Where in the world is Chuvashia, Russia?

Okay, so it's not as catchy as "Carmen San Diego", but it is the region that we have been assigned to. One of the steps in getting matched to a child is getting assigned to a specific region. We just found out today that Chuvashia is the region we have been assigned to. The agency sent us a fact sheet about the region that gave us a summary of its history, people, economy, and politics.

As you can imagine, we are going to be doing a lot of research about the area in the coming days. We do know that the capital city of Chuvashia is Cheboksary, which is about 400 miles southeast of Moscow. If you'd like to do your own digging, here is the link on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuvashia

Another interesting happening this week was that Brandon heard from some friends of hers who are adopting a child domestically. They were matched to a birth mother and were waiting on the birth of their child when the mother skipped town. Their agency thinks that the birthmom was shopping for a better offer outside of Texas. Apparently, Texas is pretty strict about the "benefits" that a mother can receive. They were devastated, but are pushing onward. They have to be matched all over again to a birthmom.

This is one of the reasons why we chose to adopt internationally vs. domestic. The rights in the case of a domestic adoption are very heavily weighted to the birth parents, plus there is the surprise factor that can happen on occasion (like the one above).

Domestic and International adoptions offer different experiences, challenges, and rewards. We feel we made the right decision for us because the issues with domestic adoption seemed unbearable. That doesn't mean that it's not right for other families, or that international adoption is in some way better. It's a very personal decision as to which one is right for your family.

We're On The List!!!

We officially are on the adoption waiting list for Russia! It's been a long time coming, and we've had a series of issues that have tried our patience, but we are over another big hurdle. We've been told that the wait will be about 12-15 months for a girl, so we will need as much of your prayers as possible to help our patience last just a little while longer.

So here are a couple things to note at this point:

1) If our daughter is somewhere between 9-12 months old when we meet her, then that means she could be born in the next few weeks. If she is closer to 15-18 months, then she is probably already out there. But we won't know what day she is actually born until next year. Funny to think that on the day she was/will be born will be just another day of waiting for us and not knowing. We have all faith that God will look out for her even though we haven't met her yet and we will not yet know the day she arrives in this world.

2) We just took a trip to Vegas, and we found out the day before that we were on the list. So it really started to hit us that soon our lives will be completely different. It's funny what we noticed with this new knowlege. For instance, I never really paid attention to the fact that they have baby changing shelves in the bathroom of an airplane. I never needed to know that before, but considering that trip was probably one of the last times that we will travel by ourselves, it really started to sink in.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support, interest, and prayers.