"Smile Daddy", says my 12 yr old as she snaps this picture. We are still working on all of the neccesary documents we need to get out of Dodge. We got the birth certificates done yesterday. Today, Olga must have them notarized and made official. To get to this point she jumped through hoops to "unregister" the kids from their addresses in their villiage (old Soviet Union way of keeping tabs on people) and request a waiver because Kolya was never registered to begin with (address-wise). She also had to find the court decree showing that the kids birth parent's rights were terminated. It seems that it was never filed or registered either, so we paid for someone's incompetence by spending a day doing their job that they should have done a couple of years back.
We are working on tax ID for them now and after that will come the Ukrainian passports followed by the medical appointments and US visas, etc. This has proved to be the hardest part so far. I now know why everyone gets "whiny" around this timeframe. I am holding onto my Christian beliefs and trying to control my attitude. I don't want my children to see my angst and I wish to lead by example, even when I thought someone intentionally splashed me yesterday with their car as Nadia and I were walking along the roadside. Just another day in paradise!
It's going painfully slow for us, but it is progressing. Everyday, I ask Heidi for a best guess day to go home. Right now it is looking like the end of next week. Stay tuned though, we may need to fix someone else's mistake.
~ Fidgety Felix ~
