Thursday, May 25, 2006

I promise not to make you cry again...

I probably shouldn't promise that so early in the game. How about I promise not to make you cry for a few...er...days? I was going to say months, but then I thought I might have something sweet to share, and I don't want to get in trouble for breaking any promises.

The newest rumors: The new SDA is supposed to open up June 24--yes, that would be the same SDA who was supposed to open up the beginning of May. What can you say about governments? I hate to destroy the hopes of some of you out there, but the opening of the SDA doesn't really mean a whole lot for us. One of my coworkers heard they were opening late June and said "oh, so you could have kids by July!". Ummm, no. Aim for December, maybe February and you're probably closer. Unless of course you mean July 2007. ;)

There are at least 600 dossiers already registered with the old NAC being transferred to the new SDA. That equates to 600 families waiting to get appointment dates, all ahead of us. It's going to be awhile. But don't give up hope. There might be a small loophole we can squeeze through. Currently, it appears that when the SDA opens, they will have the same restrictions on US families as before the NAC shut down--namely, the only children allowed to be adopted by US citizens are those over the age of 10, siblings of children you have already adopted, and special needs kids. If true, those of the 600 requesting young, healthy children may not get appointments (this is only speculation). We're still open to adopting special needs kids, and have a couple of special needs that are near and dear to our hearts for a variety of reasons. So we'll see. No guarantees on when we'll succeed, but we're not giving up.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Waiting

Usually I do pretty well with waiting through all of this, but every once in a while something gets me. This one did.

Cheerios commercial

Monday, May 15, 2006

Updates

Whew! I thought things would slow down once April was over, but we're still moving full steam ahead! The clothing drive was a few weeks ago and we collected nearly 3 tons of clothing--not bad for a first drive. We got a great response at the church and the staff has agreed to put it on the calendar for next year. All of the clothing we collected is being sent to Brovary, Ukraine, which is a suburb of Kyiv (also spelled Kiev). The really cool part about that is that we have visited the clothing store and the church where these clothes will be distributed. We spent the night in Brovary while we were in Ukraine in 2003.

A couple of weekends ago, we coordinated the team-building events at our church retreat. We had a blast at the retreat, in part because we got to play with everyone's kids! At one point we were in the pool, and were watching 6 kids between the two of us. It was great! Everyone keeps saying if I watch their kids I won't want so many, but I'm still thinking a houseful (read: 6 or so) would be fantastic. It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend. We played some tennis, softball, mini golf, played in the pool, and ate so much food. We had a great time with the team-building activites (especially the marshmallow towers).

This weekend being Mother's Day, and my sister's graduation, and her birthday(!), I drove down to Spfd for lunch with some of the family on Saturday. Unfortunately, it was a very short visit since we already had dinner plans with some friends of ours. One of them we hadn't seen for several months as he's been in Iraq, and we were so glad to get to see him. Welcome home, Scott! :)