One More Day!

These last couple of weeks have flown by so quickly! Words can not explain how many different emotions are going through my head right now. In just one day we will be flying to Ukraine to finally start the process of adopting our child. Even with that said I can’t seem to really express how I feel about this moment. Lindsey and I are both very excited, but it’s funny how things just seem surreal. Our intentions are good and we’ve obviously been waiting over a year for this moment – the preparation, the packing, and farewells. We thank God that the moment has finally come. I keep reading blogs of families who are over there right now, having their appointments and in just a few days that will be us.

Since we got our appointment date, a lot has happened. First we booked our airline tickets. On Monday, we will fly from Columbus to D.C, from DC to Frankfurt, Germany, to Kiev, Ukraine. We have about a two hour layover between both stops that should give us plenty of time to get through any other security checkpoints and the like. With the trip coming up so quickly, we are mostly packed and ready to go. We are only taking a few outfits as we have to pack light, since we’re filling a lot of our suitcases with clothes for the kid, toys, diapers, and lot of American convenience products we don’t expect to have while we are in Ukraine.

In the midst of all of this going on we were asked by our case manager to expand the age range our paperwork from 14-30 to 14-48 months. I know, scary. But, we were assured that it is not our agency’s intention to give us a 3 year old or a 4 year old, but to give us the youngest healthiest child as possible. She kept mentioning specifically that for example if a healthy child was available who was say, 31 to 32 months old, that we would not be eligible to adopt them. You can read into that as you like, but we’re hoping that we still will get a young and healthy two and a half year old. Regardless, we have faith our agency has our best interest in mind and are on our side. So with that we quickly had our home study updated for the second time and apostilled. They claim that our U.S. paperwork will be taken care of and updated. With this change, we also learned this week that my parent’s house has sold – With them in Florida visiting my sister and the sale closing by the end of the month, tomorrow after dropping some things off will be the last time I step foot in my old home. So many changes going on in my life!

This weekend has been busy. I took Friday off as my last day from work before the trip to get various things marked off our checklist, and then today (Saturday) was even busier as we had lunch with our new friends the Layne’s who adopted from Serbia and Ukraine. They gave us a nice send off with our friends the Carr’s. As well, tonight we had a send off from our church adoption involved family. It was a GREAT time and we feel so loved and supported in our decision to adopt! We are truly blessed! Here’s a picture of the send off package we were given. We are definitely ready for our trip now!

Well it’s really late, and I’m looking forward to the second to last night of sleep in our own comfy bed! Good Night and God Bless!