Trying to make good use of the wait

While I'm not expecting to hear any news of a court date for several more weeks, I'm keeping busy as there is still a long list of things that need to be done before our second trip. After having a great dinner with my cousin who's visiting from out of town, I came home and was pleasantly surprised to see the crib built. Yea! (Thank you again Gram for buying the furniture for the room. That was so generous, especially since you had already bought Dylan's crib for us.) I still don't have the bedding yet so I'll hold off posting any pictures for now.

Last week I purchased most of the gifts we will be taking with us for our agency and the baby home staff. My aunt very generously donated funds to help us out in doing this and my dad is giving us some ladies watches. We are so lucky to have such great family. I bought 10 pairs of shoes as well to donate to the baby home and we'll buy more diapers in Russia to give them. Next I plan on working on Thank You cards to attach to each of the gifts. I translated a small thank you phrase into Russian....very fun!!

I've also been putting together a photo album of our visit trip to take with us for the courts to see. I've been making digital scrapbook pages and for someone who really doesn't scrapbook, I think they're coming our very very cute. Of course the pages are of our little miss so how ever could they not be cute?? It did take me a few tries to get the formatting right, being a rookie and all (Thank you Costco for letting me return my mistakes!!)

I really am encouraged by all the families returning to Vladivostok for court dates. I am quite hopeful that we'll have her home by Thanksgiving.

Still no MOE letter yet

I really thought it should have came by now. Its hard seeing others that had their first trip around the same time as us move forward so much quicker. I'm trying not to take it as a bad sign and be patient, but its difficult. Just wish I could tell our little miss that we're hurrying and to hang in there! I wonder how long it took others to get the ministry release letter?

Our Red Square Picture

Since our region is Vladivostok and we will be using a courier to go to Moscow for us, we will miss out on the traditional Red Square picutes. Sooooo, we did ours yesterday :o) Gotta love the fair!

Dossier headed to Russia

So over a week later, the paperwork is reviewed, apostilled, and sent off the Russia. I'm still waiting to see if our agency has received our Ministry letter, which is the letter that notifies the Ministry of Education in Russia that we officially want to adopt the little miss and to take her off the available children database. I'll find that out Monday I think. That sounds to me like it should make it iron-clad that she will one day be ours, but I guess there would still be a slight chance that a Russian family could adopt her if they really wanted to. I will relax a bit, but not much.

The paint color came out very nice and I put the dresser together all by myself (well, with a little help from Dylan). And let me tell you.....it came in pieces!! Nothing resembled a dresser. I patiently muddled thru, had to re-do some things a few times, but I'm happy with my efforts. Now Steve can do the crib this weekend. Thought I'd also share some of my shopping efforts to date. I'm trying to keep it simply until I really know her size, but I still seem to keep buying....too much fun.

Other than that, I've been kinda glued to the US Open tennis matches....lots of exciting tennis on today. Hoping some of the watching will rub off onto my league match Monday night :o) I just LOVE tennis.

Dossier# 2 Delivered

and in the hands of our agency....but hopefully not for long as it needs to head up to Sacramento to get apostilled before heading to Russia. With a little luck, all the documentation that we gathered will be correct and they won't need anything further (a girl can hope!) and we'll have a court date before we know it.

I enjoyed a great sushi lunch with my friend this afternoon and got the high score twice in Galaga circa 1982 while waiting for Madison to get done with her orthodontist appt. Figures, when I'm having fun, her appt only takes about 10 minutes!