TGIF

I'm so glad it's Friday! This cyber school stuff is very stressful! I'm almost ready to give up, but I won't! Tessa and I don't like it at all, but Jerremy likes it a lot. We get started around 8:15 a.m., work until almost Noon, and are still at it at 4:00 p.m.! We stop just because we can't take anymore, and then after we eat dinner, we finish up what we didn't get done. I'm thinking I might be able to handle traditional homeschool better than this. It's just making us so unhappy and it's not a good feeling.

Our exchange student is very nice. He seems to be over the jet-lag-tiredness now. He told his mother he likes my cooking and he likes how Doug jokes around with him. I made him plain rice the second day he was here. He said, "I eat rice two times a day for 16 years. I no want anymore rice!" We laughed. One of our favorite meals is a microwave chicken and rice dish that I make every few weeks. So the night I served it, I made him leftover ravioli that he liked the night before. Turns out he liked the chicken and rice so much, he had 3 servings and didn't touch the ravioli.

It's almost October 1, and we haven't gotten our paperwork back from the USCIS. Our adoption agency told us to get our congressman involved. We did that, but it's too late now for us to get it back, drive it to Harrisburg for certification, overnight it to New York City to the Chinese Consulate and wait for them to review it and return it, and then have our agency send it to China and be logged in before October 1! It's looking like we'll be having to find a new homestudy provider, pay thousands of dollars more, and then send that to the USCIS for another 90 day wait!

There's nothing easy about adoption. I was thinking today that had we not decided to adopt again, our lives would be moving along at a comfortable pace, with the kids still at their small Christian school and me probably only working one part-time job. None of this crazy cyber school stuff trying to save money; no stressing about the paperwork getting back in time. It sounded pretty good, until I thought about Winn still in China with no family to call his own. And as much as the thought of a comfortable life is, I wouldn't give up one day of the process to bring him home! God will get us through, no matter what!