Gotcha Day for Grace!

We're HOME! More about that later, but first, catch up time!

Gotcha day was Sunday, and I wanted to post about it in a little more detail.

Sunday morning, we slept in some, and then finished packing. Vanya, our most awesome facilitator, got there 11 something and we loaded up. Then headed over to the orphanage to pick up our princess!

The nannies all gathered around to watch her get dressed in HER new clothes which was done by her favorite nanny, Tanya.

Of course we had to have the tights and turtleneck, but it was warm enough the nannies decided she didn't need the snow pants. :) And she kept her flower on! It stayed on for about 2 hours surprisingly and hasn't stayed on since... I think the nanny talked her into wearing it and then she forgot about it. lol

Grace and Tanya, her favorite nanny. Tanya is the one who came with us to get her passport pictures taken too. Since Grace did so well when we went to get that done, we joked with Tanya about her coming back to the US with us so Grace was happy all the time. :)

Not only did Grace love Tanya, the feeling was mutual. Tanya obviously cared about her and loved her. We are thankful that she had at least two nannies who loved her before we could get there to do so!

 Where she slept the past years...

One of the nannies having her say goodbye to her grouppa. Watching her say goodbye and saying goodbye ourselves was the most emotional part of the day (and the trip!) for mom and I. We got to play with almost all of them, love on them, and get to know them. Saying goodbye and leaving them behind knowing they didn't have families was gut wrenching and heartbreaking.

Walking away from that orphanage forever and ever! Tanya walked out with us... and the sun was in a really bad spot for pictures! 

 Saying goodbye to Tanya, and in Mama's arms forever! 

Getting buckled in, and the start of our 7 hour car ride! And going over the Kherson/Tsyurupinsk bridge for the last time. (We stayed in Kherson, the orphanage was in Tsyurupinsk.)

Grace did great for the most part on the long car ride! She only got upset when she had to go potty and didn't want to in her diaper.

We went out to eat once we got to Kiev, and Grace had vardnicki for her first after Gotcha day meal. :) Then we watched some Masha and the Bear in the apartment before bed, she laughed hysterically when mama changed her into her jammies!

Grace Olena, formerly just another of the 147 million, just another statistic. Now a daughter, a sister, cared for, adored and loved.

SHE IS FREE!!

Just a quick update for those who haven't heard on Facebook.... we busted Grace OUT of that stinkin' institution yesterday morning!

Yesterday afternoon we drove up to Kyiv. Grace did great on the trip for the most part!

This morning we did the first of two embassy appointments for her visa and went to get her medical done. Tomorrow we pic up her visa, and Wednesday we fly HOME!

Longer update and more detailed update tomorrow... right now we are both going to bed! :) Thank you for your prayers! Grace is doing well, but keep them coming please!

Christmas Day!

Maybe I'm the first one to post about Christmas Day?!?  :-)  But, you'll never guess!  We have tickets booked to arrive home ON Christmas Day!  WOOHOOO!!! I never thought it possible, but God has done it.

We got Grace's passport picked up and stamped late on Friday afternoon after a bit of running around in a taxi and taking the tram/trolley bus home (fun and cheap).  Our best information right now says that the hospital in Kyiv is still out of the TB skin test serum (shortage exists in the US too). That shortage shaves a couple of days off our time in Kyiv.  We should just have 2 days doing her medical and visa paperwork, and "should" be able to fly out on Wednesday - Lord willing!!!

Unfortunately, the schedule to fly from Chicago to Appleton is greatly reduced on Christmas Day...go figure. We would have had a 6 hour layover there. I think it would have about killed me to sit there for 6 hours when it is only a 3 hour drive. So, I think we will take a bus to the Milwaukee airport and my dearest husband will come pick us up!  This route is exactly what we did when bringing Elijah home. The big difference is we sat in Chicago for hours waiting for our "delayed' flight, which was eventually cancelled.  (Yes, I cried more than once.) This time it will be planned - well, as much as you can plan international travel in winter on a holiday.

So, we won't have a big airport "homecoming" which is fine.  I don't think too many people would have come on Christmas anyhow. :-)  Hey, one out of three adoptions isn't bad! 

Tomorrow, Sunday, will be GOTCHA DAY!!! Right now, Grace is sleeping for the last time in that ol' institution. She doesn't even know her life is about to flip upside down!  We know it is for the better - it just may take awhile for her to realize that. 

We would appreciate your continued prayers for safe travel and Grace's transition to a new life! Thank you so much!

Paper chasing and Passport Pictures!

Jill here...

