Thanks some more

Wow, hard to believe we have been home a month. Tonight we had a sweet time of celebration at church and were so encouraged by all of the sweet comments you had for us. We want to thank everyone for all of the cards, letters and calls. And to thank God for this wonderful gift.

Anna Beth is doing very well. She is healthy, she is growing, and she is doing a great job learning English. Right now, she understands everything we say, and she mimics everything. We are going to do a little speech therapy just to catch up.

On Sunday we celebrated a sweet time of dedication.

Its only been a week? Really

Even thou we have only been home with Anna Beth for one week, it feels like she has been a part of our lives forever. Sorry that it has taken us this long to update the blog, but we have been very busy with her. She has done extremely well, and we are all very excited. Here are few pictures from her first days in the USA!

Thanks again for all of the prayers.

Meeting Lucy

I am still silly

Championship family

This is how you do it

Very cold for sigthseeing

all dressed and ready to go

They took me for my first trip to McDonalds

Here we are at the front of red square

That famous onion top thing

Moscow underground. Check

Red Square. Check

Frostbite. Check

Too cold to buy souvenirs. Seems that 0 degrees F is at least good to keep the crowds down at the famous tourista sites. We saw more wedding parties in the Gum mall, then we did sightseers in Red Square. To put in prespecitive what a -11 feelslike tempature will do, our camera died during the experience.

Well, home tomorrow. We leave the hotel at 7:15 am, and hope to get to our house within 27 or so hours. Don't forget to pray for us. We have 3.5 hour flight from Moscow to Amsterdam, then a little over 10 hours from there to Memphis. Then a one hour to Jackson. Then a ride to the house.

We raised our right hand, and they said we could bring her home

"Cheese"

We made it to the Embassy today. They said congratulations and gave us her visa and imigration paperwork. Next stop for paperwork is the Russian Consolate. Then we can come home Saturday. Thanks everybody for checking in on us. We hope to get out and see Red Square and a few other places tomorrow.

Photos for those watching at home.

Silly faces

I love my mommy

I got to nap in the big bed

Daddy shows me the dvd player (with the baby crack on it)

I like my phone

Moscow outside my window

I want to go outside

My shirt says princess

Getting dressed up for the embassy

We made it to Moscow

Wow, sorry it has been a couple of days. Not a lot else went on in Arkhangelk except a good bit of cabin fever. With only four hours of daylight, and most of that while Anna Beth was down for her nap, there wasn’t much of a chance to get outside and play. Oh, and it was 10 degrees and snowing, so not very much fun in that anyway. We were able to complete all of our required paperwork and get ABC’s Russian Passport. Leigh was the one that had to go and pick that up, and since she got back Anna Beth has been a little testy with Bryan. Seems that since mamma left her for an hour, papa is to blame. It really only comes out when she is tired, or stressed. This too shall pass.

We had a rather uneventful flight from Ark to Moscow. A little late getting off of the ground, and that extra 30 minutes of having to sit strapped into our seats was almost more than she wanted, but we made it. She got a little fussy about an hour into the flight. She was fighting sleep, and fighting Leigh for not letting her down on the ground to stay awake. After 5 or so minutes of pouting, crying,and mild screaming, she was asleep. Another hurry up and wait in the Moscow airport for forty five minutes because our driver was stuck in traffic (a very common excuse) and we made it to the hotel. The Moscow Hilton has proven, so far, to be well worth all of our points to stay here. English is the primary language, a very helpful and accommodating staff, (well, for a regular price of $350 to 400 a night, what do you expect) and good food. Leigh has decided that civilization is much better than the best the north of Russia had to offer.

One of the main things we have had here is comfort food. For Leigh it was a rack of lamb on the night we arrived. For Bryan it was the first good cup (whole pot)of coffee since we left home, and for Anna Beth it was what might have been her first waffle. (With medical care in close reach, Leigh is feeling out the boundaries of Anna Beth’s diagnosis of food allergies.) We haven’t quite caught up on missing our nap yesterday, or waking up at 6:30 for the Dr.’s appointment this morning, but we all feel much better today. Even in a city a far from home as Moscow is, the 17th floor of a hotel where people speak your language, and u can see out makes things a lot better.

