As promised...

Ok, for those of you who are getting ornery (Linda - lol), here is the long awaited status report.

The holidays here in Ukraine have delayed things a little more than we anticipated. Our plan was to come home after court during the 10 day waiting period. I was going back to work for a couple of weeks and Mark would take Maia to Canada. She was going to stay with Nana and Papa while we came back to get Matthew. It made sense for a couple of reasons. First, I really needed to be at work. My peers have been very gracious in covering for me - especially since I have not even been back for six months following Maia's adoption. One of my co-workers is on leave with health concerns and so staffing is tight. So, it is important to me to be respectful of my employer.
Second, traveling with a toddler is stressful. Because Maia is still developing that attachment and bonding with us, we didn't feel comfortable leaving her for five weeks. But, she loves her Nana and Papa. So, Mark and I felt that the best option would be for Maia to spend the time during our second trip with them. We would only have one child to travel with each trip.
However, things don't always work out the way we planned. As I mentioned above, Ukraine holidays have affected some of the adoption process. We are scheduled for court on July 7. The earliest that we could fly home would be July 9 (assuming we could even get plane tickets). We would have less than a week at home before flying back to Ukraine on July 16. Airfare is running about $2,000/person right now and I wouldn't make anywhere near that in the four days that I would be at home working. Plus, the exhaustion of so much travel in such a short time.
We considered so many different options... both of us going home and coming back, both of us going home and only one of us coming back, one of us going home with Maia and coming back while the other stayed here, one of us going home with Maia and not coming back while the other stayed to bring Matthew home. There were pros and cons with each. After much consideration and prayer, we decided that we would stay here together as a family and come home as family (with our new addition). I am not looking forward to traveling with two toddlers, but we will survive. As always, God's plan is perfect and He has a reason that things are working out this way instead of the way that we planned. I DO think it will be good for Maia that Matthew comes home with all of us together instead of us leaving her and then showing up with him a few weeks later. And it would have been very hard for me to leave him at the orphanage, knowing that he may not have understood that we were coming back.
So, that's where things are at. We will have court on July 7. On July 18, the court decree will come into effect and we will begin the paper chase to apply for/obtain Matthew's new birth certificate and passport. We anticipate that our Gotcha Day will be on July 20 and then we will head for Kyiv to complete the medical exam/Embassy visit to get Matthew's visa so that we can head home somewhere around July 23-25.
I'll share more about our little guy in the next day or two. After court on Thursday, you will get to see pics of him!!
I'm hoping tomorrow will be a nice day and maybe we can do a little exploring.
Oh, and just a "funny" side note... the books that I left here in the apartment on our last trip were on the shelf waiting for me. It's kind of nice because I didn't bring much reading material this time. Yep... God knew that we would be back here!