Today Made It All Worthwhile

Rocky….

Well, as you all know, we have gone through a lot to make it to this day….today made it all worthwhile.

After a very extensive procedure (150 pages of documents and the judge read every one of them - AND they were also translated verbally to us) we were proclaimed as the parents of Roman and Natalia. The children now have a family…they now have parents who will love and care for them. It was a very touching moment for everyone there.  A total of 8 people were overseeing the proceedings. They were all very nice to us…the judge, court reporter (no court reporting here, she just used a recording device on the computer), prosecutor, the attorney for the orphanage, assessors, etc.

Our children are grown and gone from our house…. It’s strange to feel once again that I need to be a responsible parent:). I will try to avoid the small mistakes I made the first time around.  My children are really great kids, but anyone who already has grown children can relate to tweaking it a bit.

So now we have to wait the obligatory 10 business day waiting period. We are flying to Munich tomorrow and home on Wednesday.  I will be coming back at the end of January to bring the kids home. We are so thankful to God for bringing these children into our lives, and to all the people who worked so hard for us to make this happen…New Horizons for Children (for the orphan hosting program), Tonya Boggs (our facilitator in US), Nastya (our facilitator in Ukraine) and Alla who was here working with us these last few weeks. What a great group of people to have on our side.

We have been truly touched during our visit here in Ukraine. The children here at the orphanage are all so precious, and the people we have met in Ukraine have been so good to us.

I wish I could take them all back with me to the US and let them enjoy the life we have. Ukraine is making progress since obtaining its independence, but it has a long way to go. It is not an easy place to live…when the judge asked the children if they wanted to be adopted, Roman said, “Yes, yes, what we had in America was 100 times better than anything we have here in Ukraine.” I was a little embarrassed, because everyone knew it was true. We really have it made in the US and we don’t even know it…. I will try to remember this every day, and be thankful for what we have…and I will try to raise these children to appreciate that fact. I feel so blessed that it makes me want to cry…really… I am getting tears in my eyes just typing this. We are all so blessed and we tend to focus on the unimportant, trivial things in life. I have to try and change that…. I once heard that if you think of what you HAVE in life, instead of what you DON’T HAVE, your life will change….I truly believe that. I’m going to sleep tonight feeling so blessed.