Our Ukraine Adoption 2004

WE'RE BACK...

2008-09-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 7, 2004

Hello everyone! As I am sure most of you know, we are safe and sound at home in America! YEAH!!!! I couldn't update because our computer has been broken until today. We arrived in Atlanta on September 14th. We have been home 3 weeks and are loving it! Alyssa has done excellent! Well, she has her moments, but that is to be expected. All in all, she has done better than I could ever ask of her. She has blended right into our family just like she has always been there. We are so proud of her.
Her eating habits have seemed to improve. While in Ukraine, she would eat ANYTHING you put in front of her. When we got home, she wouldn't eat anything except for bread and bananas. Everything else she would spit out. But she is doing better and is trying more things.
She is learning English fast! She still speaks a little Russian, but less of it everyday, which I think is kindof sad. We put her in preschool already which she loves! Her first day of school was on her birthday on Sept. 29th. She turned 3. We had a huge drop-in welcome home shower/b-day party. A lot of people came and she got A LOT of great stuff!
Well, that is all for now. I have to check my e-mail I haven't checked in 3 weeks. I will send some recent photos soon.
Julie Nolte

THE DAY WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR....

2008-09-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

SEPTEMBER 10, 2004

We are officially parents now! YEAH!!!!! And let me tell you, it is the best feeling in the world!!!! We had court on the 8th and it went great! The judge waived the 30 days so we are back in Kiev now. We flew here from Simferopol on the 9th(a 1.5 hour flight sure beats a 18 hour train ride) and the tickets were only $144 for all three of us.Alyssa is doing great! We couldn't have asked for a better daughter. She has opened up to us so much in the past couple of days! She is always smiling,laughing and singing. While visiting her in the orphanage, we sang the ABC's to her A LOT and now she sings the whole song to herself all the time (as good as she can at least) :)Our flight leaves out of here on Monday afternoon. We have to overnight in Paris, so we will be home Tues. night at 7:20pm. But that too is a huge prayer request because we can only leave on Monday if we get Alyssa's visa on time Monday afternoon. If not, we will have to leave later in the week.We love everyone and miss you all!!!!
Chris, Julie and Alyssa

THIS IS GETTING HARD..

2008-09-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

SEPTEMBER 4, 2004

Hello everybody! We are so ready to come home now!!! We are getting very tired of going to visit Alyssa 2 times a day and having to leave her. It is getting harder everyday. Alyssa is realizing that we aren't just play mates and that we are her Mommy and Daddy. She is starting to get emotionally attached to us now so she is crying a lot more. It is really sad :( She is doing great though! Talking more and more everyday. Her personality is so cute :) Please continue to pray that everything goes smoothly and that we will be home soon. Court is in 4 days! YEAH!!!! If everything goes as planned we could be home in a week to a week and a half.To family and friends.....for those who asked, Alyssa wears a size 4T. 3T fits her perfectly, so I think a 4T would be best. We miss ya'll and can't wait to see everybody!
Love,Chris, Julie and Alyssa

IT'S A GIRL!!!!

2008-09-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 22, 2004

We accepted the little girl we met yesterday :) Her name is Olessya so we are going to call her Alyssa. Her full name will be Jayley Alyssa Nolte. She is such a sweet little girl! She already calls us Papa and Mama! When we first met her she didn't want to go to us and she cried a little bit. We knew that was a good thing though since that meant she was attached to the caregiver. She warmed up to us pretty quickly. The caregiver told us she was crying for us last night. We went back today and she ran to us smiling :) She will be 3years old on Sept. 29, so we will be celebrating her birthday as soon as we get back. She is very healthy! Her only problem is she has a mild allergy to oranges and chocolate. Big deal!! :) We weren't expecting a child as healthy as this! We are very lucky to become her parents. She is very smart also. They tell us she is speaking full sentences. She won't talk much to us because she knows we don't understand her, but when she gets excited she will talk. It's so cute to hear her speak in Russian. She is a big girl. They definately feed them well at this orphanage :) She isn't malnourished by any means. We will post pictures hopefully tomorrow. We don't know when we will be home yet. Court should probably be around Sept 9th Sveta said, so hopefully we will be back around the middle of September.We will update more tomorrow!
Love,Chris, Julie and Alyssa

To the Ukrainain Angels group: When we went on the playground with Alyssa andshe was around the other children in her groupa, they were mean to her. Theynoticed that we put her hair in pigtails and tried to pull them out. Then 2 ofthe kids were spiting at her. Is this a normal reaction for the other kids? Doyou think it is just jealousy? It really bothered us so we took her in to aseperate room to play. When we drop her off they play with her fine we think. It only seems to be when we are around. Also, if anyone knows any goodresturants in Simferopol, please let us know.

