9/29 - Change in Plans

Sorry it’s been so long since the last update. We’ve had a lot going on lately. Let’s see…where to begin.

Well, last week we got an email from our attorney telling us that some of Kristine’s relatives (an Aunt and Uncle) have come forward and would like to take her to live with them. For international adoptions, I think a notice is published in the paper or something so that family can be notified of adoption proceedings. Kristine’s relatives don’t want to adopt her but instead want to be her guardians. We are not overly concerned that this will stop the process, but it will definitely delay it a couple of weeks. We already know that Kristine doesn’t want to live with these relatives. They have not seen her since she was 3-years old and have not been a part of her life. Kristine has told the children’s home director and the social worker that she already thinks of us as her family.

We have been told that it is unlikely that the court will side with the relatives but you never know. Today, there was a meeting among Kristine, her relatives, the children’s home director and social worker. Kristine once again told them she doesn’t want to go with the relatives. Now it’s up to the children’s home to pass that information to the Orphan Court so that they can rule on it. We are currently awaiting the ruling of the Orphan Court. If the ruling is in our favor (which hopefully it will be), then the Ministry of Adoption will officially “match” us with Kristine and we can move forward and be assigned court dates.

Our original court dates of Oct. 9th and 23rd were assigned to us prematurely, before the international clearance for adoption had been completed. We expect our new court dates to be around the end of October. However, we are waiting until we know for sure before we make our new travel arrangements. The frustrating part of this is that we’ll lose money on the flights and hotel we already booked. We’re trying not to dwell on it though and are just dealing with things as they come up.

Kristine is going through a rough time right now so please keep her and all of us in your prayers. We found out today that she will be moved to another children’s home next week to stay until we get there. I don’t want to get into the details here but I’ll just say the situation at her children’s home became unsafe for her. Because of this, it may be possible that the court will allow us to bring her home to stay with us between court sessions. Another family we know of was able to do this because their child had special circumstances as well. It may turn out to be a good thing because if this happens, we’d have her home for Thanksgiving and Christmas! We won’t know until we’re there for court whether or not they’ll allow us to bring her back. We’ll just have to see how it plays out.

We talked to Kristine a couple of days ago and and asked her if she was okay. It broke our hearts when she said “no”. We could tell she wanted to say more but she hesitated because there were people around listening to her conversation. All we can do is remind her how much we love her and miss her. She always replies, “me too.” It has to be so hard being the child and having all of these adults meeting to discuss your fate. I don’t know how much they tell her about what’s going on. We just want her to know we’re doing everything we can to bring her home.

We found out that when we’re in Latvia for Kristine’s court that we won’t be able to have Olegs stay with us after all. Now that Kristine is staying in a different place and both kids have to go to school each day, the orphan court and director want us to focus on Kristine right now. We can still spend time with Olegs after school each day but he just can’t stay with us. We still don’t know whether it will be possible for Olegs to be cleared for adoption, so we have to be careful not to make it seem like we’re adopting him right now. He knows we want to adopt him but his situation is more complicated. When we get there, we want to make sure he understands exactly what is going on. When we’re in Latvia, we hope to find out more details about the steps they’ve taken so far in getting him cleared for adoption.

It’s been a little bit of an emotional roller coaster lately. We have no doubt that when everything is said and done we’ll be parents. It’s just hard being so far away and depending on others to do their part to make things happen. It just reminds us to rely on our faith. We have to believe that God wouldn’t bring us this far to let us down now.

9/18 - The Kids Know We're Coming!

We called and talked to Kristine yesterday. Once again Olegs wasn’t available (or at least that’s what Kristine said anyway). Whenever we want to talk to Olegs it seems like she always puts her friend Agnese on the phone instead and reminds us how Agnese needs a family too. We always love talking to Agnese and we tell Kristine that we’re praying for Agnese to find a family. We’re really hoping that someone will be able to host Agnese and her younger sister at Christmas. Maybe it might lead to her adoption. Who knows? I know it will be hard for Kristine to leave her friends when she comes to live with us. We’ll just have to do our best to help her keep in touch by writing and calling.

