Since the change in direction in our 2nd adoption, (switching to Russia from Ukraine) I thought it made more sense to start a new blog. The link is http://daleyadoption2.blogspot.com/ .

We are coming up on our 3rd gotcha day celebration soon. C is turning 5 years old this month. It is hard to believe. He is doing so great and is such a sweetheart. I was looking at how much he has changed since meeting him in the orphanage and i wanted to post some pictures.

The orphanage days....We had a corner on the "cooka" ie. cookie market.

Proud boy with his T-ball trophy.

Wow, pretty cool spraying the fire hose.

About 6 weeks ago we switched countries from Ukraine to Russia. It was a heart wrenching decision but one that we are at peace with. Of course, the day after making the decision, we get a call from our facilitator in Ukraine that we had a submission date (finally). I knew that was going to happen. I had to remind myself why we made the decision. Hopefully, it will be the right decision in the end.

Our reasons: We really want a girl and Russia program gives you a referral that meets your requirements before travel. The second reason is the age of available children. We feel strongly that our son will do better with a younger sibling based on his personality. He is still only 4 years old. Younger children can be hard to come by in Ukraine. Also, at this time we only want to adopt 1 child to complete our family. It seems like a lot of families going to Ukraine end up with larger sibling sets. That is not right for us at this time.

The other big factor that played into our decision were families coming home without children. So sad and so unnecessary.

We had a hard process in Ukraine adopting Connor. But - the outcome was wonderful. We have the perfect child for our family. It is the ending that matters. I hope and pray that those searching for their forever families find them wherever they may be.

We have been in process a year already. That is the hard part. Hopefully this second leg of the journey will be shorter. I plan on starting a new blog to cronicle our new adventure.

Christine

The Easter Bunny came inside this year because the weather was wet and snowy. When I asked Connor how the Easter Bunny got in the house he said "Maybe he came down the chimney".

Dah, that's how Santa gets in! I should have known!

Another month has gone by. We are still waiting to hear when our submission date will be. Our dossier has been in Ukraine for 3.5 months. It seems longer. I think time has gone slowly because of the gray winter skies.

It looks like we will be spending the summer here. Hopefully we will be in Ukraine this fall (fingers crossed).

We were watching the superbowl and Eli Manning went and sat down when it was time for defense. Connor said "Why is he going to his time out chair?"

How boring is a blog without pictures? So I am posting a few pictures. These are older ones. I'll post newer ones soon.

This one is from September 2005 - our fist meeting. He had us at privyet!

Here he is home about 6 months (about 2.5 yrs. old).

Third birthday party- his first at home. Sponge Bob showed up!

It's hard to believe it is 2008 already. We sent our dossier over to Ukraine November 18th. So now we are just waiting. A few things have changed with how the dossiers or submitted. There used to be a line outside the SDA (adoption center). Now they are assigning dates to families to submit dossiers. It is hard to guess when we will get to submit ours but it will probably be between May and July. At that point we would wait to get a travel date. Travel dates are around 2 - 3 months after the dossier is submitted. Soooo, the wait is not going to be short!

We have plenty to keep us busy in the meantime. Connor started playing soccer on Saturday mornings a couple weeks ago. He is having fun and it is the perfect winter thing to do to break up the gray days. We are also doing some home projects. What is it about the turn of the year that makes one want to organize and start new projects? We have also stepped up our fitness routines and are setting up a workout room in the basement. By the time we travel we should be down to our high school weights (ha ha).

We got our I 171H today!! That means I'll be gathering everything for the dossier in the next 2 weeks. It took 5 weeks and 2 days from the time the homestudy was sent. Not bad--it could have been much longer. I feel like everthing is an hurry up and wait endless cycle. Most of it is waiting......

Connor has his gotch day celebration on Monday, October 15. The grandparents are coming over for dinner. He has been with us 2 years. He has changed so much.