As you may know, our two children arrived in the U.S. on December 16th for one last hosting visit with us. I flew to Dallas to pick them up, and as soon as I saw them, I broke down in tears. Every month that they're away from us is so hard, and while it's not easy to bring them over and over again, it is so wonderful to have this time with them. We flew back to Utah on the 17th, and then, the next morning, we received our letter of approval from USCIS saying that we had met the requirements to adopt them! I had just spoken with Immigration on Friday, and they said that the case had been assigned to an officer (we had been waiting since October for that to happen). So it was an incredible surprise for that letter to come so quickly.

What this means: we now have all of the paperwork necessary to send to Ukraine. Due to the holidays (first Christmas here, then they celebrate Christmas two weeks later in Ukraine), they do not accept dossiers during this month. They will start accepting them around January 15th, which is perfect because it gives us enough time to mail them to our agency, have them looked over, then send them to Ukraine for translation. It should all be submitted about the time they start accepting them again. 

Next step: after the paperwork is submitted, we wait to hear from Ukraine that it was all accepted (that everything was done perfectly). Then if it is, we'll receive a court date of when we need to be in Ukraine for the first time. This will be where we receive our official referral for M. and A. Usually, it's a very small window of time before we have to travel, 2 weeks to a month. We'll get the process started there, and we'll also visit the kids in their orphanage. Then we'll return back to the U.S. and wait for the paperwork to be completed.

Once everything is done, we'll receive a second court date. This will also be a "short notice" trip. When we finish with court, they will officially be ours! The sad part is, where it used to be that we had a 10-day wait before we could travel home (while passports, visas, etc. were being finished), the law recently changed to a 30-day wait. So we will have to leave them there for one more month and travel home. After the wait, Anthony and I will fly back to Ukraine one final time and bring M. and A. home.

If all goes well, we hope to travel the first time in March (that may be ambitious, but it's possible), second in April, and the third in May. I'm hoping to have them home by May/June, but that will depend  a lot on our first court date and if we need to fix anything in our dossier.

Where we stand: we always knew that there was a chance of three trips, but it was one of those "worst case scenario" kind of things. It was in the back of my head but felt so unlikely. Now, it is a definite. Kind of like when we expected to host one time, and we're on our fourth visit. :) So where we were budgeting for two trips of $10,000-$14,000 and hoping it wouldn't be three, now we have for sure three trips, approximately $15,000-$21,000 total. We're grateful that at least now it seems like the end of the tunnel is around the bend! 

As always, if you're able to donate, we would be so appreciative. Time is growing short before we make our way out there, and any help we can receive would be wonderful. Thank you to those who have donated thus far and been there for us in person and through prayers!