Yes and yes.

This is going to be a short post, as my laptop is about to die, but I want to give an update. All is going really well. We have the two sweetest (three counting Jude) boys in the world. Tolia has given the formal "yes", signed and everything, and Oleg has said yes (the official "yes" comes in about 1.5 weeks, God-willing). We were expecting Tolia to say yes, but Oleg has never met us. We began to understand once we got here- REALLY understand- what a leap of faith it is for a child. We are humbled and so grateful that he is choosing a family, choosing us. 

On Friday, when we got to the boys' school, first Tolia came into the director's office. It was a surreal moment... finally being there, him walking in. We've anticipated this very meeting for so long! Right away, the director asked Tolia if he wants to stay in Ukraine or move to America. He immediately answered, "America". Music to our ears. Jude saw Tolia and lunged for him, arms out. 

Let me just say... we weren't even exactly allowed to see him yet that day. We WERE scheduled to, but ended up missing one official's signature, and couldn't get it because they were in court. Unbelievably, the director let us come see Tolia, anyway. She is usually a real stickler for the rules. Have to say, really seeing God's hand!

Then, our facilitator let the director know that we also plan to adopt Oleg. May we see him? She rolled her eyes and said "da". She sent someone for him. In a moment he appeared at the door, making this very happy room and very happy mom and dad even happier.

And, we didn't find this out UNTIL THE NEXT DAY (apparently no one thought it was worth translating to us!) but the director asked him the same question right in front of us, and he, too, said that he wants to be adopted by us. 

When we later found out that he'd said yes to us, will go down as one of my favorite memories in my whole life. It was just sweet and very special finding out, and him smiling and confirming it to us. And me crying, of course. 

On Saturday, we went for a walk with Tolia, Oleg, and their friend Valera. They showed us the whole village. And had snowball fights. :)

Then we came in, to warm up and play some Monopoly. It was all in Russian!

I don't have many pictures from today, but will leave you with this one. Thanks for reading! 

Oleg!

I talked about it a bit on Facebook, but never really specifically explained or announced on the blog: we are planning to adopt TWO boys. Tolia, of course, is the first, and also his friend, Oleg. We learned of Oleg in November, very shortly after our dossier was submitted. A friend of ours who was there adopting met him, and learned that he was asking for a family. She began advocating for him, and we quickly began to seriously consider adopting him.

Oleg has never been hosted. Everyone who knows him says that he is a wonderful boy. He loves soccer, volleyball... basically all sports. 

That's Oleg in the orange.

I have held off on talking about him publicly for a few reasons. One, I don't think we are supposed to share his pictures publicly since we don't officially have his referral yet. Two, with Tolia I got such a clear word from God about him, "He is your son." Now, granted, I never heard anything so explicit about really any other relationship in my life. God never told me that Dave was meant to be my husband. And He HAS told me a few times when things WEREN'T meant to be. (The Russian adoption, for instance. Did I listen? No.) So, we're going to pursue Oleg's adoption unless we hear a specific word from above saying otherwise, or if we hit a complete impasse. 

He doesn't know us yet. So, I really can't imagine how scary the thought of that would be to him- leaving his country, school, and most of his friends. On that note, though- Tolia has been 100% in favor of us adopting Oleg from the get-go. He has vouched for Oleg's character which counts for a lot with us. Hopefully, he's also vouching for us with Oleg!  

We have been able to FaceTime with him several times, and sent him some Christmas gifts. He knows that we are coming and passed along the message that he is happy we are coming for him. That's about all for now. I earnestly ask you to pray for the whole situation, that the Lord's hand would be in it, and His will so evident to all of us, and that we would all have incredible peace about whatever God's plan is! (Do you like that when I tell you exactly how to pray? I'm sorry I'm so bossy!)

That's about all for now. I was starting to edit a previous post to introduce Oleg, when I realized Oleg definitely deserves an introductory post all of his own! Have a good day, everyone! 

Success at SDA

So, I'll start with the exciting stuff first. We had our SDA interview this morning, and it went very well. Jude truly is our little ambassador, and his presence has smoothed many situations already. He charmed the SDA worker, and the meeting went quickly and well. We were hoping and praying that they would give us both boys' files right away, thereby making our trip significantly shorter, but they couldn't budge on that. So, we will go back for Oleg's file in about two weeks. It was a thrill just to SEE their files, and see the younger pictures of them. So precious. Definitely made me a little teary. Sure wish we'd been there to scoop them up the minute they needed a family!

 So, next we will go to the orphanage to see the boys. Hopefully we will be allowed to see Oleg, too, even though we don't yet have official permission for that. Here we are at the SDA:

We got to see a little bit more of the city. There are some really pretty parts. 

We've eaten more tasty food. This Ukrainian spot is so good and cheap. However, I'm beginning to suspect that it has contributed to some...ahem... tummy troubles. 

Chicken noodle soup with meatballs. I love how they put dill on almost everything.

And these were Siberian pelmeni. Basically Russian meat ravioli. So good. 

Some have asked what our apartment looks like inside. 

The super-tiny WC. 

Our clothes dryer. It's basically hot water pipes in the bathroom, that snake back and forth for warming towels, or in our case, drying our clothing. I hid the undies. You're welcome. 

Our washer is also super-tiny (but we are SO glad to have it!), and this is a load of laundry. One pair of jeans and a few small items of baby clothes. 

