It was warmer on Sunday so Jeff used the four-wheeler to pull Matthew and his cousins, Katie and Emma, around on the sled. They had a blast, they even like to be dumped off. Matthew laughed even with a face full of snow. I remember doing the same thing with my Dad except we had a three-wheeler. They even built snowmen.

Here we go again!
January 29, 2008
Last Tuesday I received an email from our facilitator in Ukraine. He was wondering if I thought it was possible to get all of our documents ready in under two weeks. His reason was this: The Ukrainian government just changed the way they accept dossiers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with international adoptions this happens frequently. Last fall they decided that they would only accept a certain number of dossiers from each foreign country. The US was at the top of the list with approximately 475 dossiers to be accepted in 2008. But we weren't worried the number was only slightly down from 2007 and since we are adopting the siblings of a child we previously adopted we weren't included in the quota. Now the new rule says that there will be approximately. 1475 dossiers total accepted from all foreign countries. I don't know if this is a decrease or not, I haven't been able to find out. We still weren't worried, since we are still trying to adopt Matthew's siblings, we should be excluded from the quota. Well now we aren't sure, so we are trying to assemble our dossier to get it submitted for a 2008 slot, just to make sure. As of last week 1250 of the slots were already filled. I have almost all of our documents ready. I am still waiting on our marriage license from Nevada, but almost everything else should be ready to sent to Pierre for Apostille by tomorrow (hopefully). Then to Ukraine by Fed-Ex by the end of the week--if we get the marriage license. So send off lots of prayers for us to get all of the documents so we get a 2008 slot. We have lots of faith in our facilitator--a different one from the one we used with Matthew.
Last week I ran around like crazy getting these documents, then Matthew got sick again. He has hardly ever been sick since we adopted him. Now he has had a reoccurring sinus infection since before Christmas. And being the generous child that he is, He shared all of them with me. He was sick Thursday on and then Saturday I got it too. Our teeth hurt because our sinuses were infected again. So back to the doctor again (which was ok since I had a form for her to sign too). This time I had a sinus infection and Matthew has one too with his first ever ear infection. We watched Scooby-Doo for most of the day. We drank lots of Sprite-which Matthew thinks is a big treat because he isn't usually allowed to drink much pop. Did you know that in one afternoon you can watch episodes of Scooby-Doo from 1970 all the way up to 2008? I didn't even notice much of a difference-except for in the 1970 episode only two characters move at a time.
Matthew can now spell cat, mom, pop, and tea-which we've been drinking lots of decaffeinated hot tea to help clear our heads.
Jeff and I would like to thank the generous people who have sent us a donation, we really appreciate it. There have only been a few-but every penny counts. Thank you and God Bless!

Here's Matthew and his cousins from Colorado. We met in Kearney, NE to celebrate Christmas a couple weekends ago. They loved the pool.

I love this one!

Jeff and Matthew pushing snow on the four-wheeler.

Here's my nephew Ben with his peewee wrestling medal for 3rd, he is 4 and was barely beat by a six year old for 2nd. I wish I had a picture of his brother with his medal, sorry Caleb.

Doesn't our house look pretty in the winter?

January 18, 2008

Matthew is so funny! A couple of days ago, my sister Holly was doing an evaluation on him. She is in physical therapy school and she had to do the evaluation for an assignment. She gave him a piece of paper and pencil then asked him to draw mom. He quickly wrote "MOM" and handed it back to her. He is not a coloring and drawing kid-he is a running and climbing kid. I thought it was pretty funny.

He is also smart, sometimes too smart. For example, I said "In two minutes you are going to bed" He looked at me and said "how about three?" So I said "alright three." After a minute or two he came back and said "how about four?"

He is a backseat driver and can remember how to get anywhere-even if he's only been there once before. He is learning left from right by telling us which way to turn.

I don't have any news on the older boys--we are plugging away at the paperwork-waiting for our homestudy and our immigration approval. Vasya turned 15 last Sunday-the 13th. Jeff took his picture off the fridge and we sang happy birthday to him. When we were finished I said "hopefully by next year Vasya will be with us and we can give him a cake" and Matthew replied "and a car!" I don't think Vasya will be getting a car--even though it will be his 16th. But I thought it funny that at 4 or 15, boys think the same.

January 7th, 2008
It's is official! We are going to try to adopt Matthew's brothers. Our homestudy is almost done, we have filed our I600A(petition for an orphan visa) with US Immigration, and I am working on our dossier (collection of notarized and apostilled documents needed by the Ukrainian Government to approve us to adopt).

We still haven't learned anything about Alex-except we think he is 11. We know Vasya is 14, and will be 15 in January. I do have a photo of Vasya but I don't want to post it on our blog. So if you want to see it -email me and I will send it to you. Matthew looks so much like Vasya. In fact when I ask him who the picture (Of Vasya) is of he says "Me".

The boys will not have a future in Ukraine if they remain there. Most orphans age out of the system at 16 and can not work until 18. So most die of starvation, drugs or suicide by the age of 21. We knew that Matthew had two siblings when we adopted him. We have been praying that God would lead us to them if they needed us. THEY NEED US! We are hoping to be able to travel to Odessa, Ukraine sometime in 2008 to adopt them. We need to save a LOT($25,000 or more) of money, collect a lot of documents, and pray that things will go in the right direction.

I have added a donation button of the sidebar of our blog, we are collecting things for a rummage this spring, I am teaching piano lessons, and working at Scott and Angie's hunting lodge http://www.mriveroutdoors.com/. If anyone has suggestions for us, let me know.