We told Kristine that we would be coming to Riga for our court date on October 9th and she said she already knew, of course. It’s funny how news travels so fast. We got to talk to Olegs today since we didn’t get him yesterday. He had also heard about us coming. This time when we called, we only asked to speak with him. It was funny…when we called, our friend Ilga just happened to answer the phone at the children’s home. She was there meeting with the children’s home director (also named Ilga). The director got busy so Ilga answered her phone for her. Before I knew it was Ilga, I said my usual “Labdien, Olegs Ludzu” and she said “Who is this?” It freaked us out at first because we didn’t expect the person on the other end to speak English. Then she told us it was her and we had a good chat. We haven’t spoken to her since she went back to Latvia, only through emails.

The timing was perfect in talking to Ilga because she had a couple of questions for us about the type of flat we will need for our stay there. She’s helping us locate a place to stay while we’re there. We’ll have both children staying with us and a court social worker will be making visits so it needs to be an acceptable place to the court.

We got a decent deal on plane tickets last week. The airfare was just under $2,000 for both of us which is good believe it or not. Ilga is having the court check out a place she’s picked out for us to stay so that should be confirmed soon too. Things are falling into place. We still have many things to get worked out before we travel though…very important things like how do I make sure my hair dryer and curling iron will work in Latvia? LOL! I’ll probably end up buying new ones in Latvia so they’ll be compatible. That’s just one of the million items on my list! Then there are more important things like figuring out who we should take gifts to. Of course, we feel we should give something to the children’s home director and her staff. Plus, we want to bring some games and candy for the rest of the children there too. We’ve gotten some advice from other adoptive parents based on what they gave as gifts so we’ll be working on our gift list.

Time seems like it’s moving like a freight train these days. It’s starting to hit us that we’re leaving two weeks from Friday. YIKES!!

9/15 - We Got Our First Court Dates!!!

We got an email from our attorney late yesterday afternoon telling us that we have been assigned court dates in Latvia on 10/9 and 10/23. That means we’re ready to travel to Latvia!!!! YIKES!!! During this first visit to Latvia we will be required to live in an apartment in Riga and have Kristine stay with us there for two weeks. At the first court date on 10/9 we will be granted temporary custody of Kristine. A social worker will then visit us at our apartment approximately three times to observe our “bonding.” Obviously, we’ve already bonded since she stayed with us at our home so this is just a formality. Since we are only adopting Kristine now, she is the only child we are required to have stay with us. However, we requested and got permission for Olegs to stay with us too so we can spend more time with him and he can be a part of the whole process.

On the second court date on 10/23 I think the social worker will give her recommendations to the court and they will hopefully approve us to move forward. Not sure if we’ll find out what our next court date will be at that point or if we’ll have to wait to find out. It’s so hard to believe this is finally happening. We’ve spent all this time waiting that it just doesn’t seem real that we’re gonna be traveling soon.

One thing we’re a little nervous about is that we have to take both children to school every morning and they both go to different schools. The last thing we need is to get lost and get them to school late or something. UUGGGHHH! I think Rob and I have decided the easiest thing to do will be to get the children back to the children’s home each morning so they can go to school with their friends. Then we can pick them up there in the afternoon. Our friend Ilga is looking for a flat (apartment) for us to stay in near the children’s home. We’re trying to avoid renting a car so hopefully things will work out so we can use the public transportation to go back and forth. Hopefully, we can figure out the schedules and routes so we don't get on a bus that takes us in the wrong direction. It’s all so intimidating now but I know things will fall into place when we get there.

So we'll be leaving for Latvia on 10/6 and returning on 10/24. We can’t wait to tell the kids the news when we call them this weekend. They may even already know since word gets around fast. We’re just so excited to be able to tell them that we have a definite date that we’ll be coming to see them. YIPPEE!!

9/11 - All is Fine with Olegs

Rob and I had decided we would try calling Olegs again today and see if we could get him on the phone. We had to know if he was mad at us. LOL! Plus we just wanted to hear his voice and tell him how much we love him and miss him. We tried calling around 10am which would be 5pm in Latvia. We called and got through to someone in the office who yelled for Olegs to get on the phone. It’s so funny…when they yell for the kids to come to the phone they yell at the top of their lungs in this big powerful BOOMING voice. I’d get my behind to the phone too, and pronto, if they yelled for me like that!! LOL!

