The day has finally come...

So after nearly 8 months we have finally made it to Kiev, Ukraine! The flights were seamless. We left Boston Logan International Airport on Monday April 10th at 4:55pm and arrived in Amsterdam, Netherlands 5:55 am. We unfortunately did not sleep on this leg at all. I think were both too excited to sleep, but by the time we made it to Amsterdam we paid the price with exhaustion. Aimlessly wandering the airport we found this quiet little nook with about 40 reclining chaise lounges. The lights were dim and we could hear people quietly snoring in several different languages. We found two unoccupied chairs, kicked off our shoes and crashed for 1 whole hour. When we woke, we both were fighting headaches and that overall blah feeling you feel you get when you haven't slept through the night since August. After the most refreshing orange juice, coffee, yogurt and croissant, we made our way to our gate. Along with one hundred other passengers we were placed in a glass terrarium until we boarded our flight. Shortly after take off before we could put our seats in the 2" recline mode, we were out like a light. We slept through the entire 2 hour 45 minute flight to Kiev missing the drink & breakfast service offered on the flight.

In Kiev, we made it through customs despite the ugly look on the woman's face that checked us in. We gathered our luggage and went through an additional screening process before meeting up with Svetlana and Maria our facilitators.  The drive to our apartment took us about 40 minutes. It was very interesting to see the country for the first time. Lots of high rise apartments along the drive. Maria told us that the population in Ukraine is about 48% low income and 48% high income families with about 4% of the population in the middle class range. She said in Ukraine you are rich or you are poor. We drove through areas of Kiev that were clearly neighborhoods of both wealth and poverty. When we arrived in downtown Kiev it reminded me of Commonwealth Ave in Boston. Cobblestone roads with brownstone looking homes and a section running up the middle of the road with park benches, grass and trees. Beautiful golden dome churches and pastel color apartment buildings and hotels up and down the road. The ground floor of these buildings were occupied by all sorts of shops and cafes. In a country with so much poverty it was surprising to see shops labeled Versace, Tommy Hilfiger, Rolex, etc.  A few streets later we arrived at our apartment. Our van driver didn't bother to look for a spot to park, right up on the sidewalk he went. We made it!

Leap of Faith

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine according to His power at work within us, to Him be the glory. - Ephesians 3:20

This bible verse became our family verse in September 2011. A month earlier the Lord put into our hearts the desire to adopt a sibling group of five children from the Ukraine. Since then our lives and our faith have never been the same.

For months I have been urged by friends to start a blog about our journey through infertility to this amazing journey we call adoption. So here I am on the coldest day of 2012, snuggled on the sofa, trying to figure out how all this blog stuff works. Not sure how far I should go back, but I think picking up in August of 2011 would be a good start.

My husband Brian and I had concentrated our efforts into having a child through embryo adoption. We were on our final days of completing our domestic home study and an email came through on my smart phone that would change EVERYTHING!

About a year earlier we had turned down the option of international adoption. We felt as though we didn't have enough money, or enough time to travel, and we were possibly too old to pursue an adoption from a foreign country. Despite our efforts to write our own story, God had different plans for us.

We continued to receive emails from Christian adoption agencies telling us about children waiting for their forever families in other countries. Never did we think, "oh this might be the child for us," because we had already said no to international adoption. We would just receive the emails so we could pray for the children. In August we received such an email that explained that this sibling group of five were praying for a family to adopt them all so they could be together again.

We couldn't get the five of them off our minds. They were deeply embedded into our hearts and we felt as if these were our children. Taking a massive leap of faith, we pursued an adoption for them and prayed that God's will be done. Having no idea what it would take, we had complete peace that if this is God's will He will open doors or close doors as He sees fit. For the next several months the doors have been open, wide open.

We continue to pray that God will work in a mighty way to bring our children home.