We are home

and soooooooooooo thankful to finally be here!  I ended up getting strep throat the day before we left for home and have been trying to recover from that, jet lag, being gone for a MONTH and catching up on my family and life!  So for now you will get some pictures from the trip and hopefully you will get an update soon too!

Feeding chasing the birds

She did not like ice cream at first, but it didn't take long for her to finally enjoy it!

Anna loving on Katya, a wonderful Godly Russian woman that God placed in our path on our journey through Russia

Entertaining a few people at Red Square

Hanging with our new friend Gentry who is adopting Maria,

you can follow their journey at A family for Maria

This child would not fall asleep anywhere except her bed, until this day.....

I never thought it would happen!

A Down syndrome sighting in Russia! This little man lived in an apartment above the passport agency!

It's very rare to see someone out and about with Down syndrome, believe me, we got lot's of stares at our girl when we walked around the city.  They are not used to see people with disabilities out in the community, as they are typically shut away in mental institutions.  I honestly could not believe that this man lived in the community where we saw him.  It was a small community out in "the sticks", LOL. He was so funny. I was in the car waiting on our facilitator to pick up Anna's passport and he was waving and talking to me and he was such a hoot!



Headed home!

We went for our appointment at the embassy today, and despite the issues we had with some paperwork we passed! I was expecting an interview in an office with someone asking me difficult questions but it was nothing to it at all! I stood at the window and raised my right hand and told them that everything was true and accurate and that was basically it. Way too easy, but after all that we have been through, maybe God was having mercy on me today! The lady came out of the office and spoke with about four families who were there to adopt and told us what to expect with traveling home and more about our embassy paperwork. After that they gave each of us our child's visa and we were on our merry way! Tomorrow our facilitator will pick up our registration to the consulate and then Saturday we are outta here! We will be 1 day shy of being gone 4 whole weeks! Yikes what a crazy time we have had here. Once we are home I will share more about our crazy and terrifying experience we had the first week here! Thanks for all of your prayers and well wishes!

Great news!

We have an appointment with the embassy at11:30 TODAY! I booked our flights home for this Saturday! I am praying and believing that everything will pass at the embassy and we can head for home in TWO days! Some of our paperwork was not correct so I am praying they have mercy on us! Thanks for all of your prayers and sweet comments! I will post and let you know how it goes at the embassy today.

Where are we?

I seriously wish that I could tell you we are home or leaving in the morning for home, but about the best I can say for now is I am picking up Anna's passport tomorrow. Even though I am so VERY thankful that it finally came after THREE weeks, I am so VeRy homesick that it hurts. I am sitting in a hotel room alone and have been crying for about 30 minutes. The tears, they come and they go, but tonight they won't stop falling. I talked to my mother-in-law tonight and she told me something that just broke my heart and I can't seem to shake it. As I have said before and most of you know, our biological daughter who is 11, also has Down syndrome. She is my girl and we are TIGHT! I have been gone for over 3 weeks now and she has no understanding of where I am, what I am doing or when I am coming back. She asks about me every day but as I said she doesn't understand anything that is going on. Sometimes she will talk to me on the phone and sometimes she won't. It upsets her, as well as me, when she will talk to me. I hang up the phone and then I cry. I cry for her , I cry for me. I just want to go home Lord, I just want to go home. We really thought that this THIRD trip would be over in about 2 1/2 weeks. Obviously this didn't happen. Yesterday made three weeks that I have been gone and I haven't even picked up her passport yet. Yes I do pick it up tomorrow and just found out this past Friday that it would be ready tomorrow. But there is still quite a bit to do here before we can leave and I still don't have a date that we can book our flights home :(. Yes we are on the path to leaving but with each day here there is still pain in my heart for my children at home. So about this morning, Ashlyn woke up and yelled for her me maw so that she would know she was awake. When me maw was on her way up she heard Ashlyn saying "mom, I'm waiting, mom I'm waiting." This crushed me when she told me this, because I don't even know if I have ever even heard Ashlyn use the word "waiting" and yet she is waiting on me :( to come home, wherever it is I am. The song " While I'm waiting" by John Waller came to mind and made me cry even harder.

I just keep telling myself that Anna needs a mama too, and a daddy and brothers and a sister, and that it will all be over with soon enough. But the physical pain in my heart sometimes seems unbearable. I just keep thinking that this must be like what God feels in his heart when we are away from him, doing other things in our life that keep us from him. But let me be the first to say that I have been chasing the hem of his garment over here, feeling helpless, hopeless and afraid! I've definitely been praying my way through this and asking God for forgiveness for the fears and weakness that I have been harboring the last several weeks. We were told last week that it could be two more weeks before her passport came in, but praise God we got the call on Friday that it will be ready tomorrow! We were so afraid of running out of money being gone so long,but God answered that prayer too! So in the end God is working everything to the good for those that love him. Please keep us in your prayers, as we need them very much!

I will end by apologizing for not posting very much while we are here, but I have just felt too down in the dumps to even talk about it anymore than I have too!

And if you are wondering why I am in a hotel alone, LOL, my mom stayed with Anna back in Mo$cow so that I could take the three hour tour, LOL, back to her city to pick up her passport. The poor dear has been drug all over Ru$$ia for the past three weeks, she needed a break, although I hear she isn't dealing too well with my absence either :(

Update from the hotel.....

