Double blessings!

We have big news to share...I'm pregnant...I'll be 10 weeks on Monday! Apparently everyone was suspecting it- except me -since I was throwing up on every plane in Russia. Aaron & Pat asked me several times on the trip, but I didn't think so. We found out 2 days after we got back, I thought I had some terrible virus and Aaron made me take a test to make sure and it was positive. We called the specialist we used to see and had an ultrasound and I was 8 weeks! The Dr. wanted to touch us so our luck could rub off on her. We had another ultrasound on Friday and everything looks great (9weeks 4 days), heart is beating 160 bpm, and little arm buds and leg buds are growing, and the he/she was moving around. Our previous 3 losses were all around 6 1/2 weeks, so there is something much different about this pregnancy (including the morning sickness). I think Pat said it best...(paraphrasing) maybe God temporarily held us back from having a child of our own, so that we would go and get Victor.

Speaking of, we have decided on a name...finally - Gavin Victor All. So Gavin will have a brother or sister about 5 months after he comes home. My due date is January 29th, 2008. The baby will get to share a birthday close to Grandpa Gary and niece Whitney. We are getting close to finishing our remaing paperwork and hope to get a court date in Russia soon.

[To decipher the sonogram picture...The head is to the right, facing upwards, the 4 little circle areas are the arm and leg buds.]

Home Sweet Home!

We made it home at midnight last night. We were up for over 24 hours. We are glad to be back in America and had to order pizza today! Thanks for all your emails and posts on the blog! It was so fun for us to read them while in Russia! Now we have additional documents to do so we can go back and get Victor! We are anticipating going back at the beginning of August. We havn't decided on what his new name will be, we may keep Victor as his middle name. We'll let you know when we get our court date to go back!

Leaving for US

St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square

We spent our last day in Moscow with a personal tour guide (Helen) recommended from the adoption agency...she was wonderful! She spoke very good English and was very educated about Russian history and culture. We saw so much we can't even begin to tell it here. We are less than 20 minutes from being picked up to go to the airport, so better run...we've had an amazing trip...see you all in America!

Victor with Babooshka

Mom was actually the first of us to hold Victor...this was one of the first pictures taken of him.

Victor imitating

One of the cutest moments at the orphanage with Victor...

Returning to Moscow...

[Sveta & Oleg seeing us off at the Abakan airport]


We left Abakan today, another 4 hour flight. Again, we were the only English speaking people on the flight, not to mention at the hotel Siberia in Abakan too. Before leaving, Oleg gave us a bottle of his favorite Vodka for a gift,based on our dinner & Vodka tasting the night before. Oleg and Sveta were great hosts! They are always making sure we are taken care of. I of course got sick again on the plane...on the van ride back to the hotel we had to pull over on the side of the road...ugh. We got back to the Courtyard Marriot in Moscow-we love the soft beds and I collapsed first. Aaron & Pat went to get some lunch, postcards, and a bottle of wine. Then they came back and napped too around 3:30pm. We woke up at 9pm...good luck for us getting to sleep tonight! We are taking a tour of Red Square tomorrow at noon and will do some souvenier shopping. We are watching the video of Victor and looking at how cute he is! We have another clip that Aaron is going to post, it's pretty funny!

Sveta, Shannon and Mom

Waiting for the notorization of our consent to adopt.

Last night in Abakan

Tonight, Sveta and Oleg took us out to dinner (although Mom paid) at a nice restaurant. We had eastern Siberian shish-kabobs...steak,grilled vegetables, whole parsley eaten between bites. We had long discussions about the second trip, Russian culture vs American, etc. They predict our second trip will be in Aug. At the end of the meal we had small decanter of Russian Vodka. Sveta says that Oleg (doesn't speak English) is a "pro" at Vodka. The vodka was poured into long stemmed crystal glasses. They are picking us up at 8:00am to take us to the airport to go back to Moscow. All for now!

Victor walking...

Here is some of the last video taken before leaving Victor today. We have much more, but too much for this site.

Note from Pat

[We wanted to share a note that Pat (Aaron's Mother) sent to family and her work, see below...]

Wanted to let you know that everything has gone well to this point although with a lot of stress considering all of the unknowns. We have a nice, clean, small hotel in Abakan that has a restaurant and a computer that can be used for a ruble a minute. No one speaks any English here so it is interesting to survive and fit in. However, Aaron and Shannon are doing great with their first international travel and to a region that few Americans have ever seen.

