18 Days Before We Leave

The time is coming near. Only 18 days before we leave for London and then 26 days until our appointment with the NAC in Ukraine. We are getting more and more excited about becoming parents.




Robert and I have been extremely busy getting everything together for our trip and with the house for when we return. The past few weeks we have finished renovating our bathroom, landscaped our front yard, rugged the stairwell going up the the 4th bedroom in our house, painted the stairwell, renovated & painted 2 closets, hung some closet doors, assembled 3 radiator covers, booked our hotel at Newark Airport for the night before we leave, and picked up the rest of our travel supplies at Walmart and finished setting up the children's rooms. We still have clean up, organizing and child proofing the house to do. We're almost done with everything, Thank God!



It's so hard to describe the excitement that we have in becoming parents. I am so amazed at how much I love our children already and I don't even know what they look like. God has already conceived them in our hearts and knows which children He has for us. I believe that He will direct our paths and lead us to the children He has intended for us when we have our appointment in Ukraine. This whole process has certainly been a walk of faith for sure. In the book of Hebrews 11:1 in the bible it says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." So even though we haven't seen our children yet we know and believe that we are already parents of two healthy children. =)

There Is No Substitute To A Father's Love

Happy Father’s Day to all you Dad’s out there.



I’d like to say that there is no substitute for a father’s love. I’ve noticed over the years when planning for the arrival of friends and family’s babies that the expectant mother gets all of the attention and the father gets overlooked. If it wasn’t for the father, the child wouldn’t be growing in the mother’s belly. Our fathers are the ones we go to for wisdom, guidance, encouragement and protection. We as children, whole heartedly believe our fathers can do anything and will always come through for us in any circumstance in our lives because they always do. A father’s presence in a home is greatly respected by his children (that’s why my mom always said, “Just wait until your father get’s home”), and when a he’s not there he is greatly missed.



It’s been 26 years this month since my dad has been gone to be with our heavenly Father and let me just say he is greatly missed by all of us. There is simply no substitute of his love and presence he has brought to our family and has left in our hearts. My dad was a person of great love and affection to all of us and expressed his love for us by joking around, wrestling with us, teasing us, teaching us, encouraging us, being patient, supporting our family and disciplining us when needed. Many times my dad would come home from work and would ask me to rub his horrendously stinky feet (believe me that is an understatement). We would go back and forth and finally I’d give in and hold my breath the entire time just to make his feet feel better. Oh how I wish to be able to smell his feet again. =) Many people that knew my father say that I am a lot like him, however, let me just say…My feet don’t stink like his use to. Thank God for that.



Over the past 6 ½ years I have been blessed with another father and that is my father-in-law. He is a blessing in our lives and is loved dearly by Robert and I. A man of great wisdom and love for his family and has loved me as his own daughter since the day I met him. Since I take everything to heart, I am very touched by his love and acceptance into the Millilo family and am glad that I have him as my second dad. We love you dad very much and there is simply no substitute of your love and presence in our lives. Happy Father’s Day!

Documents on the way to Ukraine & House updates

Yippie! Our updated documents are finished being apositiled (certified by the state) and are now on their way to Ukraine to be translated and submitted with the rest of our approved documents. I pray and believe that our updated documents will be approved by the National Adoption Center and submitted with the rest of our approved documents the first time because we have supernatural favor in Jesus name.



Now that our documents are out of my hands and being approved by the NAC in Ukraine, Robert and I can concentrate more on finishing all of the projects in our house we started. Since we finished painting and rugging our 4th bedroom we moved the guest bedroom furniture upstairs and set up the bedroom. I since replaced the rest of the ceiling tiles and Robert and I replaced the closet doors to finish the bedroom. WOW...what a difference time and effort can make to a room that was previously dark paneling with bare plywood floors.



We also painted the baby's room closet and touched up some of the trim work. Robert put one of the crib/toddler bed's together. It looks so nice! Last year we bought 2 matching 2 years old crib/toddler beds at a yard sale with bedding for both and Winnie the Pooh theme rug, mobiles, wall hangings, light switch covers, curtains, pictures and a nightlight all for about $225.00. When the former owners of the cribs found out that we were adopting 2 children, the lady dug out more of the pieces to her Winnie the Pooh theme out of her garage and kept adding to the pile of accessories all for the same price they were going to charge us for just the 2 cribs. When Robert and I got in our van to go home that day with our blessings from above we just looked at each other in amazement because God had fullfilled our prayer and goal in mind for the day Exceedingly and Abundantly more than what we could have asked for or thought of ourselves....especially because the cribs are good quality cribs made by Baby Italia. I'm getting so excited to see at least one of the children's rooms come together. Our next project will be our other child's room. Even though we did get bedding for both cribs in Winnie the Pooh theme, depending on the age and gender of our older child would depend on if they would need a toddler bed and what to decorate and what theme to go with. So we will keep that room simple for now and just set up the toddler bed and finish the basics of the room until we get back from Ukraine with our children. Well, it's getting late so I'm signing off for now.