Olegs got on the phone and said “yes?”. We told him it was Robert and Kathleen and he said “aaahhh, yes”. He obviously wasn’t mad and I was so relieved. We told him how much we love him and miss him and he said “me too.” Those two little words just melted our hearts. Rob got to tell me “I told you so.” Looks like he was right and that Olegs was just caught up in his game and didn’t want to come to the phone at that moment. We asked Olegs what he was doing and he said “nothing.” Come to think of it, I remember giving that same answer ("nothing") to my mom when she asked me what I did at school. Must be a kid thing. He said he likes school. We told him we’ll be coming to Riga to see him soon and he said he’s happy.

We heard Kristine approaching in the background so we told Olegs we’d call next Sunday and he handed the phone to Kristine. She was wondering why we were calling again and asked what we were doing. We told her that we were both at work (Rob and I were conferenced together so we could call together). We said that we called because we didn’t get Olegs yesterday but now we’re extra happy we got to talk to her too. She said she’s happy too which was sweet. It was a great call and it felt so good to talk to both of them again.

9/10 - Weekly Chat with the Kids

Today we called the kids at our usual time of 9am and the phone rang with no answer at the children’s home. It’s a little frustrating because we told the kids we would be calling at that time but for whatever reason no one answered. We have to remember that they are 11-years old and probably don’t understand how big a deal it is for us to call from the U.S. to Latvia. We were happy when we called back about 45 mins. later and got Kristine on the phone. We had the usual conversation about the weather (it wasn’t raining this time). Once again, Kristine said she doesn’t like school. We asked her what she was doing today and she just said “nothing.” So we said, “you just sit and do nothing all day?” She laughed and said, “NOOOOO”. She finally admitted to playing a little bit. There was too much giggling and commotion going on in the background for them to be doing nothing. Her friend Agnese was with her again. I guess the highlight of the call for Kristine was when Maverick (our cat) got on the phone and said "Sveiki" ("hello" in Latvian) to her. Okay, I'll confess that Maverick got a little squeeze from Robert before he let out his meow greeting (no, he didn't squeeze him hard, so don't write us angry letters). LOL! Kristine thought it was hilarious. She laughed and laughed and Rob and I did too!!

We asked Kristine where Olegs was and she said he was playing football. We told her to go get him and could hear her screaming for him as she went down the hallway. The girl has got healthy lungs for sure. LOL! She came back a few seconds later and said Olegs couldn’t come to the phone. We talked to Kristine a little more and she asked us if we wanted to talk to Agnese. So we talked to Agnese for a few minutes and asked her a few things. She answered “yes” to everything so we don’t know if she understood what we were saying or not. We can’t wait to meet her. She sounds like such a good kid too.

Before we signed off, we asked Kristine to go try to get Olegs again. She again went screaming for him down the hallway and came back and said he didn’t want to talk to us. Talk about a blow to the heart. Our boy doesn’t want to talk to us? Obviously, we can’t grill Kristine with questions so we just told her to tell him we love him and miss him and we’ll call him later. She said “okay” and we signed off. It’s hard not to let your mind race with all the possible reasons he might not want to talk to us…Was he mad for some reason? Was he upset that we have to adopt Kristine first and him later? Is he not getting the letters we've sent him but watching Kristine get her letters? My mind was racing because we didn’t get to talk to Olegs last week either because he was away on an outing. Rob reminded me that Olegs was with “the fellas” playing football today and he probably didn’t want to break away if they were having a good game. He probably didn’t want to ruin his cool image. One thing is certain, we’ll be calling again tomorrow and every day after that until we get him on the phone!

9/9 - Garage Sale Recap

We survived yet another exhausting garage sale today. Once again, it will take me the rest of the weekend to recover since every muscle in my body aches like you would not believe. It’s pathetic, I know. This time we had a lot of competition so we didn’t make as much money as we did in our past sales. There were a couple of big neighborhood sales in our area so we didn’t have as much traffic at ours. That means we had a lot of stuff leftover so we had to drag it back into the garage to store for the next sale. Poor Robert…each time we have a sale he keeps hoping that we’ll sell everything so he can have his garage back. We’ll just wait a few weeks and do it all over again and park the car in the driveway in the meantime. :-)

It turned out to be a gorgeous day and we made about $250.00….not as much as before but we're definitely thankful. Every little bit helps. We’ll probably try to squeeze in one more sale before Christmas since we have so much stuff left. I’m just glad this one is OVER!

