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.