Happy Birthday, Alina!

Today is Alina's first birthday, and we are more than 5000 miles away from her. To say the least, it is not a really fun day for us because we wish that we could be with her. We had a wonderful visit last week with her, spending about 6 hours over two different days getting to know her. Since we knew we wouldn't be with her today, we sang happy birthday to her during a quiet moment with just the three of us last week.

It's amazing to think how our lives have already changed for the better, and that we now have someone else that we put ahead of ourselves. Last night we watched the clips of video we took of her, and just marveled at how amazing she is. It's hard to believe that we have connected so deeply with her so quickly. While we came home after just a week, a piece of our heart stayed in Alatyr with our little baby girl. We are simply wrecked and will not feel complete again until we get to see that beautiful face in person again.

We are keeping ourselves busy with the paperwork we need to complete in order to get the court date set in Russia. We want to get it done as soon as possible so that our second visit comes sooner rather than later. At the end of that visit, assuming all goes as planned, then we will be able to bring her home. We also have LOTS of stuff to get in order, like her room, etc., so that will hopefully help to pass the long wait until we see her. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers, as we know that God is watching out for her while we cannot.

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.

We're in Russia!

Brandon and I made it to Russia without a hitch. We landed yesterday afternoon just before 4pm, and spent about the next hour or more trying to get through passport control. The workers kept taking breaks (or at least leaving their booths for a few minutes), and people kept jumping between lines. It was mass chaos. The interesting thing, though, is that by the time we got up to the window, the woman that helped us looked a bit like a Russian-version of my sister-in-law Debbie.

We were welcomed at the airport by Alexander (aka Sasha), and his 10-year old daughter Masha. We then had about a 2 hour ride in traffic to get to Alexander's parents house, Ludmila and Lev. Apparently traffic was very bad because it was the end of a 4-day weekend.

Masha entertained us last night, as she is the one who speaks the best English. We played cards for a while, and then we found out that Masha dances traditional Russian dances. We asked her to dance for us, thinking it would just be a 30 second sample. She actually went to the other room, changed into her traditional dress, and danced for a good 10 minutes. I was able to take a couple pictures which I'll post at some point. She then went and got into a different dress so I grabbed the video camera to tape her. When she saw that I had a video camera this time, she exclaimed "ohhhhh" and proceeded to dance for another few minutes, hamming it up the whole time. She's quite the entertainer.

Today we went to register our visas, which you have to do within the first 3 days of arriving. We also met Tatyana, who is our translator and will be traveling with us to the baby house. She doesn't know much about the baby, but apparently she's been told that she is beautiful and a good baby.

All in all, we are doing terrific and thank you all for your continuous thoughts and prayers.

Baby Idiots

We found out today that we are baby idiots. Let me first set the story up just a bit...

We have to take some items for use by the orphanage in Russia. These items can be clothes for the kids, antibacterial lotion, surgical gloves or masks, baby vitamins, shampoo, developmental toys, etc.

We walked aimlessly around Wal-Mart trying to figure out where all these things were. Sure, some of them were easy to find, but which ones are grouped together? Which ones are in the baby section vs. the pharmacy? Which ones are with detergents or soaps? Do they group child clothes for 12 months or less, and those more than 12 months in different groups, or are they all mixed together?

So I looked at Brandon and said "we are baby idiots"! I know we'll figure all this stuff out, but if anyone could tell me what section baby vitamins are in (that is, children UNDER 2 years), let me know.

We're headed to Russia!!

We got the call today from our adoption agency and they told us we have been matched to a child! All we know is that she is just shy of a year - no name, no medical history, and no picture (which is pretty common with international adoptions).

The crazy part is that they told us we had to be in Russia by Monday, the 12th. You read that right, 7 days from today. Pretty unbelievable, eh? Thank God for airline miles, because the tickets that would have cost us about $5,000 total cost us only $350. We spent the better part of today arranging our flights and putting together our a FedEx pack of info so that we could get our Russian visas by Wednesday.

The other thing that we have to do is complete 10 hours of video training before we leave. We had been so focused on paperwork the past few months, and we had been told that it would take 12-18 months in total that we hadn't started our training. So in the midst of getting all of the other things ready for our trip, we have to watch the videos. We cranked out 3 tonight, and succesfully passed the follow-up quizzes in order for us to get credit for them. Only 7 hours to go!

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.