Happy B-Day DJ!

DJ is 10 today, and I just want to say Happy Birthday again to our oldest son. We love you very much and happy that you are our son!

"I will not give you to someone else. "

Since we brought our son home, little bit over 2 years ago, he always gives us "love" little notes. I love receiving them from him. DJ is very loving boy, and he loves to show it. When we just brought him home he would not stop kissing us and he would do it every where home, in public, church, I really mean everywhere. lol
When I was growing up, as a child I never worried that my parents will give me away. DJ knows that we are his family and we love him, and no matter what happens in life he will be always our son.
When he writes his notes, he always mentioning "I will not give you to someone else", "I will always love you" "I will never forget you". For him it's really important to let us know that this is how much he loves us.  It's been more then two years and I am not sure how long will it take him to heal completely.
  I just cannot imagine how deeply his heart is broken. We are praying that God will heal DJ completely.

DJ 's English is improving. I think he is doing good job on being home only 2 years, and living in Ukrainian family. At our home we do speak only Ukrainian. Also we do work with DJ on his Ukrainian everyday, reading and writing. I know that it make is harder for him to learn English, but it will be nice if he can keep Ukrainian.  I really do want our kids to be able to read and write in Ukrainian.

Last note I got was today(for Valentines day) :
It's hard to see on the picture, so I will type it here:

Dear Mom,  
 Mom I love you wery moch. Mom I love you, you and dad are the best parents. I want give you to some one els noul. Mom I'm sall sarry for bing min to you and dad. I will never forget you and I love you. Mom I love you. I will for get you all the time. Love you Mom. 


                                                                                                 Love Daniel

Adopt us....please!!!

While our stay in Ukraine, we used an opportunity to visit local (in Kiev region) orphanage. We bought a box of mandarins, bananas and few other treats for kids. It was small, family type orphanage, kind of like foster care here in US.

Kids live in families , 5-7 kids per family and most of these kids are older, 12-16 year olds.
There were 5 different families, they are all under one roof but every family is living on it's own. It was so different from what we saw while adopting our first son, from Donetsk region. Kids are dressed, fed much better and looks way healthier. Kids have an idea what family is. Every night they do pray, kids attend church every Sunday, go to public school, and have a better life than kids in regular orphanages.But kids are still orphans and they needs to be adopted and have a real loving family.

We had an opportunity and privilege to get to know kids more from one particular family. There were few younger kids in this family.
At the time we were saying "bye" to the kids, one of the kids(6 year old) came up to my husband and put his head on his shoulder and whispered into his ear "Can you adopt us, please"? (this kid has another sibling) Tears ran down my face, and I saw tears in my husbands eyes. Our hearts were broken with this words. It's so hard to leave all this kids behind us, and I wish we can take them all, and keep few of them, and find families for rest of these kids. We are praying for all the little kiddos out there!

We are home...

It's been almost a week since we came home from Ukraine. We are finally over time changes, everyone is in routine, and life seems much easier :) We found out many new things about each other during this trip. All our kids do much better with routine and schedules.

 Danik had some independent study to do during trip, so he was busy.
Danik did miss school, and was happy to go back to school. I was thinking to let him stay home on Monday( we came home late Saturday), but Danik really wanted to go to school and I did let him.
The only thing Denny was talking about, missing the whole time we were in Ukraine, was MARIO :) For this Christmas we got Wii, and Mario is one of the games that came with it. We had long talks, almost everyday about Mario. lol

ElliAna, is doing much better home and looks like she is starting to remember that she has a daddy too :) At the moment we got to the plane to fly to Ukraine, and the whole time while in Ukraine and till the moment we got back from the plane last Saturday, she wanted to see, hear, touch, and deal only with mommy, me :) It was interesting times, hard times, but it's over, and we have only memories.

I am sad when I look at my kids, and I do thing about kids we left behind. Every time our kids are playing, or eating, I am thinking about my other kids. It's hard, but at least we have hope. We will return to bring our kids home.
We are looking forward to our second trip to Ukraine, and already planning. We have many little things needs to be done around the house to prepare more, and we will keep ourselves busy.

*We do have best facilitator, and him and his wife helped us a lot. He was not only doing his job, he was going  extra mile for us. We do appreciate all the help we were getting. This is our second adoption with him, and we are so happy God led us to him, and we have a great person to rely on.

Coming back with .....

We are coming back to USA with out kids. It's not why we came here, and  not what we expected to have at the end of this trip but we have a peace about this whole situation. We see more reasons for us to be here, in Ukraine now. I know it doesn't make any sense, but we see God's hand in everything. I can't share too many details, probably can't share any details, but once it's over I will explain, share everything. We will be traveling to Ukraine in 3-4 month's again.

