Paris, France

According to Fedex.com, our dossier has traveled from Longmont to Boulder to Indianapolis to Paris...and it already left Paris. For where? I don't know. But it's darn close to Ukraine!

Everyone's question to me is, "When do you think you'll go?" We don't know. But I found two other families that Cathy assigned to Valentina, and they have been waiting to be submitted since September 2007 and June 2007. Here are their websites:

http://ukraineforeverfamily.squarespace.com

http://stacianddamon.blogspot.com

Then again, last spring the Abella family had their dossier submitted in 14 days. Yes, 14 days!!! Why the difference? The Abella's requested a sibling group of 3 children, which may have put them to the front of the line. Also, the U.S. met its "quota" for Ukrainian adoptions (set by the SDA) in October and they aren't accepting new dossiers until mid-January. So really three months of their delays are due to bad luck.

Bottom line...it's anyone's guess when we travel. Hopefully in 2008!!!

Dossier Day!

All 21 documents with their apostilles & Heidi sending our Dossier to Ukraine at Fed-Ex




Well, the day has arrived! At the beginning of the week, Heidi finished getting our updated (6 month rule) medical forms and we completed the power of attorney forms. I had to meet her at the notary's office during a busy day at work. Heidi got our dossier down to the Colorado Dept. of State yesterday for the apostille process. Today she went back down to Denver to pick them up and she sorted them at home. We have three copies of the Dossier.

We are excited to announce that WE HAVE SENT OUR DOSSIER!!! Yes, we were shouting there. What seems like an impossible task is done! We will have to keep an eye on our document expiration spreadsheet (6 month rule), but the hard document gathering is complete.

Our US agency, Ukrainian Angels (Cathy Harris) assigned us our assistant (facilitator) in Ukraine. Her name is Valentina. We say assistant because Ukraine doesn't allow facilitators. In Ukraine she is called our "translator", but she "facilitates" our adoption process and represents us in line at the Ukraine Sate Dept. of Adoption (SDA). So, she is our facilitator. Believe me, we were confused too the first time this was explained to us! It is Valentina's job to translate our dossier into the Ukrainian language (not Russian, more on this later) and get it into the SDA. Once the SDA gets it, they have 20 days to accept it or reject it. If they accept it they will notify us of our appointment. This is the official invitation to come to their country to accept a referral. A referral, for those who don't know, are the children we have selected to meet.

About the Ukrainian vs. Russian language reference above. The country has both languages. Russian was the official language during the Soviet era, Ukrainian is the official government language. Therefore, all documents are in Ukrainian. But, most everyone speaks Russian and Ukrainian. The east bank of the country (split by the Dnieper River) favors Russian and the west bank favors Ukrainian. In school, Ukrainian is taught. Confused yet? Nyet?

Jordan went home

Our daughter, Jordan, went home today. We are sad to see her go and we can't wait to have her back for the summer. Jordan lives with her mother in El Paso, Texas. The house is too quiet and we miss her. It sure is a pleasure when she is here. Jordan supports our adoption and excitedly awaits additional bothers or sisters into our family. She may accompany us to Ukraine if she is out of school. Speaking of school, Jordan has maintained straight A's for years now and we are so proud of her. Way to go Jordan! May all your dreams come true!

Pappa & Pappa Jr

Felix's dad, Louis, visited us for the holidays. He helped us construct a built in shelf in the basement for our books. Dad is an accomplished carpenter and has helped us on several projects around the house each time he visits. Hmmmnn, may be we will pre-order those French doors!

Just the facts, Ma'am

First things first, Heidi was released this morning and she is home doing fine. Friends and family, thanks for the visits, calls, and e-mails. Also, thank you for sending flowers to Heidi and donations to UOO http://www.ukraineorphans.org/ .

And now (cue the Dragnet music, Daaa, da, da, dant!) some facts we discovered from today's phone call to Zina.

Lilya is back home. She called Zina for us this morning and has established a time for us to talk with her every other Saturday morning. We had a list of questions to ask her and some clarification on existing matters. If you have been reading the blog, you know what they are. So here is what we learned:

• The cell phone is indeed hers. She said that an Italian organization that sponsors her orphanage gave it to her as a Christmas gift this year. Every year they asked each child what they would like for Christmas. She explained that she needed it to talk to her parents in America and they got it for her. Talk about God's work! She wants us to get her a new one and she wants to give the "Italian" one to Rimma. She also wants the phone to be simple, being concerned of what it will cost us. How thoughtful! As we were concerned about the paying of the phone anyway, we had plans to do this already. We will take care of this through Lilya's family that lives in Ukraine.


• Zina refers to Heidi and me as her parents in all conversations, including those with friends and teachers there.


• Zina said that Vika, Rimma and she cried all the way home on the plane. She told them, "You only left friends behind. I left my family behind".


• Zina said she studied hard for her exams this week (and get this) "Because she didn't want to let her parents down"! What an incredible young lady!


• Zina said "Hello" to us 1000 times during their conversation.


• Zina said she left clothes in the dresser because she plans to come back for them. (I found these clothes the day after they left and bawled my eyes out.)


• Someone (perhaps Ellie) explained to Zina that the adoption process will take two years, so she said she is prepared for the wait. Lilya said Zina was doing the math on how old and what grade she will be in when it happens.

