Merry Christmas!

We definitely have a white Christmas! Our son T. and Matt are outside snowblowing the driveway. Truth be told, Matt is doing the snowblowing and T. is playing. Hopefully next year at this time we will have two boys out there playing together. It's such a beautiful sunny day with a fresh coat of snow. I wish I could be outside, but I've caught the cold that's been going around. One of my Sunday School students gave me a wonderful herbal spa neck wrap that I've been warming up in the microwave - it seems to help my congestion and is very relaxing.

No news on our Trip 1 dates. I am not expecting to hear anything until the end of this week. We'll see. We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and God's blessings for 2008!

Our Agency Will Receive Accreditation on Friday!

It's time to celebrate! Our agency is receiving their accreditation on Friday, Dec. 21st! What a wonderful gift to all the waiting families and waiting children. Now the process to adopt from Russia should speed up for everyone in our agency. This is such good news!

In other news, I must tell you about my haircut. I had been putting it off, but finally decided to try this new place just down the road from us. I walk in and the woman behind the counter had a Russian accent! I almost fell over! She happened to be originally from Moscow. She's been here in the U.S. for 7 years. She was telling me that there are other Russian children in our school district, and also told me about a Russian church not too far away that we could go to. She was very exicted to hear our news and very helpful. So not only did I get a good haircut (finally), but I met a new friend!

Are you sitting down?

We got a call last week from our agency. Let me cut to the chase... we have accepted the referral of a boy from the region of Astrakhan! That's about all we know right now. This definitely caught us by surprise. We have so many questions about him, but all of that will have to wait until we meet him on our first trip. Our agency notified Russia today that we are interested, and now we wait for an invitation from Russia. We MIGHT travel sometime in mid-January.

So now we have lots on our plate: more documents to get together; scheduling x-ray and blood tests for us; his room to prepare; learn Russian... OK, now I'm stressing myself out! We had been putting some of this stuff off because we thought it would be a long wait. I know it will all be fine. I just need to remind myself to breathe. I can just picture this lonely little boy, sleeping in his bed in the orphanage, waiting for his forever family. Our son T. is excited to be a big brother, and we are ecstatic as well! We really appreciate your prayers. I truly believe the Lord was moved by many people's prayers (including ours) and here we are, accepting a referral!