Speaking of the 17th floor. We have a neat view of the northern end of the city. We have a corner room, so we can see about 130 degrees of the city. We are much higher than most of the other buildings, so other than the smog, the view is unobstructed. The hotel is built in one of the seven Lenin towers, so it is in a historic building. Anna Beth enjoys looking around out of the window here too. After her nap, we plan to let her get out and experience the city a bit.

I mentioned the Dr.’s appointment. We were given the clean bill of health required by the US embassy for her visa. Our paperwork has been filed at the embassy, and we have an appointment at 2:00 PM on Thursday for our interview, and to get her visa. After that, either Thursday or Friday, we go to the Russian Consulate and register her to leave. Mixed in there will be her trip to Red Square, Arbat Street, and anywhere else we can stand. A good friend of ours pointed out that it was warmer at the south pole today then it is in Moscow. Thanks to global warming, Moscow is having its coldest January in 20 years. At least we have daylight here longer than we did in Ark, so that should help all of our feelings.

Thanks for stopping by, we hope to see you all soon, and here are a few more pictures.

Cousins

Thanks Dr. Mills for the dum dum.

Getting to know the airport monkey

Waiting on our airplane. Alex, Anna Beth, and Anya

I love my new clothes and hairbrush/ waiting on my hairbow

still learning

A few milestones. We were told one time when we needed to go potty number 1. And after she woke up from our Sunday nap she went to the fridge and pointed. When Leigh opened the door, she grabbed a bottle of food and a spoon.


Other activities included acting like a two year old at breakfast. Seems she is a lot easier to keep in check in a lap, then she is in the high chair. She likes the freedom, but she also likes to see your reactions when thinks go sliding to the floor. She continued to be a little wild until nap time. She didn’t want to go down, but ultimately did. And she woke up being Anna Beth the easy again. We also learned today that for the long skinny kid, elastic waist are good, but draw strings are better.

A few more photo’s.

Little Miss Anna Beth Bed Head
























Poopy trilogy

ABC was excited to hear that the Saints won. And Bo thinks she is back in college, because with our weight restrictions on luggage she is having to redefine what exactly is dirty clothes and what isn’t.

photos for now

I can do it.
I play hard.

This is fun.

Cold, but out for dinner.

I can smile.

First shopping trip. Shoes that fit.

Please, what's with the camera?

Turns out the only real problem we had on day one was bath time. She did not like that big ole tub, and the air was too cold evidently. And using the hair dryer to speed things up after the bath went no where fast. After we got her dressed, she was fine. I guess for a father, your daughter wanting to keep her clothes on is a good thing.

Today was another good day. She slept thru the night, woke about 6 am, but let us cuddle around her in the bed for an hour or so. She is really eating well, and has not been picky thus far. I went out for another paperwork appointment today. While she and Leigh stayed in. After a good set of afternoon naps (Leighbo won the longest nap prize) Anna Beth and I got to spend some quality quite time together trying not to wake up mommy. We got to read several books today too.

We have not had much success getting “good” photos. Every time the red eye lights come on she stops smiling. Here are a couple of the more classic ones from today.

Highlights for today were getting to skype with lots of her family back home. She got to meet NA, Pops and Joey at the office. She saw Caleb before he went to school. Nana and pop had company over to meet her. And Jacob and Bruce got to get out of class with Aunt Brandi to say hi too.

We have a couple of days waiting for her Passport, so maybe we can get some better pictures over the weekend.

