The hubs came down with an illness which is so rare for him that I could not think of a single time in our whole marriage that he has taken two sick days in a row.....in fact I only remember one other time he took a sick day (one!). On the eve of that sickness, our house flooded due to the heavy rains in the area. I would not for one second compare our mess with what others have had with rivers flowing thru their homes and such but water is messy (clear or not) none-the-less. We wet-vacked water out from 830am-1am .....over 15 hours of pure "suckness" and poor Pat (with some very wonderful friends help) lugged copius amounts of water up the stairs and out the door over and over and over..... We are just going to replace a few baseboards and call it done but the aftermath mess is taking its toll on me. I am not an organized person by nature and I had finally gotten the basement/play area about where I wanted it with a place for everything, a "system". AND now, not so much. Oh well, trying to be thankful for no mud and the fact that we were home from church that day due to Pat's illness. Little blessings.
And, then there was the garage sale this last weekend. Can you just picture the chaos our house was in! :) I am so lucky to have a laid back husband who is very patient and willing to jump in and get me motivated at any time. We made almost 800.00 at the garage sale although "we" did not...only 50.00 plus a percentage of the other friends sales. Typical of my garage sale experiences but love having the junk gone regardless.
We said "until we meet again" to our very fav Kaz students that we were introduced to several years ago prior to our adoption in Kaz. They both graduated from UK and were married while they were here but not to each other. Dalel has already returned home to Astana and his wife. Dasha and Al are hanging out til the end of the summer hoping to be allowed to do grad school.
It has been such a blessing to have them in town and see them and talk all things Kaz (or not). We are glad to have even more friends in Kazakhstan so that when we return one day with Nick, we can have dear friends to visit too!
So besides all of the big life stuff that just happens, the adoption continues to proceed. We now have our dossier requirements which seem to be pretty "usual".....we will have to do some of our paperwork over from the homestudy as they want the "freshest" dates on them as possible. If I hadn't done this before, I would not understand but I do "get it" although that does not make it any less frustrating to do. The repetitive paperwork and multiple documents that essentially say the same thing are a little price to pay for the life of a sweet child.
We do have to get a psych eval which was not required for Kaz when we went so that should be interesting if not hilarious. We may have been qualified mentally to be parents before Nick, but now, I don't know if we will pass! ;)
I am going to try and get as much done as possible in the less than two weeks we have left before school is out. I am not sure how much will be accomplished once Nick is home 24/7 and the Star Wars playfest begins.
We are so at peace with our decision to go South this time although the pictures and stories from several of my friends recent mission trip to Kaz are just about to kill me. Pat just wants me to stop looking at them. There are so many little ones who need love and a home. Kaz has recently stopped accepting new dossiers while they switch to the Hague guidelines. We probably would have had delays due to that change and who knows what is going to happen with Russian adoptions so we are thankful that at least at this time, we are headed in another direction. God knew that those kind of delays would have driven me crazy! :)
The blog may be a little quiet while I finish up some of the dossier stuff but we promise to keep you up-to-date on the adoption progress as soon as we know anything exciting. We will go private again once we have a referral and such but for now, we are an open book! :)
