The SDA posted a notice, which was later confirmed by the US Embassy in Kyiv that they were indeed accepting new dossiers. The problem was that there were a bunch of new rules...most of us in the adoption community expected something like this since there was no conceivable way for the SDA to handle the impending deluge of dossiers January 1. The problem was, no one was sure WHAT the new rules were going to be.
The new rules included:
1. facilitators now had to hand deliver dossiers
2. facilitators had to call a specific hotline to make an appointment to deliver the dossier
3. facilitators could only submit two dossiers per month
4. all dossier documents must be valid for at least 6 months AFTER submission
5. a copy of housing proof is recommended to be included (read: required)
So, after a few days of frantic phone calls to our homestudy agency, an entire day of paperchasing and visits to the apostille office and post office, the dossier was completed and mailed as quick as the holidays would allow to our facilitator in Donestk oblast. I checked the tracking number this morning, and it left Kyiv yesterday morning for its final destination. So, it is ahead of schedule according to the post office estimates. Our facilitator has a early/mid January appointment to register our dossier - she was one of the few lucky facilitators to get through on this "hotline" and get an appointment. Many facilitators are not able to get through, and those that have gotten through are being told there are no more dossier appointments until March. Go us!If everything gets to our facilitator in time and the SDA accepts our dossier with no issues, we should have a March or April appointment to bring Belle and Cinderella home!In SnowWhite news, we got to talk to her on the phone for a few minutes thanks to our Ukrainian doctor friend! When we asked what her favorite subject in school was her response was "I want a bicycle." LOL Then she said drawing/art was her favorite subject, but only after making clear that she wanted a bike! She is definately my girl hahaAs to her paperwork - I have every person I know in Ukraine working on it. According to the actual family code of Ukraine, the police report is NOT necessary for SnowWhite to be released for adoption. Since the bio family has made no attend to remove her from the orphanage system for more than 6 months, that is enough for the judge to terminate parental rights. Our facilitator is going to talk to the director of her internat at the end of January about this. The Ukrainian doctor is also going to call the regional police about the police report. Our friend G is also pressing on the detsky dom director to check on the police report again. LOL so they are getting seriously pestered by "my" people. the squeaky wheel and all.
So, I never got around to finishing our trip story...I will eventually :) It has been SOOO busy around here. We have decided to switch to a new facilitator for our adoption - we liked Sasha, but he was not very pro-active and didn't keep us "in the loop" very much. Our new facilitator- Masha - is VERY pro-active and emails us almost daily! She is working on getting our two oldest moved to the same orphanage so that the adoption will be faster and easier. She also caught some problems in our dossier that we need to fix - better now than when we are in court in Ukraine! In summary, she is AWSOME. We have been updating all of our dossier documents as they start to expire in January. Some of the documents are "good" until June, so we are going to submit the "old" documents while we wait for the updates to come in. When the updated documents eventually arrive, we will send them in to Ukraine. But, for registration purposes, many of our documents are still good. I'm going to the Secretary of State's office today to get all the notary stamps "apostilled" as that is a required level of authentication required by the Hague convention and Ukraine. It just verifies that the notaries are indeed REAL notaries. I also need 
to get our GBI state police clearance renewed. This is one of the first documents to expire in January, but it is a tedious process to update - I have to go to the GBI office, pick up the fingerprinting cards, take them to the Atlanta police department to actually have the fingerprints done, then take the completed cards back to GBI and pay them $30 to run the prints through the state system...then wait 10-15 days for the results/document. A lot of driving ugh.We have also been busy preparing for a Ukrainian visitor! A pediatrician from a special needs baby house in Kharkiv Ukraine is staying in our home for a week and receiving training with Andrew at Emory hospital in pediatric neurology. I know of this doctor and his orphanage through two different charity groups - Life2Orphans and a smaller group called OrphanBaby. I've arranged for training for him at Emory, CHOA, the Marcus Institutes IA medicine clinic, and a trip to MedShare to get some free medical equipment and supplies 
