Our updated documents are on their way. I just checked the Fed-Ex website and they left Sioux City yesterday, and left Nashville this morning.

I only ended up redoing four documents, the rest don't expire until the end of July. So as long as our facilitator gets them submitted by then we'll be fine. Here's what should happen next (but as we know nothing ever quite happens the way it should in Ukriane adoptions).
-Our facilitator has permission from the SDA to turn in our dossier any time after he gets our documents from Fed-Ex (around July 11).
-Once he turns the dossier in, the SDA has around 20 business days (Mon-Thurs) to accept the dossier granting that they don't find any mistakes.
-After they accept it they will inform our facilitator of our appointment date. This could be anytime from three weeks to four months. Most appointments have been scheduled for three months after the SDA accepts the dossier. We are praying for an appointment in August or September so that the boys won't miss to much school. Please pray for a quick appointment date for us.

Fortunately our marriage license wasn't one of the documents we needed redone, since it's apostille still hasn't arrived back for Nevada. Wouldn't you think that Nevada would have an efficent way of processing marriage licenses and apostilles, they must do tons of them?

ANOTHER MIRACLE! Our marriage license came in the mail today!!!!! One week from the time I ordered it--last time it took forever. Now I need to mail it back to Las Vegas to get it apostilled, I don't understand why the Clark County Recorder just can't take or mail it to the Secretary of State instead of to us but that is how it works. So tomorrow morning I will mail it back to NV for apostilling and hope we get it back by the time I get everything else done. We have our physicals on Monday plus an interview for an adoption grant from a church in Sioux Center, Iowa. Pray that we get the grant we could definately use it.

Here's two pictures of Vasya, the second one is only a few weeks old. (Yes I know he needs a haircut). But isn't he handsome and Matthew looks so much like him. I can't wait until I can post a picture of all three of them together.

Here's Matthew and Emma sleeping in Matthew's play kitchen.

Katie and I were baking a rhubarb desert while they were napping.

We went camping in the Black Hills a couple of weekends ago with Jeff's family. We borrowed this camper from a neighbor. It kept us warm but was a little tight for three of us. We had lots of fun, toured a cave, went fishing, and had great food.

WE HAVE KITTENS---THEY ARE FREE IF YOU WANT ONE (OR TWO).

This is Grandpa Jerald pushing Matthew on his rope swing.

Great News! Our fantastic facilitator just e-mailed us. He went to Kiev and picked up the letter that the SDA had for us. The letter states that we can submitt our dossier as soon as we are ready. Most of our documents expire in July, and so we need to redo them. This isn't a big deal except for our medicals, and our marriage license. Since we were married in Las Vegas, we have to get the license from the Clark County Recorders office which can take a while. Then we need to send it back to Las Vegas to get it Apostilled. It can take weeks. I already sent for it last week so pray that it gets back soon. Our medicals could take a week or two also since we have to wait for the labs to come back.

After we get all of the documents apostilled and Fed-Ex'ed to Kostya, then he can go back to Kiev and submitt them. Then the SDA has around 30 days to accept it, then they can grant us an appointment date. Most of the appointments have been scheduled for around 3 months after acceptance, but we are praying for a sooner date. Ukraine is beautiful in the fall ! Keep the prayers coming--anything can still happen.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after the ophans and widows in thir distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

GOD IS GREAT!!!!!
Most of you probably won’t believe this. As you remember, in March we found out that another family was adopting Matthew’s brothers. We didn’t pursue any of the options we had to interfere with their adoption since Alex had been hosted by the family and most likely had formed an attachment to them, plus we didn’t want them to spend any more time than they had to in the orphanage waiting for us. We were very disappointed but hoped that we could establish contact with them when they arrived in the states. We continued to communicate with Vasya through missionaries and sent him a couple a packages while he waited for the family to finish the paperwork and mandatory ten day wait. We had been unable to find out why it was taking so long. In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to discover if it was possible that the family took only Alex and left Vasya. The orphanage staff said it wasn’t possible and Vasya said the family was still waiting on some paperwork from Kiev. Well, yesterday our facilitator e-mailed us with fantastic news! The SDA contacted him asking if we were still interested in adopting both boys, he said yes we were but hadn’t they already been adopted? They told him no. We were very excited! If nothing else happens we should be able to adopt Matthew’s brothers and they will finally be reunited. We don’t know when-hopefully next week we will know more. Keep praying for us and the boys!