New Abode 11-29

Well, we are in our new apartment in downtown Kharkiv. It is actually a decent place, but we have no phone, no internet access, and our TV (as it has been since we got here) has not one English-speaking channel (argh!!!!!!).

We are currently in a Japanese restaurant about a half-mile from the apartment because it is the only place around that has wireless internet access. They will be seeing a lot of us over the next week!!!!!!

Our facilitator/translator left us today to head back to Kiev to continue to manage the paperwork gorilla involved in these adoptions. We are a little leary about this because Kharkiv has very few people who speak English. We have been spoiled with her around to make sure people understand what we want. However, good beer is about 65 cents and a personal driver is $6 per hour US. This guy drives us around and waits until we are done. We could have him the entire day for under $50!!!!

We have been visiting Valeriy twice a day as usual and are getting to know him pretty well. We look forward to getting him home before 2010!!!! Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Rob needs to get out of here by 12/8 in order to keep his sanity!!!!

Until tomorrow,

Lisa & Rob

Patty-Cake Video

Here is another video with Valeriy's belly laugh for your enjoyment (please ignore Lisa's bad singing) . We are moving from the hotel to an apartment today and will not have easy access to the internet, so postings may be more sparse in the future.

We are hoping (and needing your prayers) for a court date on 12/6. If that happens, we may both return home for the "waiting period" so we can be home for Zach's birthday and Christmas (not to metion finalizing our house which is in the final stages of construction). If we do that, Lisa would probably return on 12/26 to finalize the process and bring Valeriy home (hopefully by New Year's Day). However, this is a best-case scenario. We still do not know if we both have to be here for the final paperwork and return trip. The process seems to evolve moment by moment over here. Rob doesn't really have an interest in making a return trip - they don't make economy airline seats that are very comfortable for him - but he will do what is necessary to get Valeriy home.

We can tell you that the stories we heard about the food were definitely not true. We feel like the food has been excellent. In fact, every meal has been good except they serve very odd breakfasts here in the hotel. No eggs and bacon here - instead we get chicken and rice; sausages with macaroni noodles; beef tips with buckwheat (yuk!); etc. It has been pretty hard to adjust. However, the coffee is great - very strong.

Well, that's it for now. We are getting ready to move to the apartment. Remember, pray for a 12/6 court date!!!!!!

Rob & Lisa

Fantastic View from Hotel Room!!!

Here are the views you get from a luxury hotel in Kharkiv!!!! They have a habit of starting lots of buildings, but never finishing any.

Rob & Lisa

Video of Valeriy

Not much video but just thought you might want to see how Valeriy is learning his English....

It's Official - Zach Has a Little Brother!!!!!!

Here we are in the lobby of the luxurious (ha,ha) Hotel Mir drinking a fine bottle of Ukranian Merlot ($9/bottle) celebrating our good fortune. By the way, the lobby is the only place there is internet access, so we are pretty much fixtures down here. In fact, the waitresses serve us in the lobby!!!!

Well, if you can't tell from the title, things went great today. There is a new addition to the Mendenall family - Blake (named specifically by Zach) Valeriy Mendenall.

We were thankful that we were able to get all the information to our pediatrician in Columbia, as well as a pediatrician dealing specifically in international adoptions, on Sunday. We had the opportunity to talk to both doctors and there were a few questions that we needed to get answered today.

Rob and I both had knots in our stomach all morning long before the appointment. We met with several genetic doctors with Valeriy in the room. After poking and proding him, the doctors sat down with us and after a few questions all but admitted that he had been misdiagnosed. It appears that they diagnosed him with a genetic syndrome because he appeared to be short for his age. You can not imagine the relief we felt at that moment.

We are so excited to bring home a brother for Zachary! I think Valeriy even realized what was going on - at our afternoon visit, Valeriy would would not let Rob put him down. Now all the paperwork begins. You can not even make up all the different forms and people that need to get involved to complete the process (we would call it job security in the US).

We appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers through this difficult time - they worked and we are eternally grateful!

We will keep posting pictures and please comment back. We love hearing from everyone back in the US!

By the way, the weather is wonderful here - 36 degrees and raining cats and dogs!!!!

Rob and Lisa

TIme with Valeriy - 11/25

Well, we have been walking to the orphanage twice a day for visits with Valeriy. We get there about 10:00 AM and get to see him until about 12:00. In the afternoon, we arrive about 4:30 and get to stay with him until about 6:00. According to his caretakers, he is now expecting our visits and looks at the door until we arrive.

