t-7 days

Flights booked, suitcases being filled, cat and turtle caregivers secured and we are getting ready to leave.   We will leave Birmingham Wednesday, the 25th, and drive to Atlanta.  Thursday morning we will board flights to Chicago, Vienna and then Kiev.  We will arrive in Kiev the afternoon of the 27th.  We will spend the next three days getting over jet lag, exploring the city, grocery shopping, etc.  On July 1st (pray your June 30th before going to sleep) Preston and I will have our meeting with the government to be presented with files of children available for adoption.  At this time Preston and I will select one child to go and visit.  Within the next day or two all of us will board a train/plane and head to our new destination.  This destination will be determined by the child we pick (where her orphanage is located).  Once we meet our child we will give our official intent to adopt.  At this time our paperwork will go back to Kiev where they will put it through their process for at least 10 business days.  At this time we may be able to set up our adoption court date with the judge or we may need to wait until our paperwork is back from Kiev before we can set the date.  It all just depends on the preference of the judge.  During this time we will be able to visit the orphanage every day.  At our court appointment our judge, our new child and Preston and I all must agree to the adoption.  After the court date our child will return to the orphanage for 10 more days.  Once those 10 days are complete we will set up appointments in Kiev with the American embassy, doctors, etc.  From start to finish we are looking at about 60 days....possibly 45 if everything goes smoothly.

going private

Our blog is going private for the next few months.  Please e-mail me if you would like to have access to the blog.

Adoption Update: the appointment date

This morning we received the call we have been waiting for...we have an appointment date!  We will have our first meeting in Ukraine July 1st.  We are so excited!  Now on to tons of preparation and packing.

Since we will be gone for so long we need to set up a lawn care schedule.  We would love to have our yard mowed once a week and the bushes trimmed a couple of times while we are gone (mainly the ones in the front so one in particular does not cover the stop sign).  If you are interested and available to help please sign up via the google doc. lawn care sign up

Also, with our date so close we are still in fundraising mode.  If you are interested in contributing to our adoption here are the avenues you can use.  Our Pure Charity account (on-line giving to our adoption), 80% of the profit of your purchase from Daniel Frei Photography when using the coupon code "Hite" and 30% of your purchase from Just Love Coffee will all go to help fund our adoption.

Thank you so much for all the support each of you have shown our family.  We greatly appreciate it!

Augmentative Communication Device

Nathan's communication world has opened so much with his new PRC Accent 1000.   He can tell us when he is thirsty, hungry, tired, wants to play a particular game, etc.  He can also identify all the animals by their sounds, choose and identify colors, choose people by name...and the list goes on and on.  Nathan is also learning to spell words right now.  So far we have: Nathan, red, blue, green and Jesus.  We are so proud of him and he is so proud of himself!  We knew he understood so much of what we said but now we have confirmation that he truly does!  We love that our little boy can truly express himself and communicate so well with us now.  We are still working on his verbal skills and will continue too...planning that one day he will be completely verbal.  For now and as a tool to get us their his PRC Accent 1000 is incredible.

A few have asked about easily attainable communication programs.  There are several apps for the iPad, some free trial and some more pricy, that are a great place to start.  We let Nathan "get his feet wet" for a short time with some of these programs before we went with his own dedicated device.  A few specific ones are Sono Flex (the lite version is free but will only take you so far), Sounding Board, and Go Talk Now (this is the one Nathan used the most).  Most of them take a little set up but they are easily once you get the hang of it.

Logan's first swim meet

Logan competed in his first swim meet Saturday morning.  It was a great experience!  A little different than I initially thought... 1-2 hour swim meet was actually 6 hours with 80 events with some having up to 4 heats per event.  Logan is doing so well at swimming and is really excited about this sport.  Preston and I are very proud of him.  He swam the 25m and 50m freestyle. His next swim meet is Tuesday evening.  I think this one will be a little more like what I envisioned the first time...this is a 2 team meet instead of all of Birmingham.

More summer fun

Here are some pictures from all the summer fun we are having this week.

Swim team

Logan is really enjoying swim team.  They practice every weekday morning.  His first meet is this Saturday.  He is swimming the 25m and 50m freestyle.