WE GOT A REFERRAL!!!!

2008-09-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 20, 2004
We had our appointment this morning and got a referral to see a 2 year old girl in the Crimea region. She will be 3 on September 29th. We are so excited. We leave tonight at midnight and should get there by 8:00 in the morning. This is what we know about her so far....she is healthy (she was diagnosed with dermatitis and a food allergy when she was a baby...probably just a rash and bad formula). She has light hair and grey eyes. Her name is Olessa, not sure how to spell it. Her birth mother was young and gave her up when she was 3 day sold. The little girl was supposed to be adopted by Ukrainians until recently. Not sure if they changed their minds or if something fell through. We feel good about this but do not want to get our hopes up. Please pray that she is our little girl and that we can come home soon with her. Oh, they also showed us are ally cute 3 year old boy who was from western Ukraine. He had dark hair and big dark eyes. We would have chosen to see him in a heartbeat but our hearts went toward the girl :) We are traveling in a car. We checked on train tickets and flights to Simferopol, but since Ukraine's independence day is Tues,everything was booked. Sveta said that a lot of people are headed down therefor the weekend. It should take us 8 hours to get there by car. Also pray that our driver doesn't drive like we are in a video game. He drove us today and Iowas on pins and needles the whole time. Chris loved it though! We will update everyone tomorrow!

AND STILL.......NO NEWS

2008-09-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 17, 2004

Hello everyone! Just a quick update to say that we will not have an appointment until Thursday or Friday. Supposedly the Adoption Center isn't seeing families who are coming back for there 2nd appointment until then. Oh well, everything happens for a reason right? We went to the beach all day today and got lots of sun :) We may go back again tomorrow. Anything to pass the time. We will update again soon.
Chris and Julie Nolte

HAVING FUN AROUNG KYIV :)

2008-09-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 15, 2004

Hey ya'll! Hee Hee! I had to say that, people would look at me like I were crazy if I said that around here. We still don't know when our appointment is yet. We do know that it is NOT on Monday. We are praying for Tuesday. Sveta said that this is normal and that everything happens for a reason. She said that there are just not a lot of new children available right now and that they are waiting until there are more children to schedule our appointment. We totally believe that the Lord is in control and are just waiting on his timing. I will say that we are having fun though. After one day of laying around in the apartment we knew we would go insane if we didn't get out. So....yesterday we got brave and took the Metro to the Hydro Park. It is like a water park with beaches on the river and a lot of vendors. We spent all day there. There was an outside gym where men were doing gymnastics, they were really good. Every one's in the Olympic spirit around here. We then took the Metro back to our apartment, ate dinner at McDonald's, watched 3 episodes of Friends on our portable DVD player, then went to bed. Today we took the Metro into the center of Kiev. We ate lunch at Arizona BBQ. There were a lot of Americans in there. I think most were missionaries. We walked around the city and found the monasteries. I guess that is what they are called. Huge temples with gold on the top. I guess since it is Sunday people were going there to pray. We walked some more and found an underground mall. They have really nice name brand stores in it. After that we went outside where a big festival is going on. They have blocked the streets off and people are walking around. There is live music and vendors. It's sort of like walking around Six Flags without the rides. We are still here now, but decided to come inside from the heat for a little bit. Kiev is really nice and we are enjoying ourselves.We miss everyone and hope everyone is doing well. And keep those e-mails coming! :) Oh and we have pictures this time! They will be in the next e-mail.
Julie and Chris Nolte
PS- One really gross thing I had to share is that they sell dried up whole fish on the streets for people to eat. And they do eat it, we have seen it a lot. I think the fish is salt cured. But still, it hasn't been cooked. GROSS!