Tomorrow is the big day with the genetic doctor. We are not sure what to expect, but we do know that his is a very mild case (if he has it at all). We are also waiting to hear back from the doctor in the U.S.

We have gotten to know Valeriy pretty well in our limited visits. He is extremely intelligent (must get that from Rob - Ha, Ha), and he also is very stubborn (must get that from Lisa - ha,ha), and likes to get his way!!!! He is obsessed with Rob picking him up and constantly wants to be lifted up high ("vosocu" for those of you wanting to learn Russian). Unfortunately, we are in a long hallway with three couches. We have no tables and the orphanage employees have made it clear that they don't want him on the floor. It limits what we can do with an excited, rambunctious 3 1/2 year old.

Anyway, please keep us in your prayers for tomorrow at 11 AM Ukraine time. We would really like to bring Valeriy home if there are no huge issues to face in the future. Take care.

Rob & Lisa

More pictures of Valeriy and orphanage

Meeting with Valiry

Happy Thanksgiving Day to everyone! I hope everyone is eating lots of turkey and dressing for us. As you can see above we have pictures of Valiry, the 3 1/2 year old boy, at the orphanage in Kharkiv. We left this morning at 3:00 am and after 6 hours and 4 million bumps, we arrived in Kharkiv (please don't ask Rob about the bathroom on the way unless you like hearing about small concrete buildings with holes in the middle of the floor). We promise you that Kharkiv is not the tourist center of Ukraine - the city is very dirty. Nothing is easy - we first had to go see the Inspector (regional social worker) to get permission to go to the orphanage.

Once at the orphanage (which felt like we were going through a war zone to get there), we spent time with the director finding out about Valiry's mother and his medical history. As you can see, he is a cute, adorable little boy - he is on the small side especially since we can't help but compare him to Zachary. When we first met, he ran up to Rob pointing to the people and things he recognized in the room. We very quickly noticed how intelligent he was. We gave him an Elmo telephone toy and he was so excited. We spent about 30 minutes with him before they had to take him away for lunch and a nap. When we went back about 4:30 this afternoon, his caretake said that he would not put the Elmo telephone down and actually fell asleep with it.

We are still tentative about the genetic diagnosis on him and have an appointment to meet with the genetic doctor that diagnosed Valiry on Monday. We are also trying to get information back to the doctor in the states to see what she says. Although Valiry looks like a very healthy, intelligent boy, we just want to make sure that there are no major issues that could tremendously affect our family.

We also included a picture of Luda, our translator. She has been a great help in trying to figure out the adoption process here in the Ukraine.

We will probably not have much to post before Monday but will send more pictures since we will be visiting Valiry through the weekend.

Rob and Lisa

Day 4 - Preparing for trip to Kharkiv

With everything going on we had a great Italian dinner last night with the other adoptive family we met from Louisiana. Fortunately, they have been very supportive and went through a similar appointment meeting as we did. They left today to go meet their child and were very hopeful that everything would work out for us as well as themselves.

One surprising thing over here... all the women are dressed to "kill" with stiletto heeled boots and tight black pants or in some cases a skirt so short you are not sure what is underneath. Rob is questioning whether we could adopt a Ukranian woman as a nanny. I quickly said "No!!" Luda, our facilitator, stated that the women here would prefer not to eat in order to have nice, expensive clothes. Just not what we were expecting!!

As far as an update on the adoption .... After much discussion with our adoption agency/facilitator and doctor back in United States, we have made the decision to head to Kharkiv to meet the 3 1/2 year old boy. Today we have been preparing for the trip which is about a 5 hour drive from Kiev. We will be leaving at 4:00 am tomorrow morning in order to have plenty of time to complete all the paperwork once we are there.

At this point, we are not getting our hopes up that this will be the child that we will bring home but we felt like we needed to go see the child to put closure around this if the child is not acceptable.

If we arrive and are immediately able to tell that this child's medical condition is too severe, we will be heading straight back to Kiev and booking a flight home. They have told us that we will not be able to get another appointment date now - will be at least 45 days out if not more. They have so many families looking for a child between 1 - 3 years old that they are already booked out 45 days.

If we can get comfortable that more medical tests may determine that the child has been mis-diagnosed, we will stay on to see what is next.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we move forward.

