Adoption update

This week we made slow progress towards our adoption of 9 year old Dema from the Ukraine. At this point, everything revolves around the completion of our home study which includes local, state, and federalbackground checks, finger prints, lengthy interviews, letters of recomendation, and physicals which include a full blood screen.  Once they finish the work on that, we will begin working with the adoption agency in the Ukraine.  We told you last week that our goal was to travel immediately after Christmas, but we just learned that the entire Ukraine basically shuts down for 1 week starting Jan 5th--the day they celebrate Christmas.  So, if we want to have the adoption complete before our spring farm prep starts, we will need to travel the week beforeThanksgiving and hopefully return in time to celebrate Christmas with our families.  The only "hitch" in this is that by bumping our schedule forward by 5 or 6 weeks, we need to come up with a substancial amount of funding before any of the grants we have applied for will be reviewed.  So ,we are going to move forward on faith knowing that our needs will be met.

As it stands right now, it looks like Dema will be here to visit starting August 14th and staying until the 29th.  We will bring him on our travels the week of the 23rd.