The trip was a success...

We are happy to report that our reason for traveling 17 hours away from home and our children is complete! We finished the paperwork and had it notarized today to officially adopt Caroline. Our next step will be to...(this is a shocker!) WAIT!!!!!!! Yes, that is right, we have to wait for our agency to call us with our court date. We have become what they call "professional waiters". The good news is that the wait SHOULD be fairly short-or atleast shorter than we are used to. We were given the estimate of 6 weeks. Brent and I feel very good about our decision and think Caroline will fit in our family perfectly.

We started our Wednesday morning grumpy and hungry. We did not fall asleep until 4:00am and the alarm went off at 8:00 (we did not get up until 8:45 though). We rushed to get ready so we could go downstairs for breakfast before meeting Irina at 10:00. Unbelievably, we finished breakfast right at 10:00 and then met Irina in the lobby. We had a new driver named Nicolai today as Vladimir was teaching music lessons. His car was small and had no backseat seatbelts. All I could think was how lucky we were to have Vladimir pick us up from the airport because he had a van and we had a lot of luggage. (Almost a whole suitcase for the orphanage donations)

So, we were driven about 30 minutes or so away to a notary's office. We waited in a waiting room for about 20 minutes while Irina went into a woman's office to fill out paperwork and notarize all of our adoption paperwork. The Russian courts are VERY particular and everything has to be perfect or it can cause problems while in court. We certainly do not want to have to go down that path. While waiting Irina tells us what to expect when we come back for court. Brent and I need to prepare a "speech" on paper and decide who is to read it. Uhhhhh......I think I will let Brent handle that. I am sure I will have my body shivering, lip quivering, teeth chattering thing going on that my body tends to do when nervous.

Anyway, we finally were called to the back to sign a bunch of documents and some sort of book. We were asked again why we would want another child and Brent replied with an annoyed short answer. Adoption is just not a very popular thing to do here. It is really only done if you can not have your own children. It seems families prefer one child on average here. That is fine, we just feel like freaks in their eyes because we want to give an orphan a good home.

So, after we leave we have our driver drop us off at the Hermitage Museum. WOW! Let me tell you, it gives the Louve a run for its money. The actual building blows the Louve away. It is in a palace that is absolutely breathtaking. There is art on the ceilings like in the Sistine chapel and the carvings and moldings and details are amazing. Now, we can not say who has the best art collection as we are but mere pion know-nothings in that subject. They had lots of Picasso's, Matisse, Da Vinci's, etc....but sadly, only one Bougoureau. sigh. It wasn't even one of his good pieces. So, with that bit of news we bid farewell to the Hermitage and started looking for a restaurant. We decided on a Pizzaria since we have ONLY eaten at the hotel restaurant and wanted something different. It was not bad but no Papa John's either! ha ha

We got lost on our walk home and a quick 10 minutes turned in to a painful (my shoes were killing me) 45 minutes. The good news is that it was not very cold. Maybe in the upper 30's with no breeze, quite doable.

So, the plan was to go to sleep around 6:00pm and wake up at 2:00am. I woke up at 8:30 to the sound of the piano playing in the lobby. Beautiful, but quite loud. And so starts the vicious cycle of no sleep yet again. To be continued.....

Our Russian adventures!

Well, I guess we have not been as good as we hoped updating the blog. The time change has REALLY thrown us for a loop. We have averaged 2-3 hours a night in the last couple of days. We just can not shake it off. So, I will be telling you of our last 2 days in one post!
We got the news on Sunday evening that we would get to visit the orphanage Monday morning. That was a great surprise as we thought we had to wait until Tuesday. I personally was so excited I felt sick. We started the day with breakfast in the hotel, which was not bad at all. We met our translator(Irina) at 9:30am - Vladimir drove us.
We were driven to a building in St. Petersberg where the Ministry of Education(MOE) is.

We were taken up the stairs to the office of a woman who we briefly talked to us through our translator. She said that they found us a child and then "officially" gave us our referral for Caroline. The meeting was short, maybe 15 minutes or so. Irina got our paperwork to visit the orphanage and then we were
off!

The town where Caroline lives is very beautiful. There are lots of tall beautiful trees that were all sparkly and white with fresh fallen snow. There were lots of large homes that were newly built. It looked like a ski resort in Germany or Austria. Because of its beauty, it is apparently a popular place for people to go in the summer to get away from the city.

The orphanage was really tucked away off the main street. The building was under some construction - it looked like they were adding bricks to the outside walls. As we drove up we saw a group of children bundled up like eskimos about to go back inside. They were so cute and appeared to be about 3 or 4 years old.

We walked into the orphanage and went down a very long hallway with lots of outside light from the many windows looking out to the beautiful trees.

We then had a meeting with the orphanage director's assistant (the director was not there that day). She told us all about our child and then we got to ask questions. I wish we could tell you more details on that, but we are forbidden to post details online about Caroline until she is officially ours. I will say that she seems very healthy and we were happy with everything we heard.

Next, we were escorted to a playroom at the other end of the long hallway. It was filled with suffed animals and toys and had a beautiful picture window overlooking the outdoor scenery.
After about 5 minutes or so they brought our baby to us. She was not sure what was going on, but did not cry or fuss. They set her in my lap and she just looked at me. It took her a couple of minutes to warm up, but quickly did and started to smile and laugh as we played with her. She loved chewing on the cross necklace Brent got me for Christmas (it has her birthstone). She was REALLY teething and kept things in her mouth a lot. She loved the Gerber Fruit Puffs we brought and nibbled on them like they were little carrots. They said that she was not used to eating stuff like that. I think they thought she was going to choke. Brent tried to explain that they were dissolvable, but I am not sure they understood.

