I have been busy - so it has been a while since I last posted anything. We got wonderful news from some friends who have been trying to adopt from Latvia as well. John and Becky tried to adopt a 14 year old boy from Likumi. However, after their two week visit, he decided that he did not want to leave his brother behind. I think it is probably a tough decision to make at that age. In the short run, his life would be easier staying in Latvia. It is difficult to adapt to a family, to a new language and a new country. But, we all know that in the long run, having a family can make a kids life much better. That is a very difficult thing to understand at age 14. Thank goodness Deniss has the maturity to see that the short term difficulties are outweighed by the long term benefits.

Anyway, John and Becky didn't give up. Since they were already in the adoption mode, they decided to host a brother and sister from Likumi over the summer. Of course, they fell in love with them and decided they wanted them. They just got the good news that the referral for the kids had come from the Ministry in Latvia. They are scheduled to go for the two week visit the first week in November. They are also trying to make arrangements to bring the kids back with them under a temporary custody arrangement.

Another couple that hosted last summer (2006) when we did, is going to Latvia in a few days to bring home their new son and daughter. The Dolans were a little behind us in getting their paperwork done. The adoption was finalized in September.

So as of now there are four kids from Likumi here in North Georgia with another three in North Florida. Two more will be here before the end of the month with another two by the first of the year. Quite a crowd. We have gotten together with the twins a few times. We hope to get some of the others together.

It is a little harder for Deniss to get used to not being able to speak Latvian. All but one of those other kids have a sibling here in America that they can speak to in their native tongue. Deniss doesn't have that luxury. He says he misses his language.

The boys are out of school the end of this week. We decided to take a little trip to Texas to visit Bobby and Lana. Deniss will be able to add another state to his list of states he has been to or through. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and now Texas.

Deniss had an unfortunate incident last night with his bike. We had gotten him a really nice bike because he enjoys riding so much. Well, last night he rode it to Best Buy. He knows that bikes have the same rights as cars, so he pulled his bike into a parking space, locked it up and went inside. When he came out, he found that someone (who didn't have the nerve to stay around) had run over his bike with their car. He called Ken, Ken called the police. There was an eye witness who hung around to describe the car to the police but unforturnatly the van had the drive off dealer tag on it so there was no tag number to trace. We can only hope that they messed up their shiny new vehicle because they left Deniss' bike in a heap on the ground. Now we have to find a way to pay for major repairs to his bike or we might have to buy a new one. He was noticably upset!

I will try not to wait so long for the next post.

Robin