It's raining flower petals

She looks way better today, but you can still see the fatigue in her eyes.

I want to thank everyone who has sent us notes of encouragement as we are hitting a wall of sorts. Life here is fine, but our problem affects all parents. We miss our boys. Big time. We are able to get out and Skype with them, which helps. But it is a poor substitute for the pitter patter of little feet running into your bed in the morning. I guess this is God's way of telling us that Sophia is giving up a connection as well. A phone call is not going to be the same as a weekly visit from her father. We will love her and help her as best we can through this change.


This morning Sophia was meeting with another relative, distant aunt or something. We have to believe and go with it as I can't go up and ask her. We wanted to do hair things today, but we brought a backup just in case. We found these really cool keychain kits with flowers and beads. We did these today and all three, Sophia, Anya, and Luda finished them. I even finished mine. The girls were talking with some of the other children who will not be going on the hosting trip about their departure date.  There is a tree right outside the dorm that is in full bloom with thousands of little whitish/greenish flowers.  The bees love this tree and you can hear them buzzing around.  Well as the bees are jumping from flower to flower, they knock some of the petals off and make it rain flower petals.  It's kind of like a wedding ceremony of sorts as we join with our daughter...maybe I'm reaching, but it's pretty cool to watch.

Working on the keychains

Observation on Simferopol. Each day we must see close to a couple dozen pregnant women. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the short skirts, low cut dresses and shirts, really high heels, and in some cases very sheer skirts and tops. Coincidence? I think not! But I can tell you this daddy (and I know Bryan Shumaker will agree) will have none of this.

We got an update that we were none too pleased with yesterday in regards to our court date.  There is a very slim chance, and I do mean slim, chance court could happen this week.  The judge, singular, is away on a business trip and will return on Wednesday.  Even with court potentially happening this week, it means we can’t get Sophia out of the orphanage until around August 31^st.  There is an eleven day waiting period to allow for appeals after the court hearing.  The ruling does not become final until the eleventh day.  Also, if the final day of the waiting period occurs on a weekend, by law they have to allow for one final working day to appeal.  Thus if the waiting period falls on either a Saturday or Sunday, then the ruling would not take effect until Tuesday.  There!  That should be clear as the Mississippi in spring time.  I say all this to better prepare families who want to adopt their host child or a child from Crimea.  It takes time.  Prepare for it both from a cost structure and support structure viewpoint.  Oh wait, it gets better.  Once you have picked up the child on “Gotcha Day”, they only process passports on Tuesday here in Simferopol.  So we would run around getting a new birth certificate (pray it’s done right the first time), a new social security card (again, more prayer needed here) and then we head over to file for a new passport…all most likely on the Tuesday so we don’t have to wait until next Tuesday just to apply.  Even if we hit all our marks and get the application in on the first Tuesday, we cannot pick it up until the following Tuesday.  The coming home process has to be done in succession.  Meaning we can’t be working on items simultaneously.  We need the new docs and new passport in order to apply to the US Embassy for a visa.  The silver lining is Sophia will be with us and we can start figuring out this new family life.  This last aspect will be totally surrounded by love and prayer.  It’s the only way I (we) know how to make it work.  Total time in country for adoptions from Lozovoye will be 6 weeks.  I would plan for 7.

Again, as we have said it over and over and over, living in Simferopol is easy.  The hard part for us, at least, is we have three beautiful boys that we miss a bunch, or to use their descriptors, infinity plus a million.  Thankfully we are not the first, and I pray not the last, family to go through this.  We are being blessed by the trailblazers before us with connections to local friends and missionaries.  I truly understand the meaning of fellowship now.  I always thought it was a fancy Baptist word for dinner.  The local connections make life a LOT easier here.