We've been so busy!

Wow...Charles our tour guide has kept us so busy.  We have visited Red Square, The Kremlin and the "market" (a big flea market!)  The Kremlin and Red Square is so beautiful.  The parks and fountains are so amazing will all the tulips blooming.  Red, yellow, pink and purple tulips blooming everywhere.  It's so great.

 

The market was really neat also, with souvenirs everywhere!  The people were very nice.  Charles was in heaven....he loves flea markets! 

We have traveled to all these places using the metro (subway).  Sophia has been a real trooper.  She does not mind the noise or how fast it travels.  She just loves looking around and enjoying all the people. 

Sophia is doing better at eating, which has put my mind at ease.  She still loves the little cracker/cookies that we give her at snack time.  Sleeping is a different story.  She is taking a long time to fall asleep at her nap times and bed times.  We are starting so many bad habits during our stay.  Unfortunately we do not have a crib, so she is sleeping with us (this will be hard to break when we get home.)  And we do not have a high chair, so she eats in my lap!

But she is adorable!  She smiles, waves, kisses, claps and loves when I sing "The Wheels On The Bus" and "Twinkle Little Star"

We only have two more days until our travel day.  We are so ready to go back home.  My dad is bringing Gracie to the airport to pick us up.  I can't wait to see Gracie's face when she mets Sophia for the first time.  Gracie is super excited about her little sister. 

I am so proud of my sweet Gracie Girl.  At the 1st Grade Awards Day on Friday, she won the "AR Star Award" (Accelerated Reader)!!!!  She has worked so hard on taking AR tests on the books she reads at school.  Her goal was 25 AR tests.  Her reward was lunch with her teacher (Mrs. Heglin) and a friend (Susanna) in the classroom, while the rest of the class had lunch in the lunch room.  Plus a beautiful certificate presented to her by her teacher!!  I am so proud of you, Gracie!!!!

We went to the Zoo today

Things are going well.  We are adjusting well to each other.  Sophia is eating a little better, thank goodness. 

We were very busy today.  We went out to lunch to an American diner.  Then we took the metro (subway) to the zoo.  Sophia had fun riding in the stroller, but had no idea that we were at the zoo...ha! 

There is no grocery store around our apartment that sells baby food or diapers.  We had to ride the metro out at least 10 miles to find a grocery store to buy the things we needed.  Sophia did great.  Charles is doing a fantastic job finding his way around the city and the subway system.

We got to talk to Gracie this morning on a video call for the first time this trip.  It was great to see her and Gracie loved seeing Sophia.   Sophia did all her "tricks" (as Charles calls them)....she waved, clapped, shook her head side to side, made kissing noises and of course smiled!  It was wonderful.  Gracie is so excited about Sophia coming home.  We are so ready to be back home.

We only have four more days until we travel back home.  Yeah!!!!

 

  

So far so good!

Things are going great. She has been sleeping so well. She slept all night last night and she slept for over two hours during her morning nap. She is even sleeping right now. Wow.

Eating is a different story. She is not eating that much. We have been trying lots of different things to see what she really likes. We have these little soft cracker/cookie things that she seems to really like. At least we are getting something inside her stomach.

She is talking up a storm. Not any words yet. But she is making all kinds of sounds. She is very happy. She loves to be held. Bless her little heart. She just cuddles up to my neck and wraps her arms around me. It is so sweet. She gets upset when I leave the room. She loves to be entertained by Charles with all his funny sounds.

She had her medical examine this morning. Everything went well. Bless her heart, she cried and cried! The doctor said it was "alligator tears." He said she is just trying to get my attention so I will pick her up. She stopped crying as soon as he handed her over to me. He said it is like pushing a button. Ha.

Sophia asleep in the car.  Notice no car seat....it's amazing!  She looks so big here, but it's because they like to bundle the children up in lots of clothes.  When you take off the layers...she is so small (and so, so sweet!)

We will post more pictures later.

Unforgettable...

We picked up Sophia this morning.  Yeah!  It was an exciting and emotional experience.  We are so excited to be bringing her home to her new family, but yet we are sad to see her leave the only people and place that she has ever known.  The care takers were crying, but very happy for her.  She cried while we were leaving, but after being in the car for a little while she stopped and just enjoyed looking out the window.  Then she fell asleep in my arms and slept the rest of the way.  While we were driving from the orphanage the song "Unforgettable" was playing on the radio.