We are still in country waiting on Anna's passport.  Tomorrow will be  a week since we have applied and we are praying that it comes ASAP! Can you believe the people at this hotel let us sit here for 4 days sweating like pigs and dripping wet before they decided to tell us that we have air conditioning in the room? I don't know how we would have made it this long without a/c.  But thank our good Lord above it is nowhere near as hot here as it is back home.  In fact we have had some cloudy, breezy and cool days here that I am so thankful for!  Below are some photo's and things about Miss Anna!

Anna likes to watch Signing Time!

Sweet girl sings in her sleep, for a long time during the night :)

She is also a thumb sucker...I've never had one of those :)

Believe it or not, at 6 years old she is pretty much potty trained.  My bio daughter with

DS was nowhere near being potty trained at 6 years old!  Anna is afraid

of the big toilet so I had to go and buy her a "pot"

When we first got her she stuffed all of the bread she could in her mouth.

I am thinking she was afraid someone was going to steal her bread.  She is a riot...she will take her

thumb and pack the bread on the side of her jaw like a hamster packs food :)

She LOVES to take a bath and I think she would take 20 a day if we let her.

Just being her cute and lovey little self :)

Packing her jaws with goldfish

 .

This is what she does when she gets sleepy or aggravated.

She will suck her thumb and cover her eye with the other hand and

she rocks back and forth, back and forth.  Sometimes it makes me sad :(

If she wakes up in the middle of the night she will sit up in bed and rock herself back to sleep.

She loves to eat!!!!!!!!!  She will lower her head and put her mouth

down to the plate and start shoveling in it.  She is a VERY independent little girl!

I think I will have my morning bread in bed please :)

She is not too crazy about cold stuff.   She hated ice cream at first and

she will tolerate small bites of it now.  It was so funny when she took

her first bite if icecream....she made a face like it was sour and made a gagging action.

  She LOVED this popsicle until she got a big ol' bite

and I think maybe it gave her a brain freeze because she spit it out and wouldn't eat anymore.

She loves to go on rides in the stroller, BUT when the stroller stops she gets angry

and tries her best to climb out!

On our ride leaving the mental institution for the last time ever!!!!

Are you my mama?

I will ask her where's mama and she will pat her sweet little hand on my chest.

She gives the best hugs and kisses.... don't expect less than 40 a day!!!



Anna is doing really great considering we just swooped her away from all she has ever known.  I was a bit worried what would happen that first night we had her and would put her to bed. Would she be sad, scared or confused? No, she didn't appear to be at all.  She acts like she has known us all of her life and she was just waiting on us to come and pick her up and take her home :)  What a love bug she is.  She wants to hug and kiss all the time and I am so happy that she is attaching very nicely to me....she KNOWS I am her mama!!!!  She loves to sit around and be held and loved on, like she just eats it up!

Of course she has some issues that will need to be addressed when we get her home.  She will most likely need glasses, per the orphanage director, so we will get her eyes checked out.  Anna walks with a limp and I am not sure if it is because she had an ankle or foot injury or if it is because her foots turns inward some.  Her poor little skin is in such bad shape and she just claws at it.  My mom and I found our way to a pharmacy to get some cream for it with the help of google translator, LOL.  Oh what an encounter we had on this day with a drunk and crazy Ru**ian lady.  It was a horrible nightmare and I will blog more about that day when we are safely out of this country and back home.  But back to Anna....when she is tired or upset she will start rocking herself back and forth and makes a grunting sound.  This is very typical for orphans because they need some sort of stimulation even as babies and they quickly learn that rocking themselves helps ease some of their frustration and need for stimulation.  Despite her limp, she is a very strong and sturdy little girl who loves to jump.  Our daughter Ashlyn is 11 and so uncoordinated and floppy that she CANNOT jump yet!  Anna has at least 2 cavities and WIGGED out on me the first day I tried to brush her teeth!  She was scared to death, so I am wondering jsut how true the caregivers were about her being able to brush her own teeth. I thought she was going to lay an egg on me when I went to brush them!!!  We have to chase her away from bathroom day and night because she wants to be in the bathtub 24/7.  The child has not had a bath in 6 years, so I guess it does feel pretty good to soak in some good, warm and sudsy water!  She is also an escape artist and we have to build a fort to keep her in the room at night and out of the bathroom just so we can at least sleep with a little peace.  First we block the entry way to the room with a heavy leather chair and then put a big suitcase on top of the chair and a wood chair on top of the suitcase.  We shut the bathroom door at night and put  a heavy table in front of the door and a heavy suitcase on top of that. We had such a scary incident with her waking up and going in to the bathroom while we slept.....I will save that story for later too :(  What a nightmare it was!!!!!  So needless to say we are praying every day that our passport comes back ASAP so that we can get this little girl at home where she will be safe and loved.  We get the most awful stares and glares in the community here when we walk around with her.  The people act like they have NEVER seen a child or person with a disability in their life...and you know what? They probably haven't because they are all packed away in orphanages and mental institutions.  I just look at them and smile :)  I want to make a sign in Ru**ian that says "yes I am beautiful" and tape it to her shirt, ha ha haha!!!!  That would give them something to stare at for sure :)  So if you are reading this and you pray, please pray that God has favor with us and gets her passport to us ASAP and heads us home safely to join the rest of our family back in the good ol' USA who are so excited for our return!!!!