Our bags are packed, we're ready to go . . .

7:oo pm - There was so much to do to get ready for this trip, but I think we are finally there. Just a few more items to pack and were done. Jim is picking us up at 4 am (ouch!) for the ride to the airport. Our flight leaves at 6:40 am and arrives in New York at 3:10 pm. After a 2 hour layover we head for Kiev, Ukraine. We arrive in Kiev at 10:10 am on the 17th, Ukraine time. We're in the air 14 hours. I am NOT looking forward to the flight. I get ansy after a 4 hour flight, so I dread all that time in cramped coach seats. I have plenty of books to read and hopefully there will be several good movies to kill the time.

When we arrive in Kiev we will be met my our facilitator who will be helping us with everything while we are in Ukraine. He'll take us to our apartment to check in. Current weathe is 32. Cold, but not too bad. There is a 10 hour time difference, so we will have all of the 17th and 18th to recover from jetlag before our SDA appointment on the 19th.

SDA stand for State Department of Adoptions. To give you some background, we prepared our Dossier back in March 2008. The Dossier is the package with our homestudy, homeland security clearance, medical reports and probably a dozen other notarized documents that took us months to prepare. But by the time our Dossier was done and sent to Ukraine, the SDA was no longer accepting any more Dossiers for 2008. So we had to wait and wait. Then sometime in October they started accepting a limited number of Dossiers. However, by that time ours had expired! So we had to race around and re-do all the documents. Fortuately, we updated everything in time and got it to Ukraine in time to recieve an invitation to travel from the SDA and an appointment with them for January 19th 2009.

At the appointment we will ask for a referal for a child that we know of from her previous trips to the U.S. If all goes well , they give us the referral which starts the ball rolling to go see her and start adoption proceeds if the visit goes well. I probably don't have the process exactly right, but that is our basic understanding. Oftentimes, famlies do not already know of a child and instead the SDA gives them files of children to review. Then the family has about an hour to decide on which child (or children) they wish to visit.

Wish us luck at the appointment!