Let's see...it is Thursday, I think. This week has been a blur, but VERY productive!  We have accomplished eveything we needed to - court decree, new birth certificate, closed two banks accounts, papers signed by Vanya (our facilitator) for Grace to leave the orphanage, de-registration of her living at the institution and more that escapes me at the moment. So, we are just waiting on her passport!!!  It may still come tomorrow (Vanya can't get ahold of the guy) or it may come on Monday. Either way, "Gotcha Day" will be on Sunday!  WOOOHOOO!!!  We will then drive up to Kyiv and do 2 days of Embassy visa processing and then....HOME!!!   But I sure do wish we could "teleport" home.  LOL

I was a little concerned how Grace would do when we took her to get her passport picture taken. She cries when she goes to a different part of the orphanage she is not familiar with. It was about a half hour car ride, and she did great!!!  I asked Vanya to have one of her favorite nannies come along. She agreed and someone else agreed to stay late to cover her position with the other kids. They have been so nice to us.  Grace giggled the whole time they were getting her dressed and walked out that door like she owned the world! She loved the car ride too...I should have known my little sensory seeker would love the bumps and sways of the Ukrainian roads. She giggled away! 

We had a nice visit today with Grace, and Sarah and Grace are getting to know each other.  :-)  

On the way to get her passport picture taken

Pretty in pink!!! Her hat was made by her big sister, Sarah, of course! (Waiting at the office to get her photo taken.)

Sarah and Grace hangin' out

Getting early speech therapy and she doesn't even know it. :-)

I'm trying to get her used to playing on the iPad for the trip home.

As Vanya was leaving the orphanage for the last time, Grace's other favorite nanny, Tanya, was walking in. She asked if we would be willing to buy an artificial Christmas tree for the grouppa for them to remember Grace by.  We were more than happy to get one!  After our visit today, we went to the market and bought one and all the trimmings to go with it! So fun!!  Sarah carried it back to the orphanage for me. :-) The nannies were SOOOO happy!  Tanya gave us both hugs and kisses!  The kids were sitting at the table waiting for their food and were wondering what the fuss was about. LOL I am anxious to see it all decorated tomorrow.

Ahhh, the birth cetificate...So very important!!  The orphanage lawyer had it so we picked it up today along with the deregistration slip. 

I'm so thankful to the Lord everything went so well this week. We are almost there!  Thanks to everyone who has supported us and prayed for us!  A big thank you to Lisa O for holding down the fort at home for me while Pat is working!  We couldn't have done this without you!

We're back!

Sarah here!

Well the 10 day wait is over and we are back in Ukraine! Mom and I that is.

Our flights were long of course, but okay. We were delayed 2 hours on our first flight, but we made the one out of Chicago because that one was an 1 hr late. We made up time in the air and made it to our gate in Germany with literally a few minutes to spare. Then on to Ukraine! Our MAF (most awesome facilitator) met us at the airport and we stayed with his and his beautiful wife last night (it's mid-morning Monday here).

Waiting in Chicago

eMy mom's update last night:
We arrived safely in Donetsk with no issues! Thank you Lord. As soon as we got our boarding passes at the gate in Munich, it was time to board. Whew! We slept most of the way to Donetsk. Our MAF picked us up at the airport and brought us to his apt. We all had a wonderful meal (borsch and a yummy Paleo friendly casserole) made MAF's wife. We have all the amenities of home, including super fast internet. Oh wait, we dont have fast internet at home.  But we are in good hands. Plan is to get some medical stuff done tomorrow morning to prove Sarah doesn't have TB so she can visit the orphanage. Then we'll head off to Grace's city to get the court decree, new birth certificate, tax id number, and then apply for her passport! Once we have the passport in hand, we'll head up to Kyiv.

Anyway, that is the plan. Thanks so much for praying us here. God is so faithful!

One last thing..has anyone ever had "pomelo"? Our MAF just brought some home from the grocery store. It is a very large citrus fruit, kind of like grapefruit but much sweeter and not as juicy. Very yummy!!! Wondering if anyone has seen them in the States? Here's a photo of it. 

Happy Sunday!

++++++++++++

This morning, we went to go get a chest x-ray done to prove I don't have TB and can visit the orphanage (I don't!), and then this afternoon, we drive down to region. Tomorrow we start the paper chase and I meet Grace!!! We'll continue visiting her this week while we wait for the passport. And gotcha day will sometime later this week, over the weekend, or Monday. That's when we will bust her out of that stinky orphanage forever and ever!

Then we head back up to Kiev, to do the embassy and medical appts for her. And then we will go home right after Christmas.


Here we come Grace!

ONE LESS ORPHAN!!!

There is one less orphan today!!!!!  Our God Reigns!

Introducing...