When we got back to our apartment we fed her some lunch and played a little with her.  She is doing great.  She seems to be okay with us right now.  After lunch we called Gracie.  Gracie is so excited.  She does not understand why we have to stay so long.  Gracie was excited to hear Sophia laugh on the phone.  After the phone call, Sophia began crying.  We did not know what to do, we were trying everything and then we layed her down and she cried herself asleep.  She is sleeping right now.  She looks so sweet.

Tomorrow we will have her medical examine for the US Embassy.  Bless her little heart.  Tomorrow is going to rough for her and us.     

Well, we are going to take a nap too.  We need to sleep at any moment that we can....who knows what tonight will be like?  Talk to ya all later...

Yeah!!! Our I-600A has been extended!

This is fantastic news....immigration has extended the paperwork for us so we can bring Sophia home!  Thank you to all our church family and friends for your amazing contacts.  The governor, senator and state reps stepped in and rushed the paperwork.  We are so very thankful, otherwise it would have taken up to 75 days to process.  Thank you, thank you!

We are scheduled to leave for Russia in two weeks.  We will be in Russia for 10 days and then we will bring her home.  The next trip will be filled with applying for passports, visas, a medical check up and interview with the US embassy...then home.

Gracie Has A Sister!!!

Praise God! We are a family of four! Sophia is officially our daughter! We survived the court hearing! I was so nervous this morning! I had a dream last night that I fainted in the court room! Luckily that did not happen today.

I can't remember everything about the hearing...it's all a blur to me right now. The judge asked Charles questions and he did great. He stood in the middle of the room so proud and confident. I was so proud of him. He answered the questions perfectly! Then it was my turn. I did okay. I had the question about punishment and will Gracie be jealous. Plus several others that I can't remember right now.

Then we drove to the orphanage. We picked up Sophia and drove her to get her passport photo taken. We did not know we were doing that today. It was a surprise to us. Sophia took a beautiful picture. But bless heart she cried a lot when we walked her out of the orphanage, while we were riding in the car and at the photo place. It's was so crazy...Sophia just sat on our lap, not in a car seat! This is strange to us.

Charles and I are enjoying a Coke and French Fries from McDonald's right now...ha! We are soooooo tired. This has been a very emotional experience.

Finally Gracie has a sister!!!!! We are a family of four!!!!!! God is so good!

Thank you to everyone for all your prayers! We really appreciate them!

We have arrived!

We are here in Russia! It was a long flight. We slept just a couple of hours on the plane. But once we checked into our hotel, we took a five hour nap.
We did not get to see Sophia today. We are supposed to get to see her tomorrow afternoon.
We will have more details tomorrow. It's almost 11:00pm here, so I'm going to bed.

Everything has been sent to Immigration!

Last night we picked up our updated home study and overnighted all the requested documents to Immigration.  Hip Hip Hooray!  They should receive everything by this afternoon.  We are so thankful for our home study adoption agency.  They have worked so hard for us.

Our friends and church family have been so sweet to provide contacts for state representatives, senators and governors.  We are so grateful.  We appreciate everyone's support.  This will help to move the document through faster.  Charles and I are so thankful for all of you.  We have received so many blessings from God.

God's grace is so present in our lives.  He is in total control.  He was providing the path for today long before we even realized it.  Glory to God.

We have a Court Date!!!

Hip Hip Hooray!!!

We got the call yesterday.  Our court date has been scheduled for April 28th!  This is fantastic news.  We still have some paperwork that needs to be processed.  We are praying that it moves through the system quickly or otherwise we will not be able to bring her home until it is finalized.

This next trip is just for the court hearing.  We will be able to visit her once at the orphanage then go to our court hearing and then we come back home.  It's a fast trip.  Then we will return after a 10 day waiting period to bring her home (if everything goes well with the last document).

We need everyone's prayers.  Please pray for our sweet little girl in Russia, our court hearing and for a fast turnaround on the last document.  God is in control.  He knows exactly when this precious little girl will find a home in our family. 

Praise God - we have a court date!!!   

Sorry we have not kept up with blog...

Here's an update...

While we were in Russia last month, we meet a sweet little girl.  As of today, she is almost 13 months old.  She has dark eyes and dark hair.  She is so beautiful.  God has truely blessed us.  We will add pictures of her once the adoption is finalized.

All of our paperwork has been sumbitted...yeah!  We are waiting to hear back from Russia for a court date.  We are hoping to return in about 4 to 5 weeks.  We will go back to Russia for our court date and then come back to the USA for little over a week, then go back to Russia to bring her home. 