We had a great day yesterday and today with him. He is beautiful, engaging, smart, and a very warm child. I cried when we had to leave him today. He will be a wonderful addition to our family. We took lots of pictures and video. He passed all of Shannon's tests with flying colors. Aaron and he played ball. He was very quick to respond back to any prompts,even though he started out somewhat reserved. I think he knows what it takes to win people over. The caregivers at the orphanage seem very proud of him and fond of him as well. For the time we were there, the staff at the orphanage exceeded my expectations. I felt better about his care even though they can not replicate a family.
I talked to our interpretor and she indicated that fewer than 5% of the children raised in orphanages have schooling beyond 9th grade. The outlook for them is not good if they have to stay for their entire childhood. Even though the government is concerned about foreign adoptions, the local officials who deal with children in state custody and the staff appear very positive that this child will be given a home no matter that it is in another country. I think Victor will have more than a home with Aaron and Shannon. He is one blessed child.

We hope to have a safe trip back. The flight on Air Vladivostok for 4 hours was not ideal. We face that again tomorrow in our return to Moscow. Aaron and Shannon will be the lucky ones to return. However, Abakan is becoming more familiar and will hold many positive memories for all of us. We have lots to tell all of you. Take care.

Confirmation from IA Dr

It's Thursday morning (8:30am) in Abakan , and we got a couple email confirmations from the International Adoption Dr in Texas and she said everything looks good. She was able to view the video as well. We are going to see Victor again this morning and then this afternoon we will sign and notorize our intent to adopt him!! We forgot to bring the camera down to the internet room, but we will post more pics later!

Youtube video

[Updated--> This is fixed]
We'll have to work on fixing the youtube video later. The blog site is auto translating all the links into Russian and we're having trouble remembering what all the options are visually.

Youtube video of Victor

From Russia (Abakan) with Love

We made it through our flight, although Shannon threw up again shortly before landing. She says it was too 'hot' on the plane. We were in row 10, but in a section where the seats couldn't recline, AND there was virutally no leg room for Aaron. Sveta (translator) and Oleg (adoption coordinator) picked us up from the airport and assisted getting us checked into the hotel. They are both very nice. They took us this morning to the Minitry of Education to meet with the Russian officials for some short question/answers. Then we went to the orphanage. All the staff was in love with Victor. He warmed up very quickly to us. He went to Babooshka first (Russian for Grandma!), but by the end of 2 hours, we were all holding him and laughing with him. He played with toys, ate cheerios using pincer grasp, walked while holding a hand, stood by pulling himself up to a chair. He also laughed when raising him up/down. He imitated us when we made sounds with our mouth. He was very curious, turned towards noises, and tracked visually with bubbles we brought. We are excited about Victor and will wait to hear back from the Dr before commiting officially. We try and post a pic and or video here of Victor shortly.

Good Morning!

We went to bed at 12pm and woke up at 5am. Guess we are still adjusting to the sleep. We had a nice breakfast buffet (omelettes, herring, smoked salmon, bacon, pasteries,etc ) at our hotel this morning. We are planning on taking a 2 hour bus tour today to see Moscow and then have dinner close by. Luda will pick us up @8:30 pm to go the airport. All for now, Shannon, Aaron, and Pat

Us in front of a statue (the poet, Pushkin?) after dinner first night in Moscow.

Mom and Shannon just outside of our hotel walking to dinner the first night in Moscow.

We're here!

