Say hello to Alina Evelyn

We just got back to Moscow this morning from Chuvashia. It was an incredible journey that culminated when we met our baby. After meeting her, we decided to call her Alina Evelyn. We felt strongly that we wanted to keep a Russian name, so we chose Alina, which means beautiful. Evelyn, of course, is a family name on both sides - Brandon's grandmother, and my mother's sister. She has beautiful blue/grey eyes, and very light blonde hair. Her 1st birthday is coming up this week, Tuesday, May 20th. We feel very sad that we will miss it.

While in the region, the baby house doctor arranged for us to take a tour of a Russian Orthodox monastery. It was brilliant, and certainly a once in a lifetime experience. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside, but got several of the outside. We also bought a book that has pictures of the inside for Alina. The book is written in Russian, so she'll have to keep learning in order to read more about it. The village only has 40,000 people, but has 18 monasteries. I'd say that's quite a bit per capita.

We went to the notary this afternoon in Moscow to make it official that this is the baby we want to adopt. Now we have to come home and get some additional paperwork done on our end so that we can get the court date set as soon as possible. Everyone in both America and in Russia seems very willing to try to make this go as fast for us as they can, so we have a lot going for us on both sides of the process.