We have been working on the house to get it all ready for a baby.  The nursery is coming together.  We have pulled all the things down from the attic.  We are putting up high chairs, car seats, toys and cleaning and putting away sweet little clothes.  Gracie is helping with the shopping....she loves all the sweet little clothes.  I have been stocking up on diapers and wipes. 

Here is a picture of Charles' hat that he bought in Russia.....  The hats and coats were amazing in Russia.  They were beautiful! 

God is AWESOME....His love is so amazing!  He is guiding us through this journey with His love and grace.   We have so much to be thankful for.  

We're in Russia!

We have arrived in Russia. It was a long trip. Charles was able to fall asleep on the plane. I had a much harder time. We had a nap at our hotel then had an early dinner at a little Italian restuarant.

It is extremely cold here! They have snow everywhere! It's supposed to snow while we are here this week.

Last night while walking to dinner, Charles and I wore our matching Sorel snow boots. We past a lady walking with her child and she stared at our matching boots and laughed out loud at us. Oh well, our feet were very warm, I bet her feet were cold.

We are supposed to be sleeping right now, it's twelve o'clock and we are both up. Charles is working on emails.

Tomorrow is a big day for us. Keep us in your prayers. God is watching over us every step of the way. He knows exactly what's going to happen next for our family. As matter of fact, He knew even before we were born. He's in total control. What a wonderful feeling.

A Little Girl Might be Available!

We received an email from Anna on Dec 23rd.  They have a little girl that might be available for adopiton.  As of right now, she is still available for domestic adoption thru Jan 18th.  On Jan 18th, if she is not adopted locally, we will receive an invitation to go to Russia .  We did not recieve any other information on her age, health or anything else.  We are rushing to get our visas.  If she is still available on Jan. 18th, then we will travel to Russia on Sunday, Jan 23rd through Saturday, Jan 29th.

Gracie is very excited.  She especially can't wait for her grandparents to come and take care of her. 

Paperwork....paperwork!!

The other day we were told that we needed to update our home study by basically starting all over again.  I was extremely frustrated, but willing to do what we needed to do.  Then last night we found out that we only need to do an addendum to the home study.....hip hip hooray!!!!  This will go faster and cost less...yeah!  We still have lots of paperwork to put together before the court date.....but it's a managable list.

Last night we put together the crib in the nursery!  It was very exciting.  Gracie loved to see that her sister is going to use her crib.  The room is starting to come together.  It's real exciting.

We're still thinking about names.  Gracie comes up with some real sweet ones.  I'm so glad she is so excited.

We're Back Home!

Wow....what at long flight home!  I thought we were never going to get home.  We were up for 24 hours straight!  We were exhausted last night.  But we were so excited to see Gracie.  I gave her the biggest hug and kisses!  She did a great job while we were out of town.  My mom and dad were amazing with her.

Last night Gracie could not stop talking about her sister.  She said she is going to teach her how to walk and talk.  And she is even going to teach her how to jump in the deep end of the pool!!!  The last three days of school, she has taken new pictures of her sister to show everyone at school.  She is so proud.

Life is GREAT!  God has blessed us in so many ways.  We are so very thankful. 

Today, Charles flies to India....yes....India!!!  Bless his heart.  He has two 9 hours flights.  His poor body is going be a mess.  His mind is going to have no idea what time it is.  He is a trooper.  He could have taken a flight from Russia to India, but he wanted to share the moments with me on the flight back and also see Gracie's face when she talked about her new sister.  He is the GREATEST!!!!

Well, we are not sure when we get to return to Russia.  We have two more trips to Moscow before we get to bring her home.  But our translator told us it could be July or September.  In the meantime, we are going to get our house ready for a baby.  Cribs, high chairs, changing table....etc.  Wow...I have my work cut out for me!!!

Thanks again for everyone's thoughts and prayers.  You all are amazing!

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

We just returned from the orphanage. We were able to spend about two hours with her. She was so sweet. Bless her heart she has a little cold, but she still enjoyed our time together. We are very excited. We signed the papers to officially adopt her.


This morning Charles looked on the computer for a toy store so we could bring something age appropriate for her to play with. But unfortunately we were never able to find the store. We walked over six blocks in the pouring rain. Our pants and shoes were completely soaked. Then our driver picked us up and took us to a toy store beside the orphanage. So thank goodness, because we had something to give her. She actually loved the box the most! Ha!

