Big News

Let the roller coaster ride continue!

Lots has happened this weekend in the Layne adoption journey!

We got word from our stateside contact for Reece's Rainbow, that the cabinet in Ukraine decided on Friday, July 8th to continue processing adoptions for those families that have submitted their paperwork (dossiers) to the government.  The announcement will be made official this week, but we were told that we will be allowed to continue and travel during the period of time the country is restructuring the way they do adoptions!

Today, when I looked on the RR website, our family's sponsorship page said "Hope to travel at the end of July".  WHAT???  That is wonderful news, scary news!  We had prepared our hearts for a longer wait, telling ourselves it would allow us more time for our Adoption Tax credit to arrive, and to have the funds we need to travel.  After e-mailing, I was told that late July is a possibility!  We could be given travel dates in the next few weeks.  I would assume our travel date will be issued in a couple weeks and we will have a couple weeks after that before we are to arrive in country, since there are two weeks of families that have submitted before us.  (But, I have been wrong before!)

On Friday night as Doug and I were discussing the new news when I began thinking about that someone little who we might be bringing home.  We had talked about ages of kiddos.  Since I teach special education at our local school, I would really like for our child to have a preschool teacher before he/she possibly enters my classroom.  That way he/she has an opportunity to establish a student/teacher relationship understanding before Mama is the teacher.  Our ideal age would be 1-4 years old.  Our dossier says 2-48 months. We considered a 4 month old little girl several weeks ago.  There was a time in my life when I wanted nothing more than to have a baby, and then as I looked at the little one, I wasn't sure that I would know what to do with an infant!
Andrea let me know of a couple new kiddos in Max's area that were available.  After talking with Doug, praying, and getting a good night's rest to make a decision, we contacted Andrea on Saturday morning to let her know that we wanted to pursue the intent to adopt a little guy.  Yes, that means we will even the score in our home--2 boys, 2 girls!  Our family will look like this- big boy-age 14, Hannah-6, Mila-5, little boy-age 14 months!  We've talked about many name possibilities for 'little man', but I'll leave that for another post!

SO....with our new news I realize there is much to do!  I need to finish 'summer cleaning' the house, begin going over items for trip #1, and get things ready for school to prepare for my absence!  YIKES!