We got to play with Caroline for maybe 1-1.5 hours. Then they came and took her and said that it was time for her nap. We were left with the feeling that she was a very happy baby and looked to be quite healthy. She is very active and right on track with the milestones for her age.

We then left the orphanage and returned to St. Petersburg. Irina and Vladimir drove us around the city for a while to see some sights. Wow! There is a lot of history in this city. They call it the Venice of the north, but it looked like a mix between Prauge and Paris to me. It is supposed to be wonderful in the summer. The weather is not horribly cold, but too cold for me. When I get cold it takes me forever to warm up and it leaves me shivering and miserable.

We got back to the hotel and ate in the hotel restaurant called "Canvas". Brent had the same thing he had the previous 2 nights - rigatonni with roast duck (no mango salsa) . I ate a little eggplant/tomato/parmesean dish. The reason I tell you this is because I woke up at 2:30 in the morning with horrible nausea. I think it could have been the dinner, but I also had coffee with breakfast and then a cup of cofee in the afternoon. Those were the only liquids I had that were made with local water. They say to only drink bottled water. Anyway, Brent called Irina at 7:00 this morning to try to push our 8-doctor medical to Wednesday. It turns out that we could not. So, I had 30 minutes to shower and get ready. I brought a bag incase I had to vomit in the car. I felt like crying and looked like death warmed over. I slept all the way to the hospital. We went into a doctor's office in the hospital and they had cookies and coffee/tea. Needless to say, I avoided the coffee!!! The doctor's wanted to help me feel better and suggested I get hooked up to an IV with vitamin's in it. I did not want to, but Brent said I should (we had a long day in front of us and were headed back to the orphanage after the hospital). The crazy thing is that I was starting to feel a little better and I HATE IV's. So, after our exams they took us to a very cold room and gave me an IV for about 45 minutes. Then they gave me a dose of vitamin c in the IV.

By the way, a couple of doctors were so confused as to why we would want to adopt a 4th child. They kind of laughed at us. That whole hospital thing was odd and I am glad it is over.
We then went to the orphanage again. By this point, Brent started to feel bad. We were both sooo overly exhausted at this point. The stress of being in a foreign land, adopting a baby, and having 4 hours of sleep in 4 days was taking its toll.

We spent about an hour or so with our baby again. She was still happy and still very active and curious. She took about 4 steps on her own today. I bet she will be full out walking when we come back for court. She was dressed like a boy again.

 I keep putting a pink headband in her hair when I see her. She leaves it in too! She really is a doll and a very sweet little girl. She also has a mouth full of teeth!

After the orphanage we drove back to the city. Brent and I slept almost the whole way back and practically leapt out of the car to go back to our hotel room. As soon as we got back we changed clothes, got in bed and passed out for about 5 hours. I woke up starving. Anyway, here I am at 12:41am local time typing away on our blog. Thank goodness we have a short day tomorrow because I imagine we will not sleep much tonight being that we took a 5 hour power nap! Yikes we are messed up!
Tomorrow we notarize all the papers to proceed with the adoption and then we might go to the Hermitage Museum. Our plane leaves at 6:30 am(local time) on Thursday. We will have to leave the hotel at 4:00 am.
We are ready to come home. We miss our kids soooo much! This is the longest I have ever been seperated from Avery Grace and Savannah. It will be a beautiful day when we do not have to leave one child to see the others.
We will post a couple of pictures from our trip on here soon.

We're Here!

Well, 21 months after our decision to pursue adoption we are finally in Russia. Thank you sooo much to all those who have offered words of encouragement. The kids are with Brent's mom, Diane, and we can't thank her enough.

We were "wheels up" in Dallas at about 5:30 pm on Friday and "wheels down" in St. Petersburg 16 hours and 15 minutes later - not bad at all. This included a nearly 4-hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. Some of you know that we lived for 3 years outside of Frankfurt (1993-1996), and it was fun to be back - even just at the airport. We were reminded that there are rules to be followed in Germany (the German gate agent did not want to allow us to take more than 1 carry-on even though the flight was only about 1/3 full) but that those rules are somewhat responsible for very good beer, which Brent enjoyed.

We arrived in St. Petersburg under the cover of darkness so we did not really get to see the city as we came in. Going through customs was fairly uneventful and our bags arrived just a few minutes after we got off the plane. We had a very friendly drive (Vladimir) and translater (Mascha) who picked us up from the airport. The drive was about 30 minutes and we had a chance to see just a few of the historic landmarks on the way to the hotel. The hotel is very nice (Marriott Renaissance) and the service is very good. We had dinner last night and Brent had rigatonni with roasted duck - very good.

We had no problems sleeping last night since we had been up for over 30 hours, with the exception of a few very small catnaps. We didn't venture out much today but are getting rested up for the activities tomorrow. We meet our coordinator tomorrow at 9:30 am and will likely go to the Ministry of Education (MOE) and perhaps to the "8-doctor physical." We do not think we will see Caroline tomorrow but will obviously ask. That's all for now. We'll try to post an update every day (Mon-Wed).

Map of Russia