Grace Olena (o-LAY-na) Birschbach

Born in Kherson, Ukraine on March 4, 2005

Forever in a Family on December 5, 2013

Our court hearing went amazingly, AMAZINGLY well today!  Only God!  The judge did not ask any questions, nor did the jurors or prosecutor.  The quickest court case ever according to our facilitator!! Only God could have done this. He gets ALL THE GLORY!  We are SOO very thankful to the Lord for blessing us with our 8th child!  We are also very grateful for everyone who has prayed for us, supported us, encouraged us, given financially to us, and especially for those that have been holding down the fort at home for the past 4 weeks.  THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH!!!  Everyone had a part and we couldn't have done this without you.

Here's are a few more pictures from the day we first met Grace.

So, tonight, Pat and I will take an overnight train to Kyiv.  Unfortunately, the train gets in too late to make the early morning flights out, so we'll spend the day in Kyiv and fly out early Saturday morning, arriving home mid-afternoon - Lord willing. Then, on the 14th, Sarah and I will head back to Ukraine and start the next paper chase for her birth certificate, passport, medical and visa.  It will probably take about 2 weeks. So, yes, I will get to spend Christmas in Ukraine once again! :-)  (I spent Christmas 2010 in Ukraine when adopting Elijah.)  Rumor has the medical facility is still out of  the serum for the TB skin test, so that may save us a few days if that stays status quo.  The goal is to be out of the country before the BIG Ukrainian holiday of New Years.

Thank you everyone for all that you have done for us and our family. I can't wait to have all of us together under one roof! Love to you all!

Catching Up

Well, wow!  Sorry for the long lack of updates! It's been just a week since we met Grace, and in some respects, it seems much, much longer. What a week it's been!

Our visits with Grace have been going pretty well. We've seen some behaviors we expected to see adopting an older child, but that is ok. We still love her all the same! I've seen her interact with other children and she is very gentle with them for the most part...unless she wants to be on the swing at the same time and then there may be a bit of a shove...totally normal. :-)

On Tuesday, we had the extreme pleasure of being able to visit with Elijah's biological family. It is always such a blessing and honor to be with them. Mama Tanya spoiled us with so many gifts. We are so grateful for Elijah to have this relationship with them (through us). I grieve that Jonathan and Grace will not have that with their birth families, but that is just the way it usually is over here. So, thank you Mama Tanya for making the huge effort you did to come and see us and for all of the beautiful gifts you brought for us and the children.

We have court date! Woohoo!!!  God did the miraculous and our MAF (most awesome facilitator) was able to get all of our paperwork gathered to submit to the SDA on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the SDA now takes 2 weeks to process their consent that we need for court. (It used to only take one week.) So, court will not be quite as soon as we had hoped, but there is still a fairly strong glimmer of hope we can be outta here by the end of the year and the New Year's shutdowns.  We were so thankful the orphanage director and Social Services were so easy work with in getting our paperwork gathered in just a couple of days.

Let's see what else..right now I'm not actually not "home" but in Krivoy Rog visiting Max!  Check out his website at http://truehopeukraine.com.  I know I've blogged about him several times. He really is the "real deal" and his ministry is making the difference in the lives of 1000s of children, teens and adults.  He said right now is a very stressful time as the nights are getting colder and the kids from the streets need a warm place to sleep. Hmmm...what was the last thing you worried about? After this weekend, I hope to do a single post about Max and his ministry and ways you can help.

Early Wednesday morning, Pat and our MAF traveled up to Kyiv to return our rental car and submit the documents. Yes, every adoption brings something new for us and this time it was a rental car! And yes, Pat did drive in Kyiv!!  Are you impressed? You should be! LOL  It is no easy feat, but he did great!  Our MAF did most of the driving though and it was indispensible in going back forth between the city she is living in and the city she was born.  Anyway, we decided it would be best if Pat went home to be with the kids for Thanksgiving, so he totally surprised them on Thursday afternoon!  They were shocked!!! How fun!  :-)

So, I'd appreciate the prayers as I go it alone for a couple of weeks. I feel very safe and with only one visit per day, I'm home several hours before dark. I'm not concerned at all, but a little extra prayer support doesn't hurt.

This week, I'm looking forward to meeting up with a Canadian missionary family - you know, that speak English. :-)

I'm so very, very thankful for our caregivers at home. Even with Pat home, we will still need help during the day for school and what not. We could NOT have done this without you! Thank you so very much to the O and G families!!!

Thank you everyone for your prayers, love, support and encouragement. We deeply appreciate it!

THIS IS THE DAY...

That was the song in my mind as soon as I woke up at 3am.  "This is the day - This is the day that the Lord has made!"