GOTCHA

With all the time I knew we would have on planes and in airports I brought along Dr. Avant’s book, “If God were Real.” I finally started reading it this morning while I was waiting on them to bring Anna Beth to our hotel room. After just 30 minutes with her I can promise you God IS real. Your prayers have been heard. While I promise you the first 10 or 15 minutes were probably some of the most tense any of us have experienced., things have made a turn for the better. ABC has calmed down a little. (Ashley you will be so happy that changing her into some new clothes made her calm down.) She has played with some toys, had a snack, finally tried her juice, and is having a discussion with Leighbo about what it means to potty.

When they brought her to us, they had a little bag of toys with her. She had the photo albums we had left for her, and she had a”little angel” doll. I asked Leigh if we had left that before, and she quickly produced our copy that Lesley had sent. Thanks again God for winking at us and reminding us that you are in control, and as long as we will follow along you will continue to take care of us.

Well, the morning continued pretty well. We had a visitor from her orphanage, Alexander’s new parents had to go out to get him registered. The kdis both played, but not together. Diana Beth was very tired, so we laid her down for a nap. Then we had another surprise hoop to jump thru. We had to wake her up and take her to Alexander’s room while we went back to the courthouse. Seems that Diana’s last name was misspelled in translation and we had adopted the wrong kid. Some how 26 letters of our alphabet get messed up when you try to convert them to 34 phonetic characters. This was discovered when they wouldn’t allow us to register her as ours. The hearing only took about 10 minutes, and the judge agreed to correct the spelling and allow us to get that decision today, not 10 days from now. So back to the hotel, and wait to see if we can get registered today. 　
　
Just got back from getting the adoption decree and birth certificate. SHE IS OFFICIALY OURS!!!!!!!! And we are back on schedule.

Hope everyone else has this good of a day.

Back in Arkhangelsk

Well, we have been here often enough now that the young lady at the front desk recognized us when we walked up. We got checked in and then went out to a little market for some provisions and stopped by the baby food store. We got to sign a few more pieces of paperwork and got a chance to clean up a bit. We are about to call it a night, even though it is just 5 pm here. We have a big day tomorrow as Anna Beth should get to us around 10AM tomorrow.

We met one of the other families that is here picking up their son. They were able to fill us in a little bit about what they have been doing. Hopefully we can get the kids together for some playtime before they head off to Moscow.

Thanks again for all of the thoughts and prayers. Leigh's cough has been back, but doesn't seem to be gettinng any worse.

If you remeber when we talked about our summer vacation at the beach. This is what the beach looks like now.

1/2 way there

We are sitting in the KLM Crowne room in Amsterdam - for 12 hours. What a lay over! Should be in Moscow early in the morning/late tonight, 5am moscow time, then on the Ark to get Anna Beth on Thursday. Just cheecked the weather and it is much warmer than last trip. Looks about like at home last week! No below O F days while we are there. Maybe we can get out and play in the snow a bit. More to come...

Travel Plans

We leave Monroe on the afternoon of the 11th of January to go get Anna Beth. We should be back home, flying into Jackson, on Saturday night the 23rd. We get to Arkhangelsk around noon on Wednesday the 13th, and should get Anna Beth around 10:00 Thursday morning the 14th. In Arkhangelsk, we should file paperwork on Friday the 15th, pick it up on Tuesday the 19th. We go to Moscow on the 20th do our paperwork there and home Sat. Hopefully everything will work out on that schedule.

A lot of our thoughts have been about what will we do for seven days in a hotel with her. Today the temp in Arkhangelsk was -36F. Not a lot to do outside in those temps. We have tried to find light weight games and toys (we only have 44 pounds of luggage a piece going in) that we can take with us. We have invested in a portable DVD player and a few hundred hours of dvds. We have playdoh, markers, colors and such. We just don't have anything that converts everything we say in English to come out as Russian. But we aren't the first to go thru this, and we won't be the last.

We have been in contact with a couple of other families that will be in Ark at the around the same time. We hope to try to get the kids together during the days to play and to make each families transitions a little easier.

Thanks to everybody for following along with us on this adventure. We pray everyday that God helps to prepare Anna Beth's heart and mind for this change, and ours too.

