Information Catch Up

Where to begin… We started our adoption journey completing hours of research.  We started talking to an agency that told us of a sibling set of 3 in Russia. Russia Great!!! Wow this is going way to easy…..  Then the real journey began…  Less than a month later, as we started our very in depth paper chase, a political backlash by the Russian Gov’t. abruptly stopped all adoptions to US citizens.   We were heartbroken to say the least. 

Back to square one…what country should we look at…should we change agencies…and about a hundred more questions and doubts arose

Hours of internet surfing and many phone calls later the country of Columbia decided to choose us next.  We say this because every country has different qualifications, rules and regulations and for families looking for a more specific adoption profile such as a sibling set, country choices become limited. 

We were excited about Columbia as my family has ties to South America.  My sister was adopted from El Salvador.  My father’s side of the family lived in Venezuela.  Of course we did not qualify for either of these countries.  In making the move to Columbia we changed agencies as our first agency did not service adoption in Columbia.   We were now set to start the tedious task of collecting piles and piles of paperwork.  Throughout the 7 months of collecting the required paperwork, the home study process, then more paperwork for Columbia we had to make several concessions each building upon the previous.   First we were asked us to take 3 kids instead of 2, we agreed… then we were asked us to raise our age limit from 4yrs to 5 yrs, we agreed… then a couple months later we had to add one more year in case a child aged out, we agreed.  Columbia the asked for another two years so now we are at 8, we did not agree.  Having not agreed to this we were told that we’d probably not have a chance of being matched with a sibling set for 3 years!!!!  We had invested 8 months to Columbia and it just was not right. Ugh! Another closed door.  

I started the search again for the perfect country and discovered that Ukraine was back open for adoptions and we qualified!!! It had been closed for a short time to the US.  Jeff’s family name is Ukrainian. I found a network of amazing people who have adopted from Ukraine. We also found out that we did not need an agency (an enormous financial relief).  On top of all this while Jeff was at work talking about the adoption his co-worker said “my sister lives in Ukraine and does work with orphanages and was looking to facilitate adoptions.”  It was all starting to fall into place finally….nothing felt more right.   

We currently have submitted all the paperwork to our Ukraine facilitators besides the FBI background check. Ukraine only accepts documents that are under 6months old. We did not know that rule so everything but our FBI checks was good. We are also currently updating a few other documents that will expire in the next two months.  We also learned everything must be signed in blue ink!

Our house has been completely destroyed. We have been kid proofing this house.  Sorry Mia and Asics but all the dog toys lying around will be reduced.  We have the kid’s room ready for any age and any gender. We are not sure if we will end up with 2 or 3 kids.  Or a football team if I had it my way. Wink.