Tuesday, February 6, 2006

It was a very short night as the alarm goes off at 6:30am so we can get ready. We are going to the Ministry of Education today in order to get approval to visit the baby homes/orphanages.

Everyone is down in the lobby and we are taken to breakfast to basically get briefed on what is going to happen for the day, what the Ministry is going to ask us, etc. Our breakfast consited of eggs, ham, bread, cheese and tea. NO coffee. More adapting on my part. I later bought a diet coke in the lobby for the caffeine. What can I say?

Again, our 4 cars meet us at the hotel and take us to the Ministry. I am getting nervous. It didn't help either that we were the last ones to go. We got our piece of paper that stated we could go and meet our possible future children.


The plan is that we will go to the Orenburg baby home today to visit the girl and then travel to Orsk tomorrow to see the boy. Now I am just nervous about the health of the children. What a worry wart I am! I am settling in though to the adventure part. I don't really feel like I am as far away from home as I really am. The other couples traveling in our group are all going to Orsk for the day. Poor things. By the time we get out of the Ministry and back to the cars, it's after 12noon. The trip to Orsk is a 3 hour drive ONE WAY! We are wisked off to a building across the street and told we are going to have to talk to the "specialist." Have no clue who that is and we are just going with the flow. When we get there, she tells our translator to come back at 2:30 and then we can go to the baby home. We get some lunch and arrive back at 2:20. I am really nervous now. My stomach is in knots and I feel like I want to barf! Needless to say, I ran back to the Ministry to use the bathroom. Typical European bathroom. No toilet seat and it hasn't been cleaned in 20 years!

We finally head off to the baby home. We walk in and are taken to a room where the director of the home, the doctor at the home, our translator and this "specialist." We were told that she wanted to observe us with the child. Nungessor, this is when we gave your frame to the director. She seemed VERY pleased. In all of the excitement, I forgot to take a picture. I did however take this photo of Steve holding it in the hallway while we were waiting.

The specialist decides she needs to ask us the exact same questions as the MoE. Good god! When do we get to pass the test? While she is asking all sorts of questions, the door opens up and there is a girl in the workers arms. Steve goes nuts. The tell her not yet. Steve just looks at me. At this point, the doctor is now telling us what is in the medical report. About 5 minutes later, they bring her back in and hand her to the director. I am trying to take notes and write as fast as possible. Steve at this point is GONE! He can't stop looking at the girl. The director comes over and places her in his lap. I am still trying to get as much as possible about her medical history to make sure she is healthy. It's just too difficult. They let us take her down the hall to another room to play with her. There is another woman in the room who doesn't speak to us but it just sitting there at a desk. no biggie! Sergei our translator is there with us. We tell him we still have more questions for the doctor. In the meantime, we are playing with our daughter. She is a fireball! Spunky as the day is long. Steve has her up on the coach and she is into everything and wants to touch everything. She finds my coke bottle in my backpack and thinks that it's a bottle and trys to shove it in her mouth. Good that she does this because it's one of the questions on the Denver Developmental test we have to got through with her. Bad thing is, it's not food and this makes her angry. She starts to cry and there is nothing either one of us can do to calm her down. We feel bad because she is crying because she wants food and we can't give her anything. A worker comes in to get her. It's nap time anyway. We decide to stay and talk to the doctor and also wait out naptime so we can visit again. We talk to the doctor and are satisfied that all is well with our new little girl Brooke. After awhile, they bring her back in and I am holding her. She again starts to cry but Sergei tells me they are going to bring her a bottle and I get to feed her. I would love to post pictures of that we we are not allowed to do that at this time. She is not officially ours. This calms her down. She chugs down that bottle like it was a fraternity party beer chugging contest. Not that I know anything about that. She is done in like 2 minutes and wants more. I try to take the bottle but she just grabs it back and shoves it in. Ater awhile, she lets me take it out and she is in a better mood. We undress her to make sure she is OK in that department. We also find out that she is tickleish. We get her to giggle and laugh. She has NOT cracked a smile yet. This makes me feel better that she is giggling. By around 7pm, the workers come to take her back. We tell Sergei that we would like to sign the papers to proceed with the adoption. Andrei makes a brief appearance and gives us the thumbs up. We tell him yes. We sign the papers and are off. It was hard to leave. We knew we wouldn't be back for another month or so.

We head back to the hotel where Andrei meets up with us and Sergei. He tells us to meet him on the 8th floor for dinner. We are exhausted physically, mentally and most of all, emotionally. We got to dinner and it's nice. Of course we get into politics with all of this adoption stuff going on over there. I finally told Steve I was going to hit the plate with my head I was so tired. We left and came back to the room. We called our parents to let them know they had a granddaugthter and that we were off tomorrow to see the boy. What a day. It will be another early morning. We are told to be in the lobby by 6:30am so we can make the drive to Orsk. Again, it's 3 hours one way. Oh boy. Another long day ahead of us.

Monday, February 5, 2006

It's about 11am when we touch down in Moscow. There is snow on the ground but not as much as I thought. It's cold so we finally decide to take out our new down jackets.