Let the shopping begin

We spent about an hour in the courtroom this morning. Everything went just as we were told to expect. The only question that they asked that we hadn't prepared for was "if the girl is allergic to pets, what will you do?" I answered seek medical treatment, and let the dog live outside. Leigh coudn't believe that I didn't just say, "we will get rid of the darn cats." After a lenghty 3-5 minute deliberation, the Judge came back in and affirmed our petition to adopt Anna Beth. She was not able to wave the 10 days before the ruling would be final, but at least we know we can come get her next month, and that she will be ours.

We have a few more hours here in Arkhangelsk before we head to Moscow for the night. We have an early start for home with stops in Amsterdam and Atlanta. If all goes right, we will be home a little after 9 Sat night. Thanks for continuing to remember us in prayer, and we look forward to seeing many of you for Christmas. We won't have Anna Beth home for this Christmas, but we will have many of those to come. Looks like we should be home in time for Mardi Gras though, so I guess that isn't all bad.

Well, I guess to address the title. I have been a little concerned about all of the shopping that had been going on around our family. Seems all of these little things kept appearing. I had requested that we not get too much ahead of ourselves until Anna Beth was really ours. Well, she is pretty much ours now, so I have lost my argument and the furniture and other stuff can start coming home too.

Again thanks for all of the prayers as we have made this quick but stressful trip to take care of this very important step. We should find out next week when we can return for Anna Beth, so we will keep you posted. This year more than any, I have a new appreciation for what God did for us at Christmas. If you haven't met the Son that was Gods gift to you, I encourage you to seek Him out. It will change your life. Who knows, following Him may even lead you to a land far away to meet another of His kids that He wants you to raise. Merry Christmas

We made it back to Arkhanglesk

No pictures with the post, because we look rough. We made it over with out any real problems. I had a really bad sinus squeeze on the way to New York, so I doped up really well for the flight to Moscow. Neither of us had any trouble on the long flight. We had another lenghty layover in Moscow, so we stretched our legs and filled our bellies. Flight to Ark was pretty easy. We both fell asleep before take off, and woke up when they told us to prepare for landing. All of the luggage is here, and the hotel is just like it was in August, except cold.

Thanks for all the prayers, Leigh and I were able to walk off the plane fever free!!!

Did I mention it is cold here? But it is a dry cold! Dang straight, at -10, there can't be much moisture in the air. Oh well, we have coats etc. Tomorrow will be court prep in the AM, and I guess siteseeing/inventoring the baby store in the afternoon.

Thanks for all the prayers, we will see you tomorrow.

Court date!!

We got notice that our court date for Anna Beth's adoption hearing will be the 18th. We will leave on Tuesday, go straight thru to Arkhangelsk on Wednesday. We will meet for court prep on Thursday. Have the hearing Friday morning, and if everything goes as expected, we will start for home Friday night. We won't have the baby with us then, in fact we won't even get to see her this trip. We will come home for Christmas, while we wait on our 10 day waiting period to pass, and then go back after the first of the year to pick up Anna Beth. The Russian government will basically shut down for the first 10 days of 2010, so we will not go back until after at least the 10th. When we go back we will be there for 10 days to 2 weeks, which puts us bringing Anna Beth home around the 23rd or so of Jan. We will keep everybody posted.

Planning this trip during the holidays has been kinda interesting. We had a few more days notice than we expected, but that put us traveling during the holiday period. We were fortunate that we were able to use frequent flyer miles for this trip. We thought at one time that we would be able to fly first class, but because of the holiday, it took all of our miles just to get the tickets. If we had not been saving miles for the last several years, we would have been looking at $3000 per ticket. God is good and he took care of us again.

Thinks are coming along well on the new house, and we should have Anna Beth in her new room before summer. Actually, before her 3rd birthday at the end of May. It has been exciting to see what we designed coming together. Come by early one morning, and I will show you around.