9/3 - Our Weekly Phone Visit

Rob and I called and talked to Kristine this morning but Olegs wasn’t available today. Many times on the weekends, the kids go on excursions so he was away this weekend. We were a little disappointed that we didn’t get to talk to Olegs but we still had a good visit with Kristine. She now knows we want to adopt her so she’s excited about becoming a part of our family. We asked her how she liked school since Friday was their first day of school. She said she didn’t like it at all…typical kid. She said it was raining today so we joked about it raining the last time we talked to her and Olegs. We asked her if it rained everyday in Latvia and she laughed as she said "noooooo".

Kristine asked what we were doing today and we told her that after church we were going to take Winston over to our friend’s house for a cookout and so Winston could swim in their pool. She thought that was funny that Winston was allowed to go in a pool that people swim in. We reminisced and laughed about the days when she and Olegs were here and they just had to go to the pool every single day....they'd constantly ask, "swim? swim? swim?"

We asked her if she was playing with her friends today and she mentioned that her friend, Agnese, was also away this weekend so she was bored. Kristine talked this time about how she wished Agnese could also find a family. I’m not sure if she’s even available for adoption, but we told Kristine that we would pray that Agnese will find a family too. Agnese is a beautiful girl (We got to see a picture of her last week) a little bit older than Kristine (13, I think) and we also found out that she has a younger sister (9-10 years old) also named Kristine. Rob and I wish we could adopt all of them, but obviously we can’t. We can sure help spread the word about them though. In the next month or so, I believe Jennifer Peters will be looking to sign up host families for the Christmas hosting so please spread the word. Even if a host family isn’t interested in adopting, they can still make a difference in a kid’s life just by showing them love for the few weeks that they are here. If you or someone you know is interested in hosting at Christmas, you can contact Jennifer Peters directly at 404-384-7586 or click here to send her an email.

9/2 - We Got an Email From the Kids!

I just happened to check my work email from home this morning and scanned through my “junk” email box just to see if anything important got sent there accidentally. I got so excited when I saw an email with the subject line, “Hello from Kristine and Olegs.” Rob was at work so I called him to let him know we got an email from the kids!!! Of course, he wanted to know what they had to say so I attempted to “unjunk” the email and read it. My excitement quickly turned into desperation when I kept getting an error message that said “page not available.” Needless to say, I clicked on it again and again, not believing this was happening. I kept getting the same error message over and over!! It was all I could do to keep from banging the computer against the wall. ARRRGGGHHH!! We had an email from our kids in Latvia and I couldn’t open it!!!! Talk about feeling helpless!!!

Well, it dawned on me that it was probably our protective firewall at work that was preventing me from “unjunking” my junk emails from my home computer. The only way we could access that email would be for me to either wait until I go back to work on Tuesday or get in the car immediately and drive downtown to my office so I can check my email from work. There was NO way I was gonna wait 2 more days to find out what their email said. So what if it takes a day trip to get there and back [sarcasm noted here]. In my mind there was no choice. Rob knew I wouldn’t be able to stand it otherwise…plus, he also wanted to know what the kids had to say. This probably sounds so silly, but those of you who are adopting know what I’m talking about. Any communication we get from our kids is more precious than anything.

Since Grandmother loves car rides, I loaded her up and took her with me on the drive to work. It made me feel better about making this silly trip to check an email. It gave us a chance to spend some quality time together so that made it okay. Winston came along for the ride too.

As you can imagine, it was such a relief to get to work and FINALLY open that email. Olegs and Kristine had sent it to us Friday after school so it had been sitting in my junk email box since Friday morning our time. As soon as I opened it, I immediately forwarded it to Rob at the shop so we could read it at the same time. An added bonus was that the kids wrote to us in English. Someone obviously helped them and we were so relieved that we didn’t have to try to decipher an email written in Latvian. They wrote just a few short sentences but the highlights were the parts where they told us they want to come to America and that they miss us and love us very much (talk about melting your heart!). They told us that yesterday was their first day of school and that they liked it because they got to see their friends. They thanked us for calling them and said they enjoy our phone visits. They are also excited that we are coming to Latvia soon.

Talk about making our day!! We’ve reread the email over and over. We just can’t help it. We’ll be calling Olegs and Kristine tomorrow morning for our weekly chat and can’t wait to hear their voices!!