TRAVEL!!!!

The last 5 days have been INSANE! Andrew & I have not slept much since Thursday. On Friday afternoon we were given tentative travel dates of being in Kras on March 26 with our MOE appointment & first visit with baby on the 28th!! PANIC & EXCITEMENT set in at the same time. And then every plan for travel we had made for first trip changed.....

The kids are NOT going with us...we were told there is an outbreak of some illnesses & no gurantee our kids would be allowed in the orphange to meet their brother. Flying 5 of us to the other side of the world with 10 days notice was going to cost WAY more than we had planned.....on top of it fitting the 5 of us in a European car with luggage, driver, & adoption facilitator was proving difficult. If you've been to another country you understand we have unusually large vehicles here in America.

We are also not going to go through London to spend the night with family. It was more expensive to use our air miles & go that way. Plus, the flight from London went to the wrong airport in Moscow.....so we are going to fly STRAIGHT from LAX to Krasnoyarsk with layovers in New York & Moscow. We leave next Thursday the 24th & have about 20 hours of flying & 15 hours of layovers. Brutal, but cheaper :) We arrive in Kras on the morning of the 26th & we have that day & the 27th to get adjusted before all the official stuff starts.

We will have our first visitation at the orphanage on Monday the 28th & also have our appointment at the MOE to sign the referral acceptance. This reserves him for us & takes him off the available children list. We get visits with our son on the 29th & 3oth as well. We have the 31st as a day to do some sightseeing & get ready to come home on April 1st. We fly Kras to Moscow, then straight home to LAX. We fly for about 18 hours & only have a 5 hour layover in Moscow. We are very excited & have gotten all of the big stuff like plane tickets, visa applications, & hotels taken care of.

Our family & friends are the BEST! Andrew's brother & his wife as well as a few good friends are taking care of the kids & dogs. It has worked out that most of our trip is during the kids' spring break. Thank you God for the little details that have made things a little more convenient for everyone :)

Here is how you can pray over the next two weeks:

1. Our visas will get here in the next few days like they are supposed to. We paid rush fees of course, but won't breathe until they are here!!
2. Protection over us as we travel to the other side of the world & are in a foreign country.
3. For our son to bond with us during our visits!! Prayer for us to focus on enjoying him & help our emotions when we have to leave him after the thrid visit & come home.
4. For our finaces to STRETCH as far as possible. God has provided so far & we know He will provide the rest.
5. For the kids as we are gone for 9 days. Pray for the people taking care of them & for their sanity :)
6. We will not be able to file our court documents in person on this trip as we had planned because of such short notice. USCIS hasn't even processed our renewal yet (I checked this morning), our FBI fingerprints are still being processed, & we still have a few other things that need to get taken care of. So, we will have to ship our court docs after we get home & get everything together, signed & stamped by the right people. This should only delay getting a court date by a few weeks, but it's so important that we get to meet him so fast & sign the papers to officially reserve him as ours.

So that's what is going on around here!! We'll blog as much as we can while we're there. We still won't be allowed to post pictures of the baby on this trip, but we will post pictures of the sights in Kras.

Thank you all for praying & following our adventure! We're almost there :)

Charity