply advocate for children who need homes. Any family, working with any agency or independent facilitator, can adopt a child on RR.

How do you think your sons will respond to you returning to Ukraine?
This is an interesting question, because right now I don't think they "get" Ukraine. In the US, we learn about where we live (our country) when we start school. Even in kindergarten and first grade it can be difficult for children to grasp the concept of a whole country. Geography is normally taught starting at "neighborhood" and moving outward. Our boys had not started school when we brought them home, so they had never had any teaching on Ukraine as the country where they lived. And from their perspective, they never left (stay with me here LOL).
Mark and I were talking about this the other day, because the boys don't know that they ever flew in an airplane. Why would they? From the orphanage, they got in a car, got on a train (saw the train and got to look out the window as it was moving), got in another car, went into a building (airport), walked down a long hallway (gate to plane), and then sat down in some chairs for a long time (plane flight from KBP to JFK). On the plane we were not next to the window, so they never saw out. The plane had food, bathrooms, room to walk around--they have no clue that was an airplane. From their perspective, we took them somewhere else, but they don't recognize it as another country, just somewhere different than where we were before. The good thing is that we wouldn't be going back to the boys' orphanage, but I am concerned about the effect being somewhere where everyone speaks Russian would have on the boys. They have not responded well to Russian-speaking people here in the States.

Are you taking the boys with you?
This is something we're still discussing, and some of it will depend on when the adoption actually happens. If this one takes as long as the last one (almost 3 years!) we would definitely take them. If it happens this spring...we aren't sure. We don't really want to leave them for 3 weeks (initial trip) as we think that might be traumatic for them (just them personally, not all kids). But taking them with us brings a whole other set of challenges. We don't want them at the SDA meeting or at court--certain things are sometimes said in those places that the boys don't need to hear. Plus, we'd like to have time to bond with the girls before bringing them home. We're still looking at options with all of this so I'll keep you posted as the adoption progresses.