Coming home!!

Bye Bye Orphanage #13! Free at last!


You should have seen us grinning in the taxi at the thought that she was OURS and we finally get to see her asleep for the first time in my arms! She is a great traveler by the way (so far anyway).


Isn't her passport cute???!!!!!

I think most of you have already figured out by John's blog that we are now the official parents of Ava Alina Grace Urban!! Maybe you are waiting for details. Of course I will provide details, I am a woman, arent' I?! As I type, we are on a train (I know, leave it to my husband to figure these things out), John is fast asleep, and a little girl is to my right WIDE awake looking at all the shadows and lights, and playing with her bare feet.

We nicknamed Viktor "Indiana Jones", ( he preferred "Artemovsk Jones") because of the way things came together today. At the end of the day, however, he gave all the glory to God, and said, "You know, you guys are blessed. It is only because of God we were able to accomplish this."

We started the day buying gifts for the orphanage workers, writing thank you notes, packing...."Just in case", he said. We developed tons of pictures to leave with the orphanage staff of our time with them, and pictures of each one holding Ava, also pictures of Xander and Evan who are now happily adopted into families (Hope you guys don't mind, I took them from your blog). You should have heard the ladies squeal when they saw Evan on the couch with 3 brothers and 1 sister, and saw Xander with STRAIGHT feet, in his first pair of shoes, now chubby!!

We had our court date at 1:00. Viktor had done alot of research on adoption laws in Ukraine, and was able to point her (the judge was a female) to a fairly recent law which allows certain situations to have the 10 day waiting period waived. He urged us to not get our hopes up, because this has never been done in this region before, and is very rarely done at all except in urgent medical situations, but he promised us he would give it a shot for us.

When he spoke with the judge, he also took some brochures from the Little Lighthouse (Thank you Kate!!) and the photos from DSAT (Thank you Molly!) to show her the resources available to us and the potential she will have. He reminded her too, that in the four years she has been at the orphanage she has never received one visit from her birth parents (except for the one a few weeks ago). The judge was absolutely amazed that there is a christian school for handicapped children, and she LOVED the photos of all the babies with Down Syndrome lined up on the couch for playgroup. She asked if she could keep the photos and the brochure. I believe a seed was planted in her mind today. Who knows how lives in Ukraine might be changed because of a couple of photos and brochures and photos that were left behind in Artemovsk, Ukraine.

Present was the judge, a prosecutor, the orphanage lawyer (our defense), and the inspector (social worker) from Juvenile Services. There were many questions asked, some we expected, and some we didn't. We expected, "Why would you want to adopt a handicapped child?" We didn't expect, "How will your other children feel about having a sibling with a disability?" "How can you financially support this child?" And "How will your church feel about this child?" In Ukraine most people have only one child, and if you're really wealthy maybe two. So we got a lot of wide-eyed stares when we said this would be our 5th child.

Viktor likes to remind us how totally helpless we are in Ukraine without him. He teased us about ordering Vodka instead of bottled water with our meals. He joked while we were signing paperwork that we had just signed for our Ukrainian citizenship. You get the idea, we never know when to take him seriously. So today when he told us the 10 day wait had been waived, I didn't know whether to punch him or hug him. He kept insisting that he wasn't joking, and he told us to go back to the orphanage QUICK, pack her up, and wave "Bye Bye" to all the workers so that we could hopefully make it to the passport office before they closed. If not, we would have to stay all weekend, plus Monday in that city (they are closed on Mondays) and wait until Tuesday to complete the paperwork. We didn't get the court decree and finish signing all the papers until around 4, then we had to rush to the orphanage to get her, grab a taxi and speed to Donetsk to get passport and birth certificate. Because he had been in contact with these offices, everything was ready to pick up and sign, and all just in the nick of time. The passport office stayed open late just for us, and then we made it to the train station within 5 minutes of departure. The cab driver called and said we had left the camera in the taxi, and he ran it back to us just as the train was taking off! That's how Viktor earned the name Indiana Jones!

I know there are so many of you who are praying for us, and I truly believe God's hand is upon us and he has answered, and gives us the delights of our hearts. We are ever so grateful.

Right now we are en route from Donetsk to Kiev where we will relax for the weekend. Monday morning we will take Ava for her medical exam and get her Visa, at which point we will be ready to come home. We miss our kids so much, and will be so glad to get us all together again. All SEVEN of us! I still can't believe I have 5 kids!

More updates soon from Kiev.....