Here's a few cute Jude pictures...

A couple days ago, he began holding a phone to his ear, and saying "hello", though it sounds more like "huwwo". Today, he just started doing it with everything. Here, he is pretending that a baby wipe is a telephone. 

Hopefully the next post will be Friday or Saturday, and will have pictures of the boys! That's all for now. It's midnight-thirty here, so nighty-night! 

In Ukraine.

So, we're here in Kyiv. Travel with a baby went as you might expect. We all started out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. 

I was so excited about the bassinets that Lufthansa provides for infants

 on overnight flights. Jude could sleep on the plane! Then Dave and I could, too! 

Little Judester didn't get the memo about sleeping on the plane, though. He did for about 30 minutes in that bassinet. And like a parent of a newborn who finally gets them to sleep, NOT in their own arms, I was practically euphoric with relief, and didn't fall asleep myself. Oh, well. We all survived. 

We got to Frankfurt. I was very excited to see all of the signs in German. I knew that of course there would be signs in German, but I still loved it. I threw around my meager German vocabulary like a boss with the flight attendants, too. ;) 

Of course, being in Germany, wurst was on the menu for our meal. 

Which happened to be breakfast. 

And you end up feeling kind of sleepy after eating 1.5 pounds of sausage

 and french fries after being up all night. 

(Waiting for our flight to Kyiv)

And eventually we descended into Kyiv. 

At the airport, people were extremely nice to us. As soon as we got in the (long) passport line for non-Ukrainians, an officer approached us, and had us follow him to the FRONT of the diplomats line. No picture for that, just know that they treat babies like foreign ambassadors here. I like that. 

Jude passed out again in the car from the airport to our apartment. You should have seen his face after Dave dressed him in a snowsuit for the first time. He looked panicked and confused about this stifling get-up. It is cold here, but so far, not as bad as we expected. 

I'm not sure what to say about our apartment. It could be worse? I've been running through a predictable cycle of being shocked by the different standards, then feeling a little annoyed (I'm sorry), then feeling guilty for being annoyed, and for having so much in the first place. I am left wondering why America is so nice. I know that there are other nice places. And I know that there are places a lot worse than this. But still, why do we get to live somewhere so nice?

View from our apartment.

Today we got out in our neighborhood a bit. We are about 1/3 of a mile from the square where there is the large protest right now. Other than being able to hear the chanting at times, there is no sign of it if you are not right in it. 

Really close to our apartment is St. Sophia's Church. I hope to get a closer look tomorrow. 

And finally, lunch today at a Ukrainian/Russian restaurant. It was good, hearty food. 

That's about all for now. We'll be here for a few days, then expect to head to the boys' region at the end of the week. Here's a picture of several of the boys from the orphanage, with Oleg in the middle, and Tolia to the right. 

Thank you for reading. Please keep praying for a smooth process, and please pray for Oleg and Tolia, as they will soon have to officially decide to be part of our family.

Winners!

Oh, my goodness... just entered all of the shares, donations and picked winners from random.org. Drawing the numbers was one of the funnest moments of my life! Right up there with announcing them! Here they are!

iPad mini- Gregory Jones
Kindle Fire HDX- Luke Bell
Tassimo- Jeff Kerchner
$100 Amazon gift card- Kimberly Kremer
$100 Amazon gift card- Jason van Brackel
Cookies and bars- Danielle Dryburgh
Vera Bradley set- Christine Nichols
31 Perfect Party set- Rachel McCready
31 Hang-up Home Organizer- Heather Burdeaux
$50 Target gift card- Becki Kerchner

Guys, thank you SO MUCH! Your donations, shares and just LOVE have been amazing. Our account as of this moment is $10,192 and I just cannot believe it! Our $10,000 matching grant has been met! Thank you to family and friends for donating these amazing prizes. We are the most blessed and just plum lucky family in the world.

A weight is lifting.

I want to thank all of you who have given so generously to help us bring Tolia home.  In addition to the many donations by our friends and family, we received a very large donation this week. We do not even personally know the couple who donated! One of my friends shared our giveaway, and one of her friends read about Tolia and decided to make the donation. That is utterly amazing to me. We are grateful and humbled.

We received another large donation this past week, from a wonderful family we met in the adoption world...so generous and touching. To even explain exactly how we know them is complicated, but here is the post where they talk about it. (This donation is held by a different nonprofit, Project Hopeful... also an utterly awesome organization.)

Then, tonight, we received very exciting news of a generous donor (unreal, really!) who will match ALL donations to the Reece's Rainbow account for Tolia given before December 31st, up to $10,000. Right now our account is at $6425, which in itself is SO thrilling....just amazing. If we can add $3575 between now and December 31st, our match will be met, and our account will be at $20,000! That will essentially make Tolia's adoption fully funded, when we also count the money we have saved, and have received in the Project Hopeful fund.

This is a tremendous development, and we thank all of you who have helped us so far--your help is being doubled!  Please do share this news, and help get the word out to others who may want to donate. As we've already seen multiple times, even strangers have donated to Tolia's fund because they've seen the giveaway shared on their friend's Facebook page. Thank you, all, for being so patient with us...I know we have asked so much already, and we really do hope to put this fundraising to bed shortly!

Thank you, God, and thank you, friends and family. We Warners are a VERY blessed family. Gloria in excelsis Deo!