Lisa and Rob

Appointment Date - November 20

Unfortunately, things did not go as well as we would have liked today. The adoption center would not allow our translator in the meeting with us so we had to rely on the center's translator who was very difficult to deal with. We were presented about 5 children ranging from 1 year to 4 1/2 years old. Four of the five definitely had severe health issues ranging from clef palet needing at least 3 more surgeries to potential invalid status.

We are currrently trying to find out more medical information about one of the children (age 3 1/2 years old) to determine if we want to travel to the region to see him personally. We have a call into the orphanage director to get more information as well as contacting a doctor in the US to get her opinion on the condition. Our only two options at this point are to 1) go visit this child and make a determination at that time, or 2) come home and schedule a second appointment and wait for a date.

We will keep you posted.

Sightseeing - More Pics

Sightseeing - More Pics

Day 2 - Sightseeing in Kiev

As you can tell we are still trying to figure out how to blog and upload pictures. We will be sending more photos under a separate posting.
We had a great time at the Irish Pub last night. Both Rob and I had the fish and chips - the typical Ukranian dinner. Ha! Ha! It is a small world, we actually sat next to a couple and noticed they were speaking English - no less we could tell they were Southern. Come to find out, they are from Louisiana (and big LSU fans) and are planning to adopt a 4-11 year old. Of course, we compared notes on all the information we had concerning selecting a child. It is amazing how you bond with someone else in a country where you don't understand the language - by the end of the night we were hugging and shaking hands wishing each other luck.

Today we spent most of the day checking out the city. We have a McDonald's right outside the apartment where we are staying which is very convenient since we are a little leary about trying too many different restaurants. Trying not to get sick within the first few days of our trip. They actually have an underground mall where we sat and drank coffee while people watching. To our surprise, the city is amazingly modern, except the architecture. We were the typical tourists today with the camera out, the Ukranian tour book, and the map which was no help at all. Doesn't appear that they believe in street signs here. Somehow we made it though...

We found out today that our appointment is tomorrow at 12:00 pm. Everyone needs to wake up at 5:00 am and say a prayer!! Hopefully all goes well selecting a child from a picture book. If so, we have to wait until Wednesday to file some additional paperwork. We would then travel to the region where the child is located overnight on Wednesday (probably by train), and would meet the child for the first time on Thursday. We will post tomorrow after the meeting to let everyone know how it went.

Check out the next couple of posts for more pictures!

Day 1 - Arrival in Kiev

Well, we made it here safe and sound!!! It was a long 27 hours, but we're here. As you can see we are not looking our best but Zach's Ninja Turtle Leonardo made sure we made it OK (thank you Zach!!!!!) That's him on the couch in our apartment. The apartment is very small, but clean, which is the most important thing.

Kiev is actually a pretty nice city and the apartment is just off the main downtown area called Independence Square. There is some very beautiful architecture here, and lots of snow too! When we arrived it was actually sunny, which is rare here this time of year.

We have the whole day free tomorrow so we will be sightseeing but staying close to the apartment in order to be ready for our appointment on Tuesday. Right now, we expect to be heading out on Wednesday night for the region (of course the amount of travel will depend on where we are going).

Right now, we are heading to an Irish pub of all things to grab some dinner. We will log on tomorrow with more pictures and let you know how the food and drink was.

Lisa and Rob

As we begin our journey....

It has been 18 months since we started the adoption process back in May 2006. We started with Russia and were amazed how quickly it was going - by September 2006 we had picked out a little boy and were waiting for a travel date. Then came the "news" in mid October that Russia was changing its adoption laws (which would make it more difficult to adopt as well as more costly) so we decided to switch over to the Ukraine. We were encouraged that our paperwork would be submitted by January 2007 and we would be traveling to the Ukraine by April/May of 2007.

Although the process has not moved as quickly as we would have liked, we have received an appointment date and will be leaving out of Atlanta on Saturday, November 17th to begin our journey to pickup Baby Ukraine. We don't know if he will be a boy or girl, although our first choice will be a boy. We don't know how old he will be but we expect between 12 and 24 months.We will be in the Ukraine from 3 to 5 weeks and are still not sure quite what to expect but we do know that it will be very cold!!!!

Zach, our 5 year old kindergartener (turning 6 on 12/23), is very excited and looking forward to a baby brother which he has named Blake. When I asked how he thought of the name, he said "Mom, he is the red Power Ranger." Then I asked what he would name a little sister he said "Ashley, the pink Power Ranger". So either way, we will have a Power Ranger in the family.

We are planning to post to this blog while in the Ukraine to stay in touch with family and friends. If you are not able to enjoy this experience with us, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.