STILL NOTHING....

2008-09-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 13, 2004

Hello again! We still don't know anything yet. We will find out tonight if our appointment is on Monday. We hope it is, but we also know that whenever it is,that is when God will have our child ready. We moved from our tiny hotel to an apartment today. The apartment is nice! It is huge and clean with a kitchenand a washing machine! YAY!!! I wish I had more to tell you guys, but we haven't done too much. We are thinking about going to the beach tomorrow. Sorry, still no pictures :( I keep forgetting them. I will post them by the weekend though. I hope everyone is doing good and we will update later. Please continue to pray for us! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! for all of your e-mails! We love to read them!!!!!

NOTHING YET

2008-09-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 12, 2004

Hello everyone! Don't have much to update right now. We still don't know when our 2nd appointment will be. We are just trying to stay busy to keep fromlosing our minds :) We went into downtown Kiev today and ate at TGI Friday's. It was very good! Thanks again for all of the thoughts and prayers! It means a lot! We have read everybody's e-mails but just don't have time to write back individually. We love to get the e-mails though! Please keep writing to us!We love ya'll!
Chris and Julie

OUR APPOINTMENT

2008-09-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 10, 2004

Hello everyone!! Thank you all for your kind wishes and prayers. I can't writemuch because the internet cafe is closing in a few minutes.
Unfortunately we did not find a child we wanted to visit on our appointmenttoday. Our appointment was at 3:30 so we basically got the leftovers from the17 other families that had appointments today. Our translator warned us of this so we were prepared. They did show us 2 pictures of girls who were both 2 years old. One girl had mild cerebral palsy and digestive problems and the other had something wrong with her brain when they did a brain scan. We decided this was more than we could handle so we are going to go back for a second appointment. Everyone at the Adoption Center were so nice and our translator Sveta is awesome! We are in very high spirits and feel very confident in the decision we made and we know we will find our child/children soon! Our next appointment will be either Thurs, Fri or Mon. Please continue to keep us in your prayers and hope everyone is doing good. In the meantime we are having to get used to the Ukrainian way of life. It's not so bad. We would like an apartment with a fridge and a washer though :) Sveta said that if the next appointment doesn't work out she will move us to an apartment that has at least a fridge :) Ok, well that's all for now!
Till next time,Chris and Julie Nolte

WE ARE IN UKRAINE!!

2008-09-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 9, 2004

Hello everybody, we just wanted to let you know that we are here and are doing fine. We stayed in Paris two days and that was nice. We walked the entire cityin one day! Talk about worn out!! We had to have walked 100 miles :) Ir wasworth it though because it was very beautiful. Paris is such a romantic place and they have neat little restaurants and awesome crepes and French Onion soup. The architecture is amazing! We may go back when we have more than 2 days to spend there.
We landed in Kiev yesterday and Sasha picked us up at the airport. He checked us into our hotel which is TINY but is nicer than we expected. There are two twin beds which we pushed together and the sheets are very hard. The shower isweird, it is a short deep tub with a hand held shower head. We have no fridgeand so far we cannot find ice, so we have been drinking warm water and coke. Wehave no washer so we have to wash everything by hand in the sink and hang it ona clothes line on the balcony. We are in a nice area on the Dnipro River. Weate at a nice little pizza place last night and for a large pizza, cheese bread and 4 cokes we only paid 5 US dollars. We thought that was a pretty good deal! We have no air conditioning, but the weather is pretty cool here (we should have brought warmer clothes) and there is a nice breeze when we open the windows. The people here are beautiful and very interesting. Everyone has been so niceand they try hard to understand our English. We are going to try and find a McDonalds in a few minutes. We are craving American food already. Vlad (our main translator) called us this morning and said he wasn't sure what time ourappointment is tomorrow but he would call before 7:00 this evening to let us know. We will update again after our appointment to let you know how it goes. Say a huge prayer for us that we will be shown healthy children to go visit andthat the director will be in a good mood tomorrow.
Talk to ya soon,
Chris and Julie