OK, go blow your nose and wipe away the tears and I'll tell ya about Rimma.

• Rimma again apologized a thousand times for not wanting to leave Ukraine. She is afraid that she has hurt our feelings and that we are mad. Lilya relayed that this of course is not the case.


• We found out why Rimma doesn't want to be adopted. She is afraid of new things like new food, new language, new everything. She said she loves to travel and takes part in all the hosting trips so she can get out of the orphanage. She explained that she wishes she could just go on the trips to get out of there. She wishes that everyone would not ask to adopt her. She said she loved Italy, Virginia, and Colorado, but that she wishes they were in Ukraine. She told Lilya that she wants to travel the world and have nice things, but have a home in Ukraine. I think that is very admirable.

Well, that is all for now. Thanks everybody!

Emergency Room

Last night at 11:30 Heidi got home from volleyball. Did we mention she plays 2 person sand VB? She woke me up and told me she was having stomach pains. She thought it was because of a turkey sandwich she had earlier. The pain got worse and worse as the night progressed and neither one of us got any sleep. Around 5 am or so she finally relented to my constant requests to go to the doctor. She spent the next couple of hours in the bathroom, "getting ready" and somewhere in there, I dozed off. I awoke to her crying in the bathroom and so we set off to the clinic to get there by 8am when they opened. No sooner did we get there, she started having the most intense abdominal pain she has ever experienced. The doctor took a look at her and settled on three possible outcomes - kidney stones, twisted ovary, or appendicitis. He sent us to the hospital for further evaluation. Heidi cried like I have never seen before as I drove to the emergency room.

The doctor had called ahead so that when we arrived, they wheeled her straight in to ER triage. A blood test, CT scan, and pelvic exam revealed appendicitis. She was taken straight into surgery and came out within 45 minutes. I had to wait about an hour to see her and in the meantime, our friends Aimee and Lisa arrived at the hospital to see us. When we got in to see her, she was excited and started speaking with us non-stop until it was time to wheel her into the surgical overnight "hotel" room. Wow, it's a pretty swank joint, but I'm sure she would rather be home.

Long story short - She kicked butt in Women's queen of the beach VB tourney, thought she ate some bad bird, rescheduled her day, called in sick, went to the doc's, traveled to the ER, donated a few tubes of blood, got some way cool legal drugs, buzzed back and forth in the CT scanner, got rid of yucky old appendix, woke up in time to tell me and our friends about her awesome play in the tournament, ate some pancakes, talked to family in Chicago, and now she is going to sleep for the night. So, she is OK and doing fine.

They expect to release her in the morning and she will be on the couch all day. For now, we await the next CRISIS!

Dossier Update

Our dossier is almost complete! We have been working on it consistently since the first week of June, so this is a huge milestone. For those of you wondering what could possibly take so long, here is a list of what we have to include in the package we send to Ukraine:

1. Home Study
2. Adoption Agency's License
3. Social Worker's License
4. Letter from agency about social worker
5. I-171 (INS pre-approval for our kids to be US citizens - this form is like GOLD)
6. Passport copies
7. Colorado Criminal Clearances
8. Employment Verification Letters
9. Doctors' Medical Forms
10. Doctors' Licenses
11. Deed to our home
12. Marriage License
13. Petition to Adopt
14. Letter of Obligation

Whew!! The only thing we're waiting for is updated medical forms from our doctors. We had our medical exams and blood tests in July. We needed updated forms because Ukraine requires that no document be more than 6 months old when you submit your dossier.

The next step will be to take all of these documents to the Secretary of State in Denver http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/bingo_raffles/apostille.htm to have them apostilled. This is an authentication of each notary's signature. We should receive the documents in two days...and they it's off to Ukraine for translation.

We have amended our home study to read 1 to 3 children, ages 4-14. We did this in response to the overwhelming feeling we received while hosting the camp in December and from a friend's blog. Leslie who adopted Kristina, also showed us that older children are just as precious. See her blog at http://kristinasstory.blogspot.com/ Initially, as most adopters do, we thought we had to have young children. So, we initially put 2-9 yr olds on our home study.

We should explain that we have made the difficult decision of going ahead with our already planned and prepared adoption for this year. In is painful and difficult because we will not be able to adopt Zina this time because of her registration issue and the fact that there is a mandatory 12 month wait for international adoption after she gets registered. (It will be a couple of years, we estimate)

This does not mean that we have given up. On the contrary, we are taking steps and we have communicated to her orphanage director that we want to host her in the US all summer. We will continue the fight to get her registered. We have spoken with the director and have let him know we will help him with the registration process of not only Zina, but the other children that visited on the hosting program. The director asked us to wait until February and call him to find out what action has been taken by the courts on his parental relinquishment request. We fear nothing will happen as has been the case on his last couple of requests (not his fault, just the bureaucratic system). We will wait and see in February, but we will "lawyer up" in preparation for non-action for her. We will, at some point really soon, have to tell her this and I'm sure it will not be pleasant for us all.

No matter what some piece of paper says or what governments say, she is our daughter in our hearts. We will get her home. We can see that our future vacations will be to Ukraine to visit her, probably twice a year. And yes, we will go a week early when we get our eventual appointment to see her and be with her. She is our family now and her portrait hangs on our wall at home. God bless and keep you Zina, we love you!