Court is finished

We had our court appointment on Tuesday and everything went well. There were a few surprises but everyone's prayers availed and we were granted permission to adopt Dasha. Yay! We are getting to visit her everyday except weekends and she seems to be growing more attached to us with each visit. We should be able to pick her up on Feb.8th or 9th. Though I'm not sure where we'll put her in our tiny Hotel Krasnoyarsk room with our two twin beds:0) I'll post some pics after we get her. Not sure about the rules on posting photos before the 10 day wait is up and don't want anything to go wrong at this point. Thanks for your prayers! Keep praying for our bonding process to continue to go well and for us to not miss home too much!

Moscow

We are in Moscow right now, we leave tomorrow night for Krasnoyarsk. We did our 8-doctor medicals last night. Strangely, we saw seven doctors, but there were 8 signatures and stamps. Hmm... They weren't too bad, but we were at the clinic for five hours! A lot of sitting around waiting. Imagine the amount of time you'd spend in waiting rooms if you had 8 doctor's appoinments in one day and I guess five hours is about right. We went to KFC on Tverskaya Street for dinner to celebrate finishing the dreaded medicals. Today we ventured out to find a McDonald's and found one a couple blocks away. We stopped at a Russian grocery store to get bottled water and some noodles to make for dinner. It's really snowing here and the wind makes the snow a little sharp when it hits your face. We'll try to update the blog again once we get to Krasnoyarsk. Can't wait to see Dasha on Monday! Yay!

We got the call!!!!

We finally got the call this afternoon that we have a court date. Hurray!!

We leave the U.S. on January 22nd, spend a couple days in Moscow getting our medical exams done, then travel on to Krasnoyarsk. We have court January 29th, then we should get to pick up Dasha on February 13th and travel to Moscow on Feb.14th. We arrive back home February 20th.

We have been busy tonight booking flights and filling out visa applications and trying to figure out what to pack (the temperature was -33 degrees today, yikes).

Please keep us in your prayers as we travel and start this new part of our lives!

Merry Christmas!

Yes, I know that we celebrated Christmas two weeks ago. But January 7th (which it is Jan.7 right now in Krasnoyarsk because of the 12 hour time difference) is Russian Orthodox Christmas, so today is Christmas in our baby's homeland. So Merry Christmas Dasha!

We are hoping to hear about a court date soon. Over the holiday break, we received an email that one of our documents had a mistake and needed to be redone immediately and sent directly to our facilitator in Krasnoyarsk. Sounds like good news to me, it means they are looking at our paperwork and need it to be in order. We checked with Fed-Ex and Krasnoyarsk is so far away that it is not even in their delivery area! We also checked with DHL and they could do it pretty fast but their only international shipping office is at the airport and would be over $100 to ship the document. Luckily, there is a woman we know from our Yahoo group who kindly agreed to take it with her this weekend and deliver it for us, since she is picking up her daughter this week. Thank you Lord for your perfect provision! Please keep this woman in your prayers as she brings her little girl home.

We are hoping for a court date the beginning of February (the 5th is my birthday, so that would be really cool!). If not, we will continue to rest in God's arms as He prepares our hearts to be Dasha's Mama and Papa. He has done such amazing things so far, and He will finish what He has started!