Today we had our official adoption signing appointment at the UAS adoption agency office.  This was one of the most exciting days for us as it means the next step is for our documents to be sent to the Ukraine.  After many revisions of our documents, and sleepless nights, we are now officially onto the next stage in our adoption process!

The feeling of signing the 24 pages today felt similar to the feeling you experience when you sign at the lawyers office for your first home.  You feel excited for this next stage in your life, your hand is sore from signing, and the feeling of the best is yet to come!  With every signature I felt a commitment to our children being made.  Overwhelming love with every stroke of the pen to each page.

Oleg once again walked us through the next phase that we are in and answered our many questions we had about the details of what to expect.  I am amazed at the amount of paperwork and time Oleg and his team at the UAS office have put into our file.  The patience of dealing with international adoption requirements should not be overlooked.  I cannot speak enough about how amazing it has been to work with UAS and the support Oleg has been to us throughout.  We are blessed to have found this adoption agency.

Driving home from the appointment, Ryan and I were both feeling overwhelming joy and excitement as we enter this next phase.  Today was officially the day that can be written in our history book.  January 19th, 2021, the day Ryan and Mandy made the official commitment to become parents.  I believe wholeheartedly that our children are already chosen for us, waiting for us to arrive, meet them, and eventually bring them home. 

While we have a few months still to wait for the day we get to meet our children, we are overjoyed that time is moving very quickly now.  The best is yet to come!

It’s now been a year since we completed our home study, and just as Marla had predicted, now you wait for about a year.  She was bang on.  Throughout the last year all we have been working on is providing the appropriate paperwork to get our adoption in order.  Every ask of documentation requested, so specific, and so detailed.  One slight variation, or error would result in having to redo documents.  The other challenge experienced was documents expiring as the Ukraine would have a 6 month expiry on all paperwork.  This also resulted in us having to redo paperwork 2-3 times or in some cases even more.  The medicals for example, had a specific form for the Ukraine, written in blue ink only and very detailed in nature.  I think in the end we redid this paperwork 5 times and had to go through bloodwork and physicals twice.  In the end we had a binder full of paperwork we had provided the agency including things like, RCMP background checks and finger printing, land title documents, property tax statements, financial documents, employment letters, real estate information, marriage certificate, birth certificates, are only some of the documents we had to provide.  It’s basically a forensic assessment of your full life.  I can only imagine how many families would be denied the right to have children if all had to provide the information we had to.  But, there is good reason for this.  I appreciate the fact they require all of this background information on us as they are completing due diligence to ensure these children are provided a good home.

Earlier this week we had a meeting with Oleg, the director of our adoption agency, UAS to review our next steps and to answer any questions we may have.  This was so informative and helped answer a lot of burning questions we had as we wait for our next steps.  We are expected to visit his office next week to sign the official paperwork and provide all of our original documents.  This means our file will likely be sent to the Ukraine in February with our first trip likely in May of this year.  The first trip will be the trip where we get to meet our children for the first time.  From there, we fly back home and about a month later will have our second trip .  For now, the second trip can be completed either in person in the Ukraine or via online.  About a month after this trip, we would be back over to the Ukraine for the 3rd and final trip to bring our children home.

This last year has had so many unknowns for so many as we all found ourselves adapting to life in a pandemic.  We found ourselves many times feeling emotionally and mentally drained, not knowing what the future may hold.  Many times I would find myself in the kitchen cleaning after dinner, feeling discouraged.  I would look out the kitchen window only to find yet another rainbow forming in the field in the back yard.  Night after night, month after month, rainbows would appear.  I think in the end we captured 6 different instances of rainbows in our field.  One even made it into the 6pm evening news which someone else captured.  Every time we found ourselves running in the back yard giddy like children, feelings of joy and hope would engulf us.  We are not alone, God is always with us, and truly does have his hand over this situation.  We have full faith as we go through this journey together.