Almost... Almost...

We are in the busy final stages to get ready for our trip to Ukraine. It's funny that no matter how much you prepare, there is much to do at this point! We are eagerly awaiting word on our appointment date which we should find out anytime now. We are pre-packing for our trip (gotta fit in the suitcases, cars, airline size and weight limits), getting new currency from the banks to take along, learning key Ukranian words (yes, no, thank you, bathroom...)! A good contractor friend is helping us build out the boys room so we'll be chugging away this weekend (I have no actual construction skills so this is a good thing!)

I find myself wondering what the trip will be like. What 24 - 30 hours of travel will be like (I get bored on planes). Walking through airports and foreign cities where I don't know the language. Will McDonalds in Ukraine be the same as McDonalds here? What will it be like when we get to see Masha again for the first time since August? What will it be like meeting Andriy for the first time? Are we really going to stick out that much there being Americans? I am actually looking forward to the adventure of going on this trip, and much much more so looking forward to the day that is approaching when we walk out of the plane back in Texas with our two new family members!

These kids will LOVE Texas weather!

Zhytomyr, Ukraine Weather

Tomorrow Night
Partly Cloudy
-17°

Papers please!

Yes! After 6 months of preparation, our dossier has been submitted to the Ukranian government for adoption! We are told the application was accepted with no problems (thanks Nataliya and Oksana for your diligence :) and we should find out in a couple weeks when our appointment with the SDA (no idea what that stands for) will be to officially start legal adoption of Masha and Andriy. Time to start packing!

Hey, go put on a sweater...

I have been thinking about the kids a lot this past week. We're at the end of the preparations for adoption and ready to make it happen! It has been brutally cold in Ukraine in recent days with daytime highs just breaking zero and nightime lows in the -10 range and even colder! I pray every day for them, their friends, orphanage care workers, etc, that they stay safe and warm. I wish we were there to be able to make sure they are ok.

Our 3 kids we have are very well cared for. I would not say spoiled because they have wonderful hearts and generally are concerned for others before themselves, and not all into material things. It's not that they don't have everything they need and most of what they want, it's just that they're not really materialistic people. I don't know if or how much Masha and Andriy have had of that in their lives, but we are looking forward to getting them home and being able to love them and take care of them. I still think our lives will be changed by this experience as much as theirs!

T minus 1 week!

This is where the process starts getting fun. Stressful, but fun. Stressful as the adoption is becoming real after months of paperwork, raising funds, paperwork, raising funds, pap..... you get the idea! Fun, because we can finally tell these two kids that we will be there soon, and it's real. No more nebulous we're planning on doing it, now we can say that we'll be there in the coming weeks. Jodi and Alyssa got to Skype with them on Saturday. They were bundled up and looked pretty chilly. Temperatures in Ukraine have been crazy cold, it will be like 2 degrees there today and well below zero tonight! The kids are excited that we will be there soon for them, it was cool to finally get a good Skype session and see Andriy talk and smile. We miss Masha a lot and can't wait to finally get to meet Andriy in person. That will be an amazing day that is not far off now :)

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

OK, the Tom Petty song by this title is playing on the radio as I type, so..... Things are moving along well! We're all set with the dossier, attorney, facilitator, just waiting for February 7th when our application will be submitted to the Ukranian government :) Now it's a matter of waiting for that to happen and to get our SDA appointment date. In the meantime we are continuing to prepare our home for 5 teenagers. Still trying to figure out what to pack, living the past 10 years in Texas leaves us ill prepared for a trip to Ukrain in the winter! I keep my eye on the 10 day forecast and am not sure how my heat worshipping body is going to handle all those days and nights with the "minus" in front of the temperature number. Brrr!!!

And I shall call thee....

One of the common things in international adoptions is that the kids want new names to go with their new families. This is certainly not an across the board rule, but from the families we've come across in our adoption journey, it happens a lot. So we talked with Masha before she left last summer and she does want a new name. We don't know about Andriy yet, but since it took us 8 months to pick Dylan's name (we chose Dylan by the way), we figured we'd better be prepared! Not set in stone as we want to ensure that 1) they want new names with our family and 2) they like the ones we've picked, but the frontrunners as of now are Lexi Hope Tansey, and Dalton Michael Tansey :)

The Connected Child

The Connected Child is the book that pretty much everyone recommends you read when preparing to adopt, covering a wide range of topics in regards to bringing an adopted child into your home, working through the issues that they may bring with them to connect them into your family. When we hosted Masha this past summer we were really surprised at how easily she seemed to blend in with our family. At the end of the five week trip, she simply seemed to be one of us. After reading the book I had to laugh, as the recommendations in the book are already how we parent!

For anyone who knows our family it is easy to see what a great family we already have, and no question how awesome our 3 kids are, and they know that they have a solid family where they are unquestionably and unconditinoally loved, protected and safe, and cared for each and every day. Now, our kids haven't had to go through what they have, but we feel well equipped as a family to help them move past their past and into our love. We are very much looking forward to sharing this with Masha and Andriy and making them one of us. We're getting closer, T-minus 17 days to dossier submission :)

T minus 19....

19 days until our adoption dossier is submitted to the Ukranian government. It's funny that, no matter how much preparation you've done, how unprepared as this point gets closer! Lots to do getting our home ready for five teenagers (need more bathrooms :). Andriy is back from his holiday trip to Italy, so they're ready and waiting for our arrival! Please pray that there are no complications in paperwork, et al as the submission date approaches and we make our final preparations!

Hey, only 1,763 things left to do...

Wow, time flies! Seems like so long ago (5 1/2 months) when Masha flew back to Ukraine from her hosting trip with us this past summer and our adoption of her and her brother began in earnest. Now we're looking at the calendar, and our dossier is scheduled to be submitted in 3 weeks! Now our focus turns to getting our home ready for two more teenagers, trip preparations to travel to the other side of the world (literally!), and the realization of how many small yet significant details there are to handle prior to our adoption trip (we think early March) and finally bring Masha and Andriy home (guessing April).

The coming weeks are going to be a whirlwind of cleaning, organizing, reorganizing, re-reorganizing, packing, unpacking, packing again (man, I own 1 sweater!), houses, cars, dogs, kids, activities, real life that isn't stopping for all of this.... whew! We had the privilege of meeting a family on Saturday at the airport as they brought their new daughter home, we will be so glad when that is us, and we can start being a family of "Super 7"!