A Year Ago, Part 4

Rewind 1 year. April 12, 2006, we're in Poltava, Ukraine. Our court appointment, which was scheduled for April 11th had been cancelled after waiting outside the courtroom for about 45 minutes. Now it's April 12th and we're ready to go to court again. Our facilitator shows up with the woman from the orphanage. He says he has bad news; there will be no court today. We questioned him, with our hearts sinking with each passing moment. He says that he has no money left to continue with our adoption. (Mind you, this is just a few days after $20,000 was demanded from us by our agency: money we weren't told we'd owe while in Ukraine. But I digress...) How could he not have any money!? This was ridiculous! So the heated discussion started. Ken and I were now yelling and our facilitator still refused to take us to court. Without him knowing, I turned my video camera on so I could record the conversation, even though it was just the audio. At some point, I was crying, Ken was yelling, I was yelling, I was calm, I was pacing, Ken had steam coming out of his ears. Lira and Timmy were OUR children and we weren't going to accept our facilitator's B.S. I made him repeat his explanation of needing money, what it was for, and how he didn't receive any of the money that was wired to our agency in the states because I wanted it recorded. I then went into our bedroom, took out all of the cash that we had on us at that point which was well over $5000. I came back in the room and yelled at him, "What is that you want? Money!? Then here's your (bleeping) money!" and I threw the cash on the table in front of him. I can't imagine what the lady from the orphanage was thinking at this point in time. I didn't care how much money our facilitator wanted to extort, these children were ours and I wasn't leaving the country without them. He didn't take the money. I can't recall the words that were then exchanged between Ken and the facilitator but I went into our bedroom and called the "President" of our agency. I was quite upset, told her what was in the process of going on and she called me a liar. I told her to listen to the background noise, she'd hear the facilitator's voice. I started yelling at her for not sending him the money- she wanted me to put him on our phone. I was fed up so I yelled at her to call the facilitator on her "own dime" and do her (bleep) job. I hung up on her. The facilitator took the lady from the orphanage and left. They left us in our room. Alone. Stranded. No answers. No court date. I was hysterical. I called my family, hysterical. Within moments both of my parents and my aunt (who helped us come up with the cash the week before) were on the phone repeatedly calling the agency. Ken and I were devastated. Lost. Scared. More phone calls went back and forth and within an hour or so (I don't recall how much time passed) our facilitator knocked on our door and apologized. He said he would reschedule the court date for tomorrow morning.

April 13, 2006- The woman from the orphanage who was supposed to come to court with us had left for Kiev. We needed someone from the orphanage at the hearing. Our facilitator, after stressfully scrambling, found a man to take to court with us. Ken and I jokingly called him "the janitor" because that's what he looked like. We made it to court, had the hearing, and officially became parents. It was Ken's birthday- what a day to become an official father! We didn't really celebrate or get to excited when we first heard the ruling from the judge- at least for me, I almost didn't believe it- I was waiting for something else to go wrong.

Now, April 13, 2007- Lira and Timmy are gorgeous, happy, healthy, adjusted, loving, smart, speaking 100% english. We're a family. Playing soccer and driving a mini-van. Ken had a nice birthday with adorable gifts from his children for the 1st time.

Oh, and as for the money that we paid the agency last year that our facilitator said he hadn't received- supposedly our agency had mistakenly wired it to Latvia.

Want to see before/after pics of the kids? Take a look at the previous post, "A Year Ago, Part 3"