For now, please pray about our family, kids!
Paperwork
Finances( we had this trip, and we didn't plan it to have another one) we had to loan money for this adoption, and in few months will have to loan even more. :((


In few days we will be home .... I know it does sound bad, but we are happy, and we see light at the end of the tunnel :) We are sad to leave people we met, behind us, but we have no choice. We know God has a plan. :)

Hello from Ukraine

I just want to say thank you to all of you out there, who is praying for us, and our situation. We are still in Kiev, and still not sure what we will do. Probably will return home, and wait till our kids become available in few month.

We do have peace about this whole situation, and not disappointed at all. I would love to know what was the reason for us to fly all the way to Ukraine now? Only God knows everything, I just wish to know. :)

Kids are doing great, we all had food poison but doing much better now.  We been sick almost all week, so kids are still weak, and we haven't go anywhere yet. Sergey is doing all the shopping and other necessary things.  It's very cold here, but we have a nice place to stay, and very warm(we even have our window open, it's way too hot).

I am not sharing all the details what is going on with our case. But please pray that  God will take care of everything, and give us wisdom to make right choices.

 Boys with Grandpa :)

 Some winter fun! Boys will miss all the snow when we return back to US

view from our window (we were prepare fro cold winter but not for this kind of winter) :)))

God Bless you

Today-SDA Appointment

Today we had our SDA appointment. It was not successful. Kids we were hoping to adopt are not eligible for adoption, and there is some issues with paperwork. We have two options: come back home and wait when kids become available and come back to Ukraine to finish adoption. Or go to another appointment and try to find different child. We are still not sure what to do. For now we are praying and waiting for some feed back from SDA .

We are good, kids are fine. Baby was vomiting last night, and today, also she has diarrhea, but after a prayer she is much better now. Boy are find, and were in Ukrainian time the first day/night.
We were supposed to be in Ukraine Sunday at 1pm, but do weather issues our flight had to return back to Frankfurt, after almost touching the ground. It was interesting experience, but we do appreciated Lufthansa to offer us a hotel and take care of our family for their expenses. We had a good night at Frankfurt, good food, and kids were well rested. More details to come, baby fusing.

Less than 1 day

We had a very busy week, preparing for our trip to Ukraine. We had a lot of ups and downs, but looks like it everything working out and we are truly blessed by our God.

In Kiev we have a place to stay (friends of friends), and Sergey's dad will come to airport to pick us up.

I was trying to pack light , and take less stuff as possible with 3 kids on board, and I think I did a good job :) only 3 suitcases, and 3 carry-ones.

Boys are very excited, and ready to go.
Yesterday DJ, before going to sleep, came to me and while sitting on my lap, asked for a song(I am a horrible singer), but I think kids don't mind. After I was done "singing", DJ said " Mom, we are leaving Saturday early morning, and I like to sleep in on Saturdays, please, make sure you wake me up" Funny boy, :)))

DD, small Daniel, counting days until we leave, and crossing on the calender. He agreed that it's ok to leave his BOBBY at home. Bobby, this is a name of his stuffed dog. I have no idea, why Bobby, and I think DD was 2, 5 when he came up with this name. Now, DD, will not even go to bed with out his Bobby :))) I am still thinking, take it or not with us.

We are still not sure who we are adopting, but please keep praying that God move mountains. As soon as I can, I will share more information about our new kids. There is a huge possibility that we might have to move our appointment date with SDA for few days later, do to some paperwork. :( Please pray, it's all in Gods hands.

Christmas EVE

On New Year we did our own photo-shout.

New styles by ElliAna Rose lol

Christmas Cookies, after baking with kids, we did little plates of cookies, card, and took it to few neighbors

God Bless you!

9 more days

We are so excited , but there is many things that we do worry about it and praying.

We decided to take kids with us, we have no one to watch them here at US. I know it's not going to be easy, but we have no other choice.

Our kids deal bad with changes, so please pray about this. 
The most I worry about our Danik, he has some health issues,  I never talked about on here, and I will not go into details (maybe some other time). Please pray for our son, that travel and time changing will not cause any problems. 


Denny should be fine, he might get a little whinny but we will deal with it :))

Baby ElliAna, I have no idea, how she will react to all changes. I hope that as long as I am with her, she will be fine.

I am doing some packing already, making lists(what to buy, take, pack, do) before we leave to Ukraine.

We have one more prayer request, there is kids that desperately needs a family, but in order for us to adopt them  God has to do a huge miracle. Please pray!

Happy 4th Birthday Daniel D(Denny)!

I can't believe that my Denny is already 4 years old. Time flies so fast and sometimes I wish to get back to the moment when I touched, and hold Denny for the first time!

He is full of energy, funny, goofy, and loves his brother and sister.

Happy Birthday Denny! We love you!!!

Less than 2 weeks

We have less than 2 weeks before we leave to Ukraine and I still have so so many things to do.
Please pray for us,  for our family!'

