SOOO close but a green monster is in our way!

 Tomorrow I leave to head to Ukraine to bring our boys home. My husband has been there the past week getting most of the final paper work in order. If all goes well, we will be on a plane Wednesday morning and home Wednesday evening. There is only 1 thing standing in our way: the money to book our plane tickets. We have a flight picked out, the only flight leaving Kiev that day. I really hope that we do not get stuck in Ukraine :( Please share with anyone that you think may help by donating to our FSP so that we can fly home Wednesday with our boys. We need it to read $14266 to book our tickets. 

Here are some great pictures of the boys taken at the orphanage:

Silas

André

So Much To Say...

We have returned home from our first trip Friday evening. I will try not to be too lengthy in this post. There is so much to share! I was unable to blog in country due to the website being in another language and I had no clue how to fix it.

The biggest news is we are bringing home TWO boys! On the RR website, the child listed as "Orion" is our second boy. His name is André (we kept his given name), he is 3 years old and has Down's Syndrome. Please do not be fooled by that awful picture! He is the happiest, lively little boy! Seriously, I have so many pictures that I can not use because he would not stay still long enough to take a picture so they are blurry. 

And of course we are bringing home our Silas, which almost did not happen due to a paperwork error. When we arrived at our DAP appointment, we were told there was a problem and he was unavailable. A doctor saw him while the director was on vacation and accidentally changed his medical code, making him unavailable. But our amazing team was able to have everything straightened out and our little boy will be home soon! I shared our story with Julia Arnold Nalle and she did a wonderful job of telling it in her blog which helped us raise a large portion of the money we needed for the adoption. She is an amazing writer and has such a beautiful gift! It is my story that I lived and her words are so much better than mine. I truly admire her gift to write so beautifully. Silas is the sweetest little boy. He is very small for his age. He will be 5 at the end of this month and is the same size as my 17 month old :(

We were in country for 24 long days. Court was delayed due to the sick leave of the only person in the country that can approve court dates. But we finally had court last Thursday and we were granted adoption of these two wonderful boys! 

We are still in need of funds. We thought we were fully funded then ran into a couple of extra expenses and realized we had forgot to account for a few expenses, such as our apartment while in country. We greatly appreciate anyone who can help us complete the process of bringing these boys home by donating to our FSP. 

 Stephen will leave on Sunday to start paperwork such as changing birth certificates, applying for Social Security  Numbers, and applying for passports. I will return to Kiev a week later to help with Gotcha Day and the flight home :)

Now please enjoy some pics from our trip :)