Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Life Update 5/22/2007

I’m so sorry to any faithful readers out there who check back regularly hoping for updates.  Life has been insanely busy, but I will take a few minutes and fill you in on the highlights and what’s ahead.

Adelina’s last day of school is tomorrow.  It is so hard to believe!  This year went by so fast.  Adelina began the year very unprepared for kindergarten but finished the year with flourish.  Her language and speech are both still way behind her hearing peers, but she has made phenomenal progress and continues to impress everyone.  We have felt incredibly blessed by the professionals who worked with her so tirelessly and with such enthusiasm.  We couldn’t have been more pleased!

Outside of school, Adelina has continued with horse riding lessons and is making excellent progress.  She trots the horse almost the entire time now and has no problem showing the horse who is in charge.   This week will be her last lesson for awhile.  The cost is becoming an issue, but it is also going to be too hot for riding for the next several months.  In addition to horse riding, she played soccer again this season, and had fabulous coaches this time.  Her team is excellent, and she practiced hard and really understands the game now.  In her last game, she had several contacts with the ball (and even knew what to do with it!) and she played goalie for one quarter and made a very significant save.  Needless to say, we are quite proud of her, but even more important, she is proud of herself!

Our Russian adoption is progressing.  Our home study is complete, and all our round 1 documents have been filled out, signed, notarized, and apostilled here in the U.S.  From here, they were packaged together by our agency and mailed to Russia, where they were translated, notarized again, and apostilled again.  We just got word that they are officially ready for submission!  This is very exciting!  Unfortunately, they cannot be submitted until our agency receives re-accreditation by the Russian government.  All you pray-ers out there please join us in our request for speedy approval from all the ministries that must give it (there are four in addition to the Ministry of Education, which has already given its approval).

Finally, the last piece of news to share is my decision to resign my position at ISEC and stay home with Adelina - and eventually with her sibling(s).  I will work through the end of the month of June, and I’m already counting down the days.  Actually, it’s not even that long because I’m taking some time off between now and then for vacationy type stuff.  More on that to come.

My hope is that I’ll have more time for life at home.  I desire to cook interesting and healthy meals for my family, and I’m so done with eating fast food because of its convenience.  I want to make my house actually clean, even if it only lasts for 10 minutes.  I don’t think it has reached that status since… hmm, well maybe never.  And it may never happen, but it’s a noble goal, and I’m going to do my best.  I even want to do a little sewing.  I have a curtain project that I have intended to complete since before we adopted Adelina, but it didn’t happen.  From there, maybe I can make some cute clothes.

One of the reasons we were so busy over the past several months is Steve and I were taking a college level ASL class.  That was great, but it is only beneficial if I use it.  So I also hope to find opportunities to meet up with more people from the Deaf community and improve my ability to communicate with them.  Once again, a noble goal.  God is going to have to help me if there is to be any success on any of these goals.  But He is good and faithful, and these are true desires for me now, so we’ll see what happens.

If you don’t mind taking a minute or two and writing a quick comment I will know who is still reading my blog.  Maybe if I know I still have readers, I’ll be more faithful about writing.  Some people are good about writing for their own sake, but I like writing more when I know I have an audience.