Life Altered

I awoke to begin what I believed would be another typical Monday morning.  However, as I checked my email that morning, I realized that this Monday could be a turning point for myself and my family.  One of my emails that morning was about a hosting program for Ukrainian orphans.  I actually opened and closed the email twice before I finally gave in and read the entire email (along with attachments).  James and I have discussed adopting before, but we were certainly not looking to do anything soon (we've thought about possibly adopting a little boy to balance out our family and give our son, Micah, a brother).  I decided to glance at the options for young boys.  Although there were a number of boys and very cute boys at that, nothing really resonated with me.

I knew that I couldn’t possibly adopt multiple children (that would be crazy, right?), but continued (out of curiosity) down the list to the sibling groups.  Within those groups there was another little boy that had two older sisters.  Completely uninterested in this idea, but still curious, I opened their pictures.  The little boy (Maksym, age 5) was absolutely adorable and reminded me of Micah.  I was a little more interested.  I scrolled over to the 10 year old sisters picture (Alina).  I was surprised to see that she reminded me of a younger version of my daughter Emma.  Very interesting.  Lastly, I scrolled to the final picture of the 16 year old girl (Albina).  Upon seeing her picture I said aloud, “Oh!  WOW!”.  She had a similar look to my other two daughters, Toria & Isabel.  I was immediately drawn to these kids (in spite of the fact that they were a sibling group) and took the email and pictures to my husband.  We agreed, without much discussion, that we were definitely interested in hosting Albina and Alina (Maksim would not be coming to the US since he was so young).  We called the man that was arranging the hosting and spoke for quite some time.  He told us that we could certainly host Albina and Alina and made arrangements to come visit us in our home.

Meanwhile, I showed my kids the pictures and told them about the hosting program.  They all had a similar reaction to myself while looking at the pictures and immediately wanted to know if we would consider adopting these kids.  We explained that it was too soon to make such a decision, but that we were certainly open to adopting if we felt right about things as we moved forward.

Meanwhile, I can't stop thinking about these kids.  These kids I've never met.  Never did I expect to wake up this morning and suddenly consider adopting three kids from the Ukraine.  What a life altering thought…

This blog is the story of our Adoption Adventure!

Maksym

Alina

Albina