Monday Mish Mash

I had a post up earlier with a great video about the state of Education in the US. Unfortunately the people who own the video didn’t want me to have it on my blog. Ordinarily I’d be too offended to link it but their message is pretty important so here’s the video.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

There’s tons of stuff brewing with our placement agency. Here’s a blog that gives a good background to the current crisis in VN adoptions so you can be all caught up. It’s not a great time to be looking into international adoptions. China’s extremely slow, Vietnam is unstable, Korea is pretty restrictive, Guatemala is closed, Russia & the other Soviet-block countries are really expensive & a little shaky too. My heart aches for the families that long to parent children & especially for the children who languish in an orphanage without a family to love them.

Tonight I’m really upset with the quality of communication our agency has with their current clients. When I was giving recommendations to people, the most asked question was about communication. We had very few complaints with the communication. They always responded promptly to our calls & emails. Sometimes we felt like they weren’t giving us the whole story & of course, we wished they would have. The wait would have been so much easier if they would have said “here’s our plan, these are the steps we’re taking to implement said plan, & please be patient while we do our jobs & we promise to keep you apprised of the situation, warts & all.” That kind of honesty would have been refreshing. We’re all adults. When adopting you have to expect waiting & setbacks. What you don’t expect is half-truths & runaround. Especially when transparency is so important. I think I’d better stop now. For those not adopting with our agency, this probably isn’t making a whole lot of sense. I just needed to get it off my chest. I’m just so disappointed…

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

We’re still dealing with the dreaded fever. Ethan was much better today. I kept him home from school anyway & I’m glad he had another day to rest up. There were 6 kids gone in his class today so there’s obviously something running rampant through his classroom. Gavin spent most of the day curled up on the couch with the fever. I think it finally broke right before supper. He was much more talkative & less whiny this evening. Even if he’s fever-free tomorrow, he won’t be going to school on Tuesday. He’s in denial about that though. He kept saying Ethan was the only boy not going to school on Tuesday. Now we have to wait for Tova to get sick & hopefully Jason & I will stay healthy. Jason’s leaving on Thursday for MN for his dad’s heart surgery. He’s having a valve replaced on Friday so Jason will be spending the whole weekend in MN while I’m home with the kids. I’m thinking Popcorn for supper & a Muppet Show Marathon is in order at least once over the weekend. Sure beats sitting at the hospital

11:20pm – Just when I need a reminder to keep things in perspective I read this blurb on WCCO about the Javens’ brothers funeral (from the bus accident last week)

“Hunter would have celebrated his 10th birthday on Monday [2.25.08], and the roughly 1,400 mourners at the funeral sang the Happy Birthday song to his twin sister Sasha. She also accepted a birthday gift on his behalf.”

K~