One month down

And hopefully only one more month to go! We have been so busy getting the paperwork done and getting the rooms ready. Thank God for Marilyn at CHI. She has been so wonderful in helping us get the remaining paperwork done and off to Russia by the 15th of September. Please pray that all this rush will get us back to Russia by October sometime. We both miss the kids tremedously and it is so hard not to be able to ask everyday how they are doing. We are trying to get cards together to send to them with pictures. Our friends Joel & Clarion are on their way home soon with their two boys from Vlad. It was so emotional to see the picture of them as a family and to know that in just a couple of months it will be us taking a picture of our family.

Day 5

Day 5. Our last day with the kids. We consider ourselves very blessed to have the opportunity to bring these children into our family and give them a loving home. They are wonderful kids and it was really hard to leave today. We went to the notary office this morning and signed the official paperwork to adopt them. We then went back to the hotel to drop Lana off and headed to the toy store. We bought a ton of toys for the oldest boy’s orphanage. The kids there are really good kids so hopefully this brightened their really rainy day today. We must be getting the rain that is hitting you guys at home too. It was kind of a bummer that it rained because we couldn’t go outside to play with him. Svetlana, the director of the orphanage, insisted we eat lunch which was soup (of course), some kind of rice with some meat, pickles with onions and tea. Again, Eric loved it all. He is going to hate going back home to Becky’s cooking (or lack of!!). They put us in a room upstairs with him. He colored a little then we got out our computer to show him some pictures of the other kids, our house and the family. He was talking about the pictures but of course we couldn’t understand him. He did know his brother & sister right away though. He was very interested in playing with the computer and loved to see the typing on Word. Overall the visit was very good and hopefully in the time between trips he will become more acceptable of the idea of going home with us. We then headed to the baby home. The kids were very excited to see us. The director there told us that in the morning the little girl asked if her parents were coming today and if we were still going to adopt her. It is amazing at such a young age how much she understands already. The lady from the social service office came to the baby home and met with us to ask some questions. Of course the biggest was why we would want three children! She is going to stand up for us in court for the two little ones saying it is OK for us to adopt them. The girl was very quite today. We are not sure if she was tired, not feeling well or just had a sense of what was going on. She clung to Becky most of the visit (which of course I loved!) and when it was time for them to go back to their group she would not let Becky go. Hopefully they will explain to her that we will be coming back soon. We ate at the hotel tonight and their was a 60th birthday party going on in the restaurant. They had entertainers (singers & belly dancers). Very interesting!