A little about Italy and our end of May report.

Mom and I returned home from our trip on Thursday May 12, 2005. Italy was fascinating to say the least. To make it brief we started in our trip Rome. We went to see the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. We got a special treat that day and actually saw the Pope. Later that afternoon we went to the Colosseum and saw the old Roman ruins. We saw so many fountains, statues and squares I can even begin to remember the names of everything. We then traveled up the coast to the ruins in Ostia Antica. Our tour director really brought the time of the Romans to life for us. We continued on to San Giaminano and Ravenna and finally on to Florence for the night. The next day we spent in Florence seeing the famous statue of David. We went to dinner in the Tuscany countryside after going to a wine tasting at the Chianti vineyards. We stopped in Verona to see Juliets Balcony on our way to Venice. Venice is a amazing city. It is so unique it is mind numbing to think you are actually there in a gondula riding through the canals. Awesome. On our way back to Rome we stopped in Assisi and our final night we went back to St. Peters square and had a fabulous farewell dinner with our new found friends. It was a lovely and wonderful trip. It was also very good to get home!

Mom and I spent a couple of days at home getting the house and our bodies back on track before we left to drive her home to good old PA. I stopped in Pittsburgh to visit my new grandbaby Jordan and my favorite little girl Jersey for a day and flew home. It was such a fast trip and I couldn't wait to get home again. It's good to be home!!

We did recieve some news on Friday on the adoption front as well.
Since our agency is not accreditated at this time the officals in Yaroslavl will proceed as if we are independent or private as they call it. The agencies have been getting accrediations which is good news however our agency was one of the last to expire so it will be one of the last to be renewed. They do not anticipate any problems. Our social worker sent us a very old photo of a baby boy that the Adoption Center in Yaroslavl matched us with. We also got a old medical report. We will travel soon to meet this little guy and go over his medical with the IA doctor, the orphanage doctor and director. We do not have travel dates yet, she was hoping to get those for us next week. So it looks like we are making progress. We can not go into detail about this little guy yet as the law forbids us to at this time. We must be very careful as we have not yet accepted him to be ours. We must follow through with the medicals and meet him first. We pray that there is no problems. This will be one of the hardest things we have to do in this process. I will update you on the travel dates as soon as we know.