Welcome to all readers...  I know I have personally spent many late nights over the last year combing every blog, every website, trying to find information about adoption, Ukraine, adopting in the Ukraine, timelines, SDA/SPARDAC/NAC- just so I felt like I had some understanding about what my family and I were about to get ourselves into. 

Family (and those of you that know the story) can skip this section.  Let me introduce myself- my name is Pamela, my husband is Paul and my 9yo BioSon is Jake.  We decided last January that we wanted to add to our family- and I decided that I had NO desire to be pregnant again- so we started down the path of adoption.  Given both Paul and I lived and worked internationally- having an international child seemed natural.  After reading everything we could on the various countries- we decided on the Ukraine.  Today is October 29th- and it has taken us 11 months to get to here. 

A brief timeline:
1/2/07     first contacted adoption agency
1/18/07   signed the contract with the agency
2/4/07     had all documents submitted for homestudy
3/5/07     received approved homestudy
4/12/07   received USCIS approval/documents sent for US approval and translation
....after numerous rewrites, new letters, updated copies...
7/30/07   final documents delivered to Ukraine
8/20/07   dossier submitted to SDA
10/10/07 received registration number and travel date

After numerous dossier documents, fingerprints, home studies and conversations with Dawn (our adoption coordinator)- we applied and were successfully accepted to adopt a little girl between 4 and 8 years old.  It was October 12th, that we finally received our registration number and appointment date - DECEMBER 13th.

We are going to spend the next 8 weeks preparing, packing, planning- and just trying to stay sane!  Stay with us for more!