Our Daughter

Our court appointment went well yesterday afternoon and we legally became the parents to our five year old daughter, Svetlana Laurel Zander.  We could not think of any better way to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary! The mandatory ten day waiting period is now in effect until August 18th, which should be our official "gotcha day" when we get to take Sveta from the orphanage.  Before we can take her from the orphanage we will need to get some paperwork from a rural village about 100km away.  We are praying that we can get that paperwork early on August 18th so that we will have time to get back and get her from the orphanage that afternoon.  However, being a rural village it's very unpredictable and there's no guarantee we will get it early or at all that day.  If that were to be the case, then we would have to wait until the following Monday before we could get her from the orphanage.  We are then looking at about 2-3 weeks (we hope not any longer) back in Kiev before we have everything we need and she is cleared to travel HOME.  We are so in love with this little girl and so excited to finally be her parents.  It may have taken almost 5 1/2 years but she was always meant to be our daughter.  We are certainly counting down the days until we can take her from the orphanage and have her with us for good.  In the meantime we are still able to visit the orphanage just like before to continuing bonding with her.  She is a beautiful, active, sweet, and silly girl for sure!

Please pray that we will get the paperwork we need and be able to take Sveta from the orphanage on the 18th.  Also, that we will easily be able to get train tickets from Odessa to Kiev when we need them (we've been told this is very difficult in the summer).

We will share pictures of our girl publicly after gotcha day :)