Day 1 - The adventure begins

We want a family together. After many attempts to have one on our own, we decided in early 2008 to take that wonderful leap to adopt a needy child(ren) from the Ukraine. In August 2008 we left London to move to Las Vegas with the goal of starting the adoption process from the US.
Adoptions in the US are much more accepted and somewhat easier than in the UK, so after spending a year in Las Vegas, researching, saving money etc., we initiated the process. First thing we needed to do was to get married (Duh!), which we did in the summer of 2009. Homestudy, background checks, visits to doctors and shrinks, and bloodwork - you name it. everything about us was checked, notarized and apostilled. You name it, they checked on it and double checked, no problem. We were determined to add a new Dannemiller or two to our little family! The adoption agency we used (Ally and Alla at Adoption Ark) were very helpful and guided us through the process, which took us until May 2010 when we submitted our final dossier for translation and approval by the Ukrainian Agency.
On June 24, 2010 we were accepted and put into the queue for an appointment with the SDA (the Government Agency for Adoptions). In early July we were notified that we were approved for adoption and assigned a date to come to Kiev for our intitial appointment which was August 11th!! They told us to plan on being in country for about 5 weeks, so we immediately booked our flights, requested a 6 week leave of absence from Bechtel, and started getting ready for our wild and crazy adventure to Kiev. We would leave Vegas on Sunday August 8th and arrive Monday morning on the 9th (which would have been Dave's father's 83rd birthday). We bought round trip tickets from Vegas to London but only a one way ticket from London to Kiev, cuz we didn't know when we would be leaving or with whom. So the plan is to fly back to London some time in mid September to spend a few days with the new kid(s) to introduce them to Emma's family before returning back to our home in Vegas. A home we hope will be filled with the sounds of children and family. So here we go. I will try to post something every day to keep everybody up to date.