We started the day very early with a shower and my new blow dryer. (So happy to have one now! This would be the 3rd one I've bought in Ukraine by the way. :-)) We left Kyiv about 4am with our MAF (most awesome facilitator) and headed south.  After experiencing all we could experience on Ukrainian roads (pot holes, chickens, pot holes, cows, pot holes, trucks, pot holes), we arrived at the social workers office around 11:15.  (SW office is always the first stop in region.)  She hardly asked us a single question.  SOOO very different than when we were in Simferopol adopting Elijah - she grilled us.  It really does help tremendously to already have adopted a child with Ds.

Anyway, next stop - the orphanage!!!

We met with the director first and talked quite awhile. She was very nice and cordial. I was also very impressed with the cleanliness and "niceness" of the orphanage. It was very obvious that director cares deeply for her children as she greeted each one by name as we walked around later. She showed us picture updates from other families that had adopted from this same place. We assured her we were more than happy to send her updates about Grace.  We showed the director and all of the other "legal" people there our photo album. One of them noticed Elijah looked a little like Grace. I would have to agree.  It is probably just a Ds thing, but some of their mannerisms are the same.

Then it was time to meet Grace! We heard her before we saw her. :-(  An unfamiliar caregiver brought her downstairs to the office, which she was also unfamiliar with, and she was scared and crying. She had a toy that she threw on the ground when they tried to comfort her with it. (I've seen that before!) The director said she had never seen her cry before as she is usually very happy. So, they took her back upstairs and let her settle down a bit. We talked more with the director about her history. She has no known health issues beside Ds. As is pretty typical, she was abandoned at birth and her parents terminated rights then. :-(  She will go potty when she sits and sometimes asks to go. Yay! (She'll be wearing diapers/pull-ups on the way home I can assure you.) She also feeds herself and doesn't need her food pureed, just maybe the bread softened a bit. That is great news as well!

After awhile, the director called up to see if she was calm and we went up to meet her! She was calmed down and ready and eager to play in what looked like the PT room.  Grace's main caregiver was very proud to show off all that she knew and could do.  She was able to point to her ears, nose, eyes and even did nose on the puppy we brought. She waved hi for the camera and we got a few good smiles and giggles out of her. She's very ticklish too. :-)  She responded and turned to her name being called too - a great sign! I think she will learn to sign very quickly.  The nanny knows she understands everything said to her, she just can't speak in return.

They told us how she is very active and likes to get into trouble. LOL We've dealt with that! We saw a little taste of this.  In the room we were in, they have a long, wide, flat swing mounted. Several times she took a flying leap on it and went swinging.  My little sensory seeker!  We'll see how well Elijah and Jonathan have prepared us for her. :-)

She was receptive to me holding her after awhile. She is tiny, but I think she is taller than Rachel. She has lost her 2 front teeth too. Very cute!

Our visit ended all too quickly, but we'll go back Sat and Sunday AM.  We ran around all afternoon doing paperwork, including a visit to the notary (like a lawyer here) and lunch finally at 2:15 while waiting on the notary.  Our MAF got the bus route figured out for us, so we can return our car once we are done filing the paperwork early next week.

Sorry for no pictures though!  I know, I know.  But I've said from the beginning that we would not be posting pics of "who" we are adopting until sometime after court. Sorry...Thanks for understanding. Thanks for all your love and support!  We appreciate it!

All is Well!

Praising God!!!  Everything went well today at our appointment. Grace is available for adoption. Good to know! :)  We saw her baby photo.  Too cute! :)

We went sovenuir shopping afterwards.  You know you've been to Ukraine too many times when you have your favorite souvenuir guy to buy from! LOL (Rochelle, we went to see Alex again!)

I'll try to post photos later.  I had to take a pic of my first (of many) bowl of borsch.

We'll travel to Grace's region Thurs night/Fri early AM. Train tickets are not looking too promising, so we may have our facilitator drive down. I can't say as I'm too heartbroken about not taking the train. We'll see how it goes!

Thanks again for all your love, support and comments.  We deeply appreciate it!

We're Here!

After a big delay in Appleton due to weather in Chicago, we made to our flight for Munich just fine. In fact that flight was 3 hours late leaving. But we had a 3 hr layover in Munich, so we made it fine to Kiev. (The airlines pad their arrival times, so we still had an hour to spare...)  Anyway, we slept a fair amount on the plane, made it through customs very easily, and went out for borsch for supper. Yay!!! LOVE borsch!  Pat, not so much...

So, tomorrow, we have our appt to see Grace's file and start the process to get her referral. Please pray everything goes very, very smootlhy with the appointment. In Ukraine, we do not have a "hold" on a child until the referral is in our hands.  Lord willing, we will pick up her referral Thursday afternoon and get on a train Thursday night.  Friday will be THE DAY we met here!!

I'll update when I can.  Thank you to everyone for your love and support to get us this far!