January 2011
7 posts
Sumy city map →
Just a google map of the location of our apartment and the orphanage in Sumy city. click on the link to see it.
August 2010
4 posts
Vladimir Putin wrecked my day
Addendum to the blog
This post was written on May 17, 2010 but due to technical difficulty in Ukraine, didn’t get posted. Here it is.
Today we woke up to barricades and militia men surrounding our apartment. My mother said she guessed that there was some big wig staying in our building. By the time we left for the embassy no local traffic was being let through so we had to arrange an...
May 2010
29 posts
Many Thanks
We have many people to thank for supporting us while we have been away.
First to our companies, who were understanding when the length of our absence grew and grew. And in particular to Wendy’s FCT family who arranged for her to work from Ukraine and actually helped contribute to her sanity over this 100 day journey. Wendy also wants to thank Theresa for all the extra e-mail traffic she...
Meeting Kate- Adjustment and Attachment
We are delighted that so many people want to meet Kate now that we’ve finally liberated her from Ukraine. However, for Kate this is a very big change. She is used to a very regimented routine at the orphanage and we will need time to develop one at home. Our biggest priority for Kate is to get her eyesight corrected. The other challenge that we face is that she needs time to become attached...
Going home
We are in Frankfurt sitting on the plane for Toronto. I feel relief
Katerina was freed
At 1:42 pm in Sumy.
Kate is in our hands. She, Wendy and Babushka Rinella are now on their way to Kyiv. One more day of paperwork to get Kate’s Canadian Citizenship and another day to wait for all Kate’s documents to be translated and they’ll be on a plane home to Oakville early next week!
Significant Progress Today.
Today we accomplished a lot. The court order was ready, we secured the birth certificate and are well on our way to getting the passport. We’ve even been told that we may get the passport tomorrow morning (but… alas we’ve been told many things over the past 3+ months that seem to change). If all goes well, we’ll go to the orphanage tomorrow to get Kate and be on our way to...
Another Bureaucratic Delay!
Wendy and Carol went to the court house to get Kate’s custody documents this morning so they could travel to Kate’s home town to get her birth certificate but they were hit with another in a long string of what seem like arbitrary bureaucratic decisions. The court clerk told them that even though the court decision was printed and waiting that the clerk wouldn’t release the...
Map of Kate's hometown. 4,882 miles from Oakville →
Today now that the holiday is over the process begins. Natasha arrives this morning and we will pick up the court decision that says we are her parents which we need for her birth certificate, then travel to Kate’s hometown to get her birth certificate which we need for her passport. Velyka Pysarivka, the town where Kate was born is a small town of about 5,000 people five miles from the...
April 2010
39 posts
Big week for our family
Kate’s 3rd birthday party yesterday was the kick-off to quite a bit of activity this week. Our facilitator arrives on Tuesday in anticipation of our court date on Wednesday (11 AM) which hopefully will determine that we can officially adopt Kate. This isn’t supposed to be an issue as the Ukrainian Government has already given us a letter of no objection but anything can happen so...