Now we have to decide on her name. Luckily we have a little time to think about it.

This trip has been very organized. Our translator and driver have been so nice. Our agency has done a fantastic job getting everything ready for our journey here. We have so many people to thank.

Tomorrow we fly home. Yeah! Ten hours of flying....I can't wait!

It's A Girl!

We met her today!!!  It was a surprise.  We registered for a 3 or 4 year old, but they introduced us to a beautiful little blue eyed girl that is only 12 months old!!! 

The meeting with the Ministry of Education was short, but stressful.  They asked a few questions about us and why we wanted to adopt from Russia.  They were interested in me being a preschool teacher (Charles said they smiled when I told them that I work with 2 and 3 year olds.)  Then Charles did an excellent job answering the why we want to adopt question.  Granted he was sweating bullets...really!  Then they handed over a sheet of paper with a black and white picture of a small little girl.  At first we thought she was only 6 months old.  Then they told us all about her.

Next we took a long ride through lots of traffic (Atlanta has no idea what real traffic is...this is unbelievable here.)  They brought her out all dressed up, she even had on a bonnet!  We played with her and the doctor examined her and gave her a great report.  The funny thing is we brought big girl toys...so we had nothing to give her.  She loved the photo album of our family. 

We just called and told Gracie all about her.  Gracie had a smile on her face when she saw the picture.  She is looking forward to pushing her in a stroller and being her Big Sister!

We get to go back to the orphanage tomorrow and see her again.  We will take lots of pictures. 

Well...it's 12:00 am here and we are ready for bed.  Talk to you tomorrow.

We Arrived!

We made it to Moscow!  It has been a very long day.  We did a little site seeing.  We visited the Kremlin and Red Square.  Then we meet with the doctor and social worker tonight.  We are extremely tired.  We have only had a few hours sleep in the past two days.   

We get our referral tomorrow and then go to meet her at the orphanage.  It will be a BIG day!

Talk to ya tomorrow.

Our Visas arrived! Yeah!

Fed Ex delivered our Visas this morning!  Now it's official we can travel to Russia.  If our visas did not arrive today, then we would need to postpone our trip.  Hip Hip Hooray...they arrived.

We're all packed.  We put together the photo album that will leave with her. Plus, today we went and picked out some toys to take.  Gracie picked out a sweet little baby doll with a bottle.  Then we picked up some playdough and coloring books.  All the toys we give her will become "community toys" for the orphanage. 

Here's our schedule for the time we are there:

Monday:  Arrive and go to the hotel and rest. Maybe a little site seeing
Tuesday:  Go to the Department of Ministry and see a photo of the "referral"
                Go to the orphanage and meet our little girl
                Meet with the Director and doctor
Wednesday: Go to the orphanage and then in the late afternoon sign papers to adopt
Thursday:  Travel all day.  Arrive in Atlanta at 7:40 pm

Very quick trip.  Wow!

Thank you to everyone for your sweet notes.  They mean the world to me.

Talk to ya later.

"The Call"

Yesterday we got "The Call!"  Our agency called me at my preschool around 9:30ish!  It was amazing.  I couldn't believe it.  She said were were registered and we have an invitation to go to Russia on Sunday!  I said..."SUNDAY!"  Usually families are given two weeks notice to get everything in order.  Oh well....we'll take it!  The next hour was full of phone calls to Charles, our parents, the VISA office, and of course to the airport!  We got our airlines information all worked out.  Luckily were able to use our airline miles.  The flights were about $2000 a piece...wow!   Our Visas are applied for...now we just wait and hope we will recieve them before our flight on Sunday!  Fed Ex is amazing....thank you Fed Ex!

The day was spent sharing the information with Gracie, friends and our church family.  Gracie is excited.  She is doing well with the information of her parents leaving town.  Thank you to everyone for all your love and support.  Your prayers and thoughts are what has gotten us to this point.  God has blessed us in so many ways.  He is the reason and He is how we are going to make through this very emotional journey.  He will give us the grace we need to meet all the new challeneges and joys over the next couple of months.

Today I am working on my super long "To Do" list.  We'll get it all done!  Talk to ya later.

Paperwork in Russia

We heard from our agency that our paperwork is in Russia and is being translated.  The coordinator in Russia is scheduled to go the ministry of Education on May 4th to submit our documents.  Once they review them, then we will be officially registered in Moscow City.  Yeah!