Hosting & Adoption

See if I can sneak in an update while the kiddos are still sleeping! :)
We have had Tanya with us for almost 4 weeks now!! We will soon be half done! I didn't post anything sooner because I wanted to wait until I could write something positive and now I finally can! :) Let me tell you friends.. We nor Tanya had NO IDEA what we were getting into!!!!! We had some really tough, stressful couple weeks there, but I am very happy to say that it is going much better and I think both sides are enjoying it now! :) We still definitely have some challenges to work through, but for the most part she found her little spot in our family and knows what to expect and therefore has become much more trusting and relaxed! It is no minor, simple thing to pull a 13 year old girl from an orphanage setting and plunk her down in a strange land with a totally strange family and not one single thing familiar!! Just let your mind wonder a bit and think of how strange it actually would be... the food, the weather, the culture, the everything!! And then add the tremendous language barrier on top of it all and it is nothing short of a miracle how well these children can actually handle it and adapt!! We have come years in just 3 weeks!!
There were many times in those first couple weeks that we had to revisit our strong conviction that this is what we were suppose to be doing! I know that the prayers of all you, my dear friends is what carried us through, I have never felt so strongly the miracle of intercessory prayer like I have in the last month and I want to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts that pleaded on our behalf!! You will never know what it meant to us to feel your support!! Don't quit now! :)
Maybe I'll have to write another post with some of the details of what all we have been doing and what it is like to host! :)

Now a little update on our adoption..
We finally got our dossier completed and it is set to arrive in Ukraine this Friday!! Hard to believe the months of sweat and tears we put into it and it's all in a package someone over the ocean right now! They are hoping to submit to the SDA either on the 24th or 31st and then depending of course on how fast they issue us our SDA appointment, we are looking at traveling the end of August or first of September. As of now we are planning on making into 2 trips so that will make it less stressful with knowing we will have a chance to buy some clothes etc. when we come home in between. Not knowing age or gender would make it very difficult to know what to take! This hosting has had us so occupied that adoption was not foremost in our minds and now that it is getting so close the reality of it is starting to sink in and I could get excited and stressed and every other emotion if I would let me self!! Sometimes when you work towards a goal for so long it's hard to believe that it will ever actually happen, but it's starting to sink in and all my friends that have just adopted or are in process now keep saying to get my ducks in a row now and don't wait till last minute, but.... I guess some of us just work better under stress! ;-)
Till next time..