Dearest Dema,
Well, it has been a while since I last wrote you and a lot has happened. We had our home study and passed! Yea! So, at least from the US standpoint, we are ready for you. We are now busy starting to get together all the documents for the Ukrainian government. But I can't leave you without a blow by blow account of the home study, can I?
So, to begin with, we are now having our grass cut by Eric, the boy who lives next door. I was going to ask him to cut the grass just before the home study so that it would look good, but I know he goes to school and we had the study scheduled faster than I thought it would be able to be done. So I just thought - oh well, no big deal - if the grass is a little tall it won't matter. But I came home Thursday night with Amanda from TKD to see that the front yard had been half mown! Yikes, tall was ok, cut was ok, but how was I going to explain half-done? But it was late at night and the next day was a school day, so I knew that Eric couldn't fix it in time, so I just devoted myself to cleaning inside. I thought I will dazzle her with the inside cleanliness and maybe she will forget about the state of the lawn!
So we scurried around, cleaning and picking up all Thursday night and Friday morning. The home study lady was due to arrive at 9:00 am so I went outside about 10 minutes before to make sure there was no dog poop, etc. that would cause a problem, when I saw Eric's mom outside preparing to take her baby for a morning walk. I laughingly told her about the situation of the home study being that morning, and she was so worried about the lawn, she said, "Don't worry, I will just finish the front lawn up right now." She turned and went back into her garage to get the mower, with me chasing after her ineffectually saying, "Really, don't worry about it! She will be here any moment and it's no big deal." Well, I wasn't being listened to and she got her mower and was mowing the lawn when who shows up - you guessed it - the home study lady! ACK! So she gets out of her car and Eric's mom looks up and says, "Hi, I am just their neighbor." So the home study lady turns to me and asks, "Your neighbors do you lawn for you?" What could I do but smile sickly and say, "No, no. See her son didn't finish last night…" Seeing her look, I just trailed off and weakly asked her inside. What a way to get started. Now I was going to have to convince her that we do not make our neighbors pay homage to us in exchange for not eating their firstborn!
Thank goodness, things picked up from there. It was a good session. She asked a lot of questions about our parenting technique (superior of course), personalities (untouchable), and attitude toward adoption (unparalleled). Even G4 and Amanda were well-behaved and well-spoken.
We got the rough draft in the mail and looked it over - it was very complimentary and should be accepted well by the Ukrainian government. So, back to the paperwork drills. So for now, it id just paperwork and probably back to the post office again.
Things are pretty much the same around here. Amanda is preparing to compete at the Pan Am games next week and is spending hours each day at the studio. G4 is still doing well in college. He has A's in all of his classes so far this semester. My book continues to sell well. It has been picked up by the Follett Book Group for library distribution, so hopefully I will have a lot of sales generated by that. G3 is busy at work. he has some travel coming up this fall for work.
I hope you have received our package by now. I will try to call you in the next few weeks or so. We miss you a lot.
Love,
Bethany, Amanda, G3, & G4
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