Thank you

God Bless you

We have our appointment date :)

We have an appointment at SDA on January 24, 2012. We are excited and now I am worry to get everything done before we leave. We have less than 3 weeks to get tickets, get ready, pack and be ready to go to Ukraine to meet our child/ren.

Tomorrow we are planning to get tickets, and write down all lists, what needs to be done before we leave.

Now we have an extra bedroom because My brother, he use to live with us, moved out 2 days ago. This is one more project we are working on, painting extra bedroom. The plan is to move boys to this new looking bedroom before Ukraine. And the other bedroom will be waiting for our new child/ren.

2 years home

I been so busy with holidays, and the whole family being sick for more then a week, I didnt' have a time to post about Daniel J.

December 22, marked 2 years since  I pick it up Daniel J from orphanage, and we are so blessed he is our son.

December 26, 2009 we landed in San Francisco, and Daniel J were home with us. I will try to post later about his progress over these 2 years, and he did make a lot of progress.

We are so thankful to our God for Daniel J , for keeping him safe, and for allowing to be his forever family.

We love you Daniel J!

Still waiting...

We are still waiting to receive our travel date. At least we do know that our dossier has been approved and registered on 12/16/2011. SDA still don't give appointment dates. So we are still in waiting position, but at least we know that our paperwork is fine.

We had a great Christmas, but we were thinking a lot about our child/ren, we do pray for the. And I still keep repeating to myself that "God has a plan" lol.
Our facilitator thinks we will travel late January-mid February, but again only God knows. As soon as I know something I will post.

Thank you for all of your prayers, and encouragement.

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful day! Kids were good, and we got a lot of family time.

Happy Birthday Jesus!!!

Not traveling yet... but

It's been a long time since I posted my last post. We been busy, and holidays coming, and many, many other things had been going on, and I was not in the mood of posting.

Updates on our adoption. We been submitted in November, but SDA was not giving out travel/invitation for the last two month, so we been just waiting. Last week we found out the SDA had reopen, and functioning as usual so from our facilitator words, we should expect to get our official invitation next week.

We are praying for Gods perfect timing for everything. I will post more if I have time, also will try to post some pictures.

God Bless you

Not submitted

We didn't'  go through submission process, choose to be on the safe side, and did rescheduled our submission date for November 23. Will try to write a post on this. Been very long day, and it's time to go to bed.

Dossier in Kiev..

I just wanted to let everyone know that our dossier made it save to Kiev. Praise our God. Thank you everyone for your prayers. Its a long story, and  we were  sure that we will miss this submission day, but....

We took our envelope to FedEx on November 1st, around 4:30 pm, and they had their pick up for a day already. So they said that our envelope will leave their office on Wednesday, at 4 pm. When I check our tracking # on Thursday morning, November 3rd,  system couldn't find anything for our tracking #.
 Sergey had to call FedEx office to see what is going on. Lady at the FedEx office said, that they had some issues with pick up, and our package was still at the office. My heart dropped, I knew that there is no way that our envelope will make it before our submission.Actually our envelope left local office November 3rd evening, and did 3 stops in US before leaving to Ukraine. Also Fedex promised that our envelope will be there on November 10th, and it's after our submission day. But God is amazing God, and it took less then 2 business days for our envelope to make it to Ukraine, and be delivered to our facilitator!!!!


*** We are getting closer and we already preparing for our trip. Little by little we are getting warm cloth for everyone, and stuff that we will take with us. I am getting more nervous and cant' wait for everything to be over, and have our child/ren home with us.

Dossier on the way to Ukraine!

Yesterday we mailed our dossier to Ukraine, and if everything will go smooth we will have our submission date next week. We are very excited and ready to go to Ukraine to find our child/ren. But we put all our paperwork, time and everything into our Father's hands. Please pray with us for next week submission date, and for our paperwork get to Ukraine on time.


Thank you

God Bless you

We are alive :)

We are still home, and praying that by this submission date we will have our I171H.
We had our fingerprints scheduled on October 20, but we went to our local office and they took us in and we were able do our fingerprints on October 11.

Once our paperwork got to USCIS it seem like everyone who had to do anything with our paperwork had to take vacation at the same time :)) First it was our case officer, she took her vacation two times while reviewing our paperwork :) On the 14th of this month we finally were approved by our case officer, and our paperwork went to Supervisor, for another approval by him. And we found out he was on vacation all last week, and came back just today:) So we are waiting again and praying that he will have our paperwork out of his office today, or tomorrow.

I just know God has a plan, and now when girls that we liked to adopt are adopted and have a family, God does have a different plan for our family.

Looks like we will have to spend Christmas and New Year in Ukraine. It should be fun ! Last time I spend New Year in Ukraine , was  13 year ago.