What to pack

Ok, I need advice on what we should bring on our trip, for our little boy?
Thank you, Ursula

Court date

We got the call late yesterday from our agency.
Nick and I are leaving for Russia next Saturday and court is on the following week. I just got back from sending off our forms overnight, to get our visas ASAP, we are cutting this really close. Nick got our plane tickets, and I will be running around like a crazy lady trying to get everything else done.

Bag

I received a nice surprise yesterday. Nick out of the blue gave me this bag by Oilily!!! I had been ogling this bag on eBay for a while now. I would not buy the bag because I have been scared to get anything for the baby until we go to court. Also we found out or paper arrived from Moscow and everything was submitted to court. So that is some positive news!

No new's yet

We are still waiting for the all elusive letter from Moscow. Our coordinator told us that we should hear something next week. However, they have been telling us this for 3 weeks now. I am not going to get into the details because I might say something that I will regret, so for now I will hold my tongue. We are really hoping to get our court date in the next week. On a happier note I am so thrilled for my fellow PAPs that have gotten there court dates and referrals. I hope everyone is having a nice weekend and staying warm. Nick and I will be watching the Superbowl with friends and snuggling with our puppy's.

Now we wait

Last week was a very high stress week. We had a couple of documents that expired, and one last new requirement. We ran all over town, back and forth to the Secretary of State. We ran over to Fed Ex Friday late in the day and explained that we needed the documents to be shipped as quickly as possible. they proceeded to tell us they could have our documents in Russia by the 20th of January. Now call me crazy, but 2 weeks to deliver an envelope seems really slow and this was the express service!!! Thank goodness we thought of DHL, we drove like maniacs to the airport location during evening rush hour to get it out asap. Unlike Fed Ex they could get our envelope to our region in 4 days. We needed to get our last documents to Russia no later than the 12th, the Russian government has been basically shut down for the holiday season and reopens on the 11th. We are really hoping that we receive a speedy court date. Nick and I celebrated that we got everything done. All together we had a total of 85 separate documents for our region!!!! I hope we hear something very soon, until then we wait.

Our Crazy Journey

OK, I am going to start from the beginning.
November 3rd we got the call, about a little boy, who was 3 1/2 years old, our agency emailed a photo of him and some medicals. We had to really think about this referral, because he was in our old region, and in the same orphanage that our last, lost referral was from. After much discussion we decided to go and throw caution to the wind. We left two day's after thanksgiving, met the little boy, spent alot of time with him, and sent his medicals to the University of Minnesota. Unfortunately he was not the right fit for our family, he had some issues that we were not ready or able to deal with. We had to decline this referral after traveling all this way again. My hope is that another family will adopt him.

We then decided to spend some extra time in Paris. 3 days in the city of lights to be exact, and it was a greatly needed detour. We have not had so much fun in such along time. We really needed the vacation together. I find myself getting so wraped up with the whole IA process that I tend to loose focus of life around me.

We got another referral on our way back from Paris!!! So 3 days after we came home I had to turnaround and fly right back to Russia without Nick. We luckily had applied for a double entry visa. This referral was perfect for our family, I spent a week with him, I took tons of photos and video, and sent his medicals to the University of Minnesota. My trip back was interesting. Challenging is how I would best describe my return trip home. I was one of the many people who got stuck in Amsterdam. I was stuck on the runway for 7 hours before being let off the plane from a stairway in the runway. There were no gates left to pull the plane into. When we finally got into the terminal the lines to rebook were thousands of people long and nobody to help, they then left and said they would be back in the morning. Nick had been on the phone with Delta all night rerouting and changing my flights as needed because they kept canceling the flights. He got me booked on the flight that was not cancelled in the morning, the only one I might add as the other three were cancelled overnight. He routed me through Detroit and then to Minneapolis, he even had to rebook my ticket from detroit while I was in the air because we were not going to make the connection, so when I got to Detroit everyone else was stuck but I had a first class ticket to MSP. Thanks to Nick not Delta I arrived home safe and sound. As a side note, Delta gave us nothing for the trouble and charged us a change fee. It could have been so much worse, it took some people a week to get to there destinations from Amsterdam.

When I got back, Nick and I set up an appointment with the doctors at the U of M. We are very lucky to be in Minneapolis and got to meet with Dr. Dana Johnson. Dr. Johnson is the head of international adoption clinic and has a wealth of knowledge about children who have lived in institutions. I feel that we got very direct information on what challenges we might be facing down the road, But in general he said everything looked really pretty good. As PAPs we have very few advocates. Your IA doctors has no other motives but to help you and your family in this process. They are your only real advocates!!!!. We received the green light in regards to our referral. I really hope this little boy works out and we get a court date ASAP. We had all of our paperwork done so I hope after the Russian holiday we will get a court date. I want everyone to know that we are very excited about the baby. However, as those of you who have been following our blog are aware we are really guarding our hearts. At this point anything can happen in regards to Russian adoptions so we are hoping for the best.
We are wishing everyone a happy New Year!!! I enclosed photos of Paris and Russia.

Russia in December

I plan to write more, when I get home, but I am in Russia. This trip is my 2 trip to Russia in the last month. I have a great story to tell, I will try to post something, later on tonight. I am no longer MIA.