Our adoption is over

Sadly, we have to report we have come home from Ukraine without a child. There are many reasons, none of which we will get into here in a public forum at this very moment. We're sad and disappointed, but it was the right decision.

Thanks for your support over the last two years.

We've arrived!

Please excuse any typos. We have six minutes left on the internet connection from the main Kiev post office.
We are in Kiev, getting settled in and awaiting our appointment tomorrow.
Our flight was great, except for a drunk guy collapsing in front of us. The weather in nice and our Kiev facilitators hooked up with us no problem. Can't upload pics just yet.
Will update again soon

Waiting for our ride...

We're just about ready to head to the airport to begin this journey. Our bags are packed. Our house sitters are in place. The bills are paid. We're just wrapping up a few gifts for our daughter, teaching Grammie the Skype and waiting for my brother to run us up to JFK for that lovely 10 hours in a plane. At least it's non-stop.

We dropped off our daughter at Grammie's. That may end up being the hardest part of all this as it's the first time she will be away from us for an extended period of time. She didn't want us to go and was inconsolable. Lots of tears. And not just from her.

Know this Maddie: We love you so much and we know you are in good hands of loving family members. We know you are sad, but we'll be back soon.

We love you with all of our hearts,
Mommy and Daddy

Money-saving tip

We wish we had figured this about a year ago. In the last 18 months, we've sent many, many documents that "had to absolutely, postively be there overnight."

We've used U.S. Mail, Fed Ex, UPS and others to get our documents places quickly. If we had known to set up an account with one of these places, we would have saved because account holders automatically get a discount. I doesn't cost anything; you just set it up with a credit card, they give you an account number and you are set.

Why didn't we figure this out before?

If you are just starting out in this process, go to your nearest overnight delivery place and set up an account. All of those shipping charges add up. May as well get the discount. And maybe we'll need it in Ukraine to send things home or have documents sent. Would be good to have an account already set up.

We just did a wire transfer to send some cash overseas to our facilitator to get us started over there. It's getting close.

Working out the details

We've been in a kind of shocked state of perpetual motion around here, if that makes any sense. But since reality has finally started to set it, we've started moving a little faster.
Yesterday, we had a conference call with our state-side facilitator to tell us what to expect. It was pretty much what we expected. She advised us to book a flight and get our money in order.
We've done both, booking nonstop flights that are not refundable, but we figured if we have to change them, we would still do better than the adoption/refundable fares we were being quoted.
Getting new money shouldn't be a problem, I'm told. We're glad we looked into the mechanics of that in January. Our bank had told us it wasn't possible, so we pulled our money out and went to another one.
Just one hiccup with some medical stuff. SDA wanted yet another medical letter. Sigh. Hope this is the last thing we have to have notarized/certified/apostilled. In the United States anyway.
We've got a home sitter and our daughter will be with Grammie, who will no doubt spoil her, as will the rest of the family. Good. We tried out Skype. Works just fine. Will have to make sure we have some kind of Internet connection, though, or we'll be totally dependant on Internet cafes, which I don't like. We'll work on that.
We may come home after the court hearing and spend the 10-day waiting period stateside. Or we may not. A lot of this will be play-it-by-ear, so we'll do just that.

Travel Date

April 27th at noon is when our appointment is with the State Department of Adoptions. More to come

Officially submitted today

We just got word from our U.S.-based agency facilitator that we were officially submitted to the State Department of Adoptions today. We should expect to travel within three to four weeks, according to her.
I'm guessing we'll know the actual date of the SDA appointment by the end of this week.