Gotcha Day

Just in case you missed Josh's comment on the last blog....WE GOT 'EM!!!!! The two new rats are sleeping in the room right next to me and I swear life just keeps getting better for our
family. This road has been long, but today was worth every drop of pain and agony of the last 21 months. Just a little insight here......

First off, many of you know the various delays and false starts we experienced during the process. We nearly had a referral last summer, but the facilitator couldn't make it happen in Kiev. Something about a bad rain storm that scared everybody away - including him obviously. We stuck by this first facilitator for another six months or so until he failed us yet again. We then switched to Yuri Safonov - sort of a God-send if you ask us.

Don't ever mistake what this whole adoption business acutally is - you guessed it...strictly business. Only the most persistent of facilitators get the referrals and only those good facilitators have the contacts to make the adoptions happen without fanfare. Of course, those same facilitators demand the highest fees and get them solely because they produce. We actually believe Yuri to be one of the good ones who can balance the cut-throat world of adoption with making sure the right kids are placed with the right parents. Thanks be to God for bringing him into our lives.

That said, I want you all to know that God had his hand in this right from the beginning. One of the children we just adopted today was all of nine months old and still with his mom when we started down this road. Heck, these two weren't even in the orphanage until June of last year. To top it all off, they weren't eligible for international adoption until a scant one week before we met them. AND, there was a Spanish couple who met them just before we did but couldn't pull off bringing two children home. They fell in love with the boys, couldn't take them both nor could they split them. We also hear rumblings there was a couple just hours behind us who were devastated when they found out the boys were already referred to us. You can see just how small this window was that God opened for us.

I guess that all set the stage for today. We arrived back in court at 10AM seemingly only a few hours after leaving yesterday afternoon. Court went reasonably well - just a little longer than expected. The judge appeared to be grilling us; we later found out he was so fascinated with our international background and overall life experiences. He just wanted to talk to us for a nice long while. Kristina managed to win him and all the ladies in the room with one very key statement. She was asked how she would provide for five men in the home without a daughter to help her with the house work. She smartly but politely replied that she was merely training our boys
on how to be the best future husbands possible. There were no-kidding gasps quickly followed by smiles of adoration from all the Ukranaian ladies. They then quickly turned a very smarmy eye to the judge who sheepishly and IMMEDIATELY changed his line of questioning. The only thing about me that he found quaint was that someone who had been in the military for this long did not have a big belly to only sit behind a desk telling people what to do. I told him to just give me couple of years and that would be the case.

Anyway, court ended and we went home to finish a little more shopping. We then picked up our translator and headed to the orphanage to complete the transfer and "take delivery" of our precious cargo. We packed up some new clothes for the boys and sure enough, the ladies at the orphanage watched us strip our new kids to their birthday suits (sorta apropos). The ladies promptly hauled away their old clothes while we clad them in true Douberly-wear....track suits. They may be comfortable now, but little do our children know of the miles ahead of them on the treadmill, bicycle, and elliptical in those very track suits. We then gave the boys' classmates a whole heap of fruit and fruit juice in lieu of the traditional cake (too sweet for this orphanage apparently) and we left for our apartment.

The night has flown by so much more rapidly than our other evenings here in Ukraine. We cooked dinner, cleaned up, took baths, sacked the quarterback, drank some beer, and looked at the pretty girls walk by. All in a night's work for a Douberly if I may say so myself. They performed all their new tasks with utter distinction and will be certain to attain "man" status in record time. Alexander Yarik does seem to have an aversion to the shower and brushing his teeth - pesky personal hygeine. Andrew Nikolai exceeded all expectations and is well on his way to achieving "kid of the month" in some social circle somewhere.

If you are still reading at this point, God bless your soul. I could ramble on for hours like this, but I will spare you all until tomorrow. The only thing I do want to share is that an irrepressible feeling that has been lifted off my shoulder. Every Ukrainian woman with a scowl seemed to be the lady who would simply swoop in right before court and take the boys from our grasp with a claim to motherhood. Gone are those pressures and now I can get back to the serious business of cutting the fool with my four urchins.

Thanks for staying with us on this magnificent ride so far....more to come later.