...the flight was 10+ hours long, we were the minorities on the plane. We guessed that %75 of the flight was Russian. We were flying so far north (over Greenland) that the sun never set! Shannon and I kept watching for the sunset, the sun touched the horizon and went right back up! We had to force ourselves to sleep, the flight provided sleep masks/ear plugs for everyone and shut the shades to simulate nighttime. Shannon threw up shortly before landing, she's ok though! We arrived in Moscow around 10:45am Moscow time, went through customs and our Russian contact for our Adoption agency met us at the airport with a driver. Her name is Luda, very nice & helpful. We immediately went to the Courtyard Marriot/Moscow, checked in and slept for 5 hours. For dinner, we had our first Russsian cuisine. The hotel recommended a place within walking distance, called the Mill. We had a Russian pies (like rolls) with cabage, mushrooms, or meat...very good! Shannon had veal medallions, Mom had pork kabobs, Aaron had roasted duck. For desert we had Russion creame puffs. Tomorrow, we will check out of our hotel at 12:00pm, spend some time touring downtown Moscow (the Kremlin, Red Square, etc). Then, at 8:30pm, Luda (our translator) is meeting us to put us on a Russian airline called Vladivostok (Uncle Roman, hope this one passed your engineering tests!) to go to Abakan, Russia. The flight leaves at 11:00pm, takes 5 hours, and will cross 4 timezones, and is as long/longer than traveling from NY to LA. It's Russia's independence day weekend, Tuesday is the last day they will be celebrating it. After arriving in Abakan, we will be taken to our hotel, and then to the Orphanage to meet Victor. We will be back in Moscow Friday (Thursday for you all), and will post more at that time. We'll try to post a pic here shortly. Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers!

Russia here we come!!

We're packed and ready (we think). We have snacks, all the techy equipment we could possibly need, toilet paper (just in case), gifts for the baby, and much more. We want to thank everyone again for all their postive thoughts and prayers! We can't believe we're really going! We'll post next time from Moscow. Love, Aaron & Shannon

Our itinerary:

Sunday June 10th: depart KCI 9:00 AM, arrive in Atlanta 11:58AM
depart Atlanta 3:40 PM, arrive Moscow-Monday June 11th 10:30AM
Monday June 11th: we will be met at airport by representatives for adoption agency
they will discuss the events of our trip with us and take us to our hotel
we will spend the night at the Courtyard Marriot by Red Square
Tuesday June 12th: we will have all day to catch up on some sleep and do some touring in
Moscow, depart for Abakan at 11pm (5 hour flight and 4 hour time
difference)
Wednesday June 13th: arrive in Abakan at 8AM, we will be met by a translator and driver
we will meet the baby today, spend night in Abakan
Thursday June 14th: we will spend more time with the baby and have to make our final
decision on adopting him today and complete paperwork
spend night in Abakan
Friday June 15th: 12:00 pm -fly back to Moscow (5 hour flight, time is 4 hours earlier )
spend night at Courtyard Marriot
Saturday June 16th: Last day to tour around Moscow and buy souveniers
spend night at Courtyard Marriot
Sunday June 17th: depart Moscow 1:10PM, arrive Atlanta 5:00pm
depart Atlanta 7:38PM, arrive KCI 8:42 pm
Monday June 18th: SLEEP!

Go With The Flow.......

If there's 1 thing I've read or heard from other adoptive parents, it's go with the flow. I had to remind myself of that today. Our agency called and said the region is requesting a few more documents that will need to be apostilled (state seal). So I will be driving to Topeka Friday morning to get this done. But it'll all work out and we will be ready. There will be more bumps on this roller coaster and we will GO WITH THE FLOW:)

Got our travel arrangements, whew!

It's been a crazy day, but we got our flight and stay in Moscow. Our agency arranges in country flight to Abakan. We leave Sunday 11th and return the following Sunday. We'll fly to Abakan (a 5 hour flight, and 4 hour time difference from Moscow) on the evening of the 12th. Spend 13th & 14th visiting the baby and making our final decision. Fly back to Moscow on 15th and have a few days to tour before coming home. Thank you for all of your nice notes and well wishes. Aaron's cousin Theresa reminded us of this verse that is so reassuring that God is leading us in this: Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not; in all your ways be mindful of Him and He will make straight your paths." We will have to keep reminding ourselves of this verse on this trip!

Explaining the 2 trip process

Russia requires that we take 2 trips for adoption. The first trip we spend a few days with the child and officially decide to adopt him. Then we come home and wait for a court date. We go back 4-8 weeks later, go to court, and then get to bring him home. We are anticipating that if things go well on this trip, we could be bringing him home end of July or August.

Sooner than expected!!

They want us to come in 8-10 days because the main lady at Dept. of Education is going on vacation June 18th for a month. So if we wait we couldn't go until she gets back! We are gonna be in fast gear preparing to go!

We are going to Russia!!!

We spoke with the Doctor this morning. She said that the info that we have on this little boy is good. We will also be able to email pictures, video, and more information to the Dr's while in Russia for more reassurance. We will be traveling in approx 2 weeks. Aaron's mom is going with us. It's gonna be quite an experience!