Thanks again for all of your prayers, and we look forward to showing Anna Beth off next month.

last piece of paper (we hope)

Well, it finally happened. The piece of paper we have been waiting on has finally arrived. We received our approval from immigration to be adoptive parents. Who would have thought it would take this long to figure out. I still contend that if we could get the government involved in approving natural childbirths, we could end world hunger, overpopulation, and most government entitlement programs. Well, we have copies of the form off to Todd and Lesley. They will take them to the Sec. of States office in the morning, and then send them on to Dallas for us. Dallas will turn them around to Russia for us. Once they get to Russia, the Judge has to review them, and then we can get our court date.

We have prayed for months that we are home for Christmas. At this point it will require God's touch for that to happen. We look forward to being able to praise him for that gift.

We are also especially happy that Caleb was given an all clear yesterday. He was back at St. Jude's for scans following his Chemo treatments. He is CANCER FREE!!!! We thank God for that for sure.

We thank you for your continued prayers as we try to get God's child home with us. We cannot adequately express to you how much of a difference those prayers make.

B

Still waiting

Well, there isn't much to tell right now. We are still waiting on our FBI clearance to return, and our form from immigration. Once we have these, we send them to Russia and they will set us a court date. While it is still likely that we could be home for Christmas, our spirits have been a little down this week because we were hoping that if our paperwork came back we would be able to go for our hearing at the end of October. Please pray for us as we wait. It is so hard to not get frustrated when the delays come. And it is as equally difficult to keep from getting overly excited.

We had a great visit with Lesley, Todd, the girls and Caleb this weekend. Continue to pray for them as Caleb is half way through his Chemo treatments. He has been really good so far (besides feeling pretty lousy after each treatment). Pray his counts stay up so he can stay in school and do all the things a 6yr old should be able to do.

As far as building a house goes there isn't a lot that can be done when you get 20+" of rain while you are trying to build a foundation. We will try again this coming week to pour a slab. I think the delays there are part of the frustration as well. Hopefully with a little progress we can keep occupied while we wait on the paperwork.

Thanks again for continuing to lift us up.

News of the day is we got our appointments for our imigration background checks. We go next week to be fingerprinted yet again. Then we are just waiting on the finalized I600A to send along with another batch of paperwork to Russia. Once that is there we will be waiting on our court date. We will only have about two weeks notice for that trip.

Keep Caleb in your prayers, he starts testing at St. Judes in the morning but we probably wont know anything about treatment for a few days.

What a week

Well, we have been home for almost a week, and what a week it has been. We nailed down a place to rent while the house is being built, we moved up the close date on our house again, and we started taking down trees on the lot. We also got the news that our little nephew Caleb was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Caleb is the 6year old son of Lesley (Leigh's sister) and Todd Free. They live in Walker LA right now while Todd is finishing up a degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and working on the staff of Walker Baptist Church. The good news is that this is a curable cancer. I didn't even know that they used those words together. But this will be a difficult time for our little man as his body has to undergo treatment. The leave for St. Judes on Tuesday. Once there the team in Memphis will do all of the testing to stage the cancer, and then develop the treatment plan. Please pray for the Free family, especially Caleb. When Caleb was born in China, he was diagnosed with Spina Bifida. While that diagnosis was never confirmed in the US, it was the reason that Todd and Lesley were able to get him because he was considered special needs. God has been holding this child of his all along, and we know he still does. We as humans just hate that Caleb is going to have to go through this. We also know that God will be glorified through this, and we look forward to seeing how others lives can be changed by coming into contact with this wonderful little boy.

As for the rest of our timing, we are working on a new round of paperwork. As soon as it is in Russia they can set us a court date. We will have about two weeks notice of our court date, so we will let you know as soon as we do. But still looking at several months from now.

Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.

We are back in the good old USA

Wow, thanks for all of the prayers. 3 flights down, 1 to go and we should be home tonight in our bed. Total of 25 hours or so this trip, so not too bad. HA!! As we get our feet on the ground we will try to get a few more pictures up. Thanks again, and we will keep you posted as we try to get her home for Christmas.