Less than 3 weeks!

We've stayed busy trying to prepare ourselves for the first trip and all of the court dossier paperwork lately. Time can't go quickly enough over the next 2 1/2 weeks! :) We are so excited to meet little Maks. One update though, I won't be able to post pictures from our first trip until we are back from the 2nd trip and Maks is legally our son. So I started a website that I can share on Shutterfly. It's password protected and we can post both video and photos for our friends and family to see. If you want the password and website, just let me know and I'll email it to you! Time will be a little hectic once we're in Russia so I don't know if I'll post from there, but I will try to do it the day after we get home.

Say a prayer (or a bunch of them!) for us and for little Maks!

Planning Our Trip

Now that we've got the date, all of the craziness has begun. Its great craziness though! We just booked our tickets. We leave on November 14th at 11:00am. We're traveling through Washington DC and then on to Moscow. We have to catch a smaller regional plane from Siberia Airlines to Kemerovo. We'll basically land in Kemerovo around 6:30pm Chicago time on November 15th, or 7:30am (November 16th) in Kemerovo. Lots of planes!

Just in case you were wondering, we'll be meeting Maks around Midnight Chicago time on November 16th, it will be 1:00pm-ish in Kemerovo. Seems chaotic, not sure how one's body figures out when to sleep, when to eat, etc... The good news is that the hotel has a 24 hour restaurant, so you could stay on Chicago time if you want.

We're going to try to post a picture or two after we meet him on the 16th so you all can see his cute little self!

Thank you to everyone for all of your well wishes and support. We truly do appreciate it!

TRIP 1!!!!!!!!!!

I have had the BEST day.

Got great news on the surrogacy front- not that it worked yet but that we had a GREAT turnout with Embryos!

And then I got the call we have been PRAYING FOR! We will finally get to meet Mr. Maks on November 16th! I cannot believe it. :)

We travel to Kemerovo, go to the Department of Education to read his medical file and sign off on it, then take a car down to Novokuznetsk. We will then get to meet the little guy.

We'll go to a hotel in the region that night and head back to the Baby House the next day to see him again and officially sign the papers that we want to adopt. And then sadly, we fly home the next day. What a whirlwind it will be! We get to travel with another family, not sure who they are or where they live yet.

A lot for us to do now. Get a Visa, book our flights, buy the gifts for the coordinators, put together a picture book and of course work on our Court Dossier so we can return to get him as soon as humanly possible!!

The typical wait these days between Trip 1 and Trip 2 seems to be 4 months. Let's hope its shorter.

I AM SO HAPPY!!!!!!

Keeping ourselves busy

Letters in Kemerovo were supposed to have been signed on Thursday or Friday, surprise surprise, they weren't. We're still waiting to hear about the first families to travel.

In the meantime we are keeping ourselves busy by going through IVF for a second time with a gestational carrier. The first time did not work as we used a more experimental method called IVM. The worry is that the hormones from the IVF medications would send my brain into overdrive like it was when I was pregnant. Well so far, so good. My follicles are developed, my Estradiol is high but no migraines. We do our retrieval tomorrow morning downtown Chicago. The transfer will then be on Friday and we'll find out on the 24th if it worked or not. Keep your fingers crossed!

Some really great things happening around us lately so I'm optimistic! Two of my close friends just got married, congrats Atiya & Darius (check out their wedding march in New Orleans on YouTube- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQOEjVnM8Nw) and Sarah & Kevin! (see picture) My Best Friend from the age of 5 Cara just got engaged-who knew! Good job Brett! And my friends Katie & Scott just had their little girl last night, Leah. Can't wait to see her pictures! Baby #4 for the Beierwaltes's. WOW!

With all of this good mojo flowing out there right now, good things are destined to come our way! I know, I'm positive for once, can you believe it!?!?! :)

Its October!

When we received the referral in June I thought for sure I would have met Maks by now. Alas, that was not to be. Alina emailed us on Friday and said that the referral letters should be signed around the 8th or 9th of October with the first families traveling 2 weeks after that. As I've said before I think we are #8, #9, or #10 in line so that would have us traveling at the end of November. We're currently working on our court documents in hopes that we can get back for Trip #2 as quickly as possible.

I also just learned that on Trip #2 there will be a mandatory waiting period (they don't waive the wait anymore) and we won't be able to have Maks stay with us during this time. Apparently we will be staying in a town a few hours away from the orphanage to be close to court. We will be allowed to visit the orphanage 2 times during the week for a $200 fee each time.

We are now considering leaving Russia during that 2 week period and traveling to nearby countries. I'm not a strong flyer so if I'm only a few hours away from Beijing why not go? I'm not sure how the Visa stuff works though in that case. I know we have a Visa to travel to Russia but I'm not sure what happens if you choose to leave and then come back without going back to the USA. Lots of questions!