We were the only international flight landing so we breezed through customs. It is really hard here to look at someone and not smile. They are not a smiling type of country. Oh well. Got through customs and headed over to get our bags. When we checked in back in LAX, the gal at the united counter asked if we wanted to check our bags all the way through. We said sure. After we had done it, we were worried because it had to not only change planes but also airlines. It was too late to do anything about it. As we were standing there looking for our luggage, it became apparent that our bags were not going to be there. My carryon was the only thing there. We had planned for this so we were prepared. We went to the counter and filed out claim to try and find our bags. We left out of there and were to wait for someone to pick us up. We found the guy with our rented cellphone but no one there from the agency. We waited about 10 minutes when a young man walked up to us. Guess us Americans stick out like crazy. He told us we were going to wait for the other couple and they were arriving at 1:30. Steve went off to try and resolve the luggage thing. He found the Delta counter and the woman gave him a number. He called and they only spoke Russian. We decided to wait for the young man to come back so he could help us. His name is Ilya. He arrived awhile later with the other couple. Steve had spoken to her via email. It was finally nice to meet the people. They were John & Cristina Westover. They were 1 of 3 couples that were traveling with us.

We picked up our belongings and headed outside. There, 2 cars took us to the domestic airport to catch our flight to Orenburg. It took us 2 hours to make it there due to traffic. It's worse than the 91 with a SIG alert. Once there, we met the other 2 couples, John & Maggie from Ireland, and Ann & Dave from Rhode Island. Again, I had previously spoken to Ann on the phone before we left. It was nice to have people there that you felt you already knew a bit.

We all walked over to the ticket counter and Ilya purhased all of our tickets. For a 2 hour flight, it cost us $500/person. WOW! We forked it over and since we had so much time to kill, found a place to sit down and eat. By this time it is about 3pm and our flight isn't scheduled to leave until 8:30pm. While eating, our coordinator Andrei walks in. It was very nice to meet him. We had heard some very different opinions on him so we were really unsure. He seems like a nice man.

Once it gets close, we pack up and head toward our gate. Low and behold, it's running late. It's now going to leave at 9:30pm. This is the never ending travel day, My hair is now stuck to my head and I am feeling rather gross and sticky.

The time finally arrives to board. We have to go outside, get in a bus and it will take us to the airplane. It's cold and windy outside so we bundle up.



Steve getting on the bus!



Getting on the plane!


We board the plane for our 2 hour flight. It was really uneventful. We all sort of slept a bit. Once we land, we walk down some stairs off the plane and the coordinator and ilya take us to 4 waiting cars. We are told to wait there until the bags come. They then come and get the guys and tell them to come but tell us woman, "woman stay, men, get bags!" It is now 2am. It's about a 20 minute drive to the Orenburg hotel. We are all ready to sleep in some type of a bed. We pull up and it looks pretty decent. They get us all checked in and tell us that we need to be in the lobby ready to go by 8am. It's going to be a short night.

Steve and I go upstairs and get settled. He takes a shower and I have to wash my only pair of underware in the sick and hang it to dry. Thank you very much REI and my clotheline that I brought. I rinse off and we both fall into bed. Tomorrow, will be a very interesting day.

Sunday, February 4, 2006

Today is travel day! I am so nervous. All of this unknown. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off yesterday. We told the the Monahan's that we would go to Hunter's birthday. It was a welcome stress reliever. Steve and I bowled a few rounds, had a few drinks and ate like pigs. Geez, how do you spell emotinal eating? Anyhow, back to the travel day...

I set 2 alarms and had the hotel giving us a wake up call. I know, I'm a nut but I wasn't going to miss this plane. While I was drying my hair, apparently Steve's cellphone went off. It was Delta calling to tell us that our flight had been canceled and that we were now going to be on a flight that left 30 minutes earlier. You thought there was stress before, LOOK OUT! We kicked it into high gear and headed out the door.

We checked our stuff in and headed toward the gate. We were doing great for time. Unfortunately, we packed our nice outfit for meeting with the Ministry of Education and had bathroom supplies with us. Well, the airport doesn't like this anymore. My carryon bag had a ton of "no no's." This gal was going to take it all. I knew the tight schedule that we were on and I was not going to be able to purchase any more anytime soon. I just lost it. I sat down in a chair and cried. Such a girl thing to do but my stress level just ran over. The gal went to get her supervisor. He came back and was telling me the "rules" which i could really care less about. I explained to him about what we were doing, showed him my passport and my visa to Russia. I even pulled out JESUS! Thank you very much Lou Velazquez! This man must have thought I was a nut. Nope, just desperate. The funny thing is, I had just shown steve the night before my makeup kit because it is so small. I said, some woman have a ton of makeup...LOOK, I just have this. I then followed it up by telling him not to screw with my hairproducts. Well, that's exactly what the airport wanted to do. Long story short, I somehow got the guy to let me go. Thank you very much. Of course as we are walking out of the security area, Steve looks at me in his best George Lopez accent and asks, "why you crying?" I just shook my head.

The flight to New York was pretty uneventful. It was United so it was cramped and small. It was a bumpy landing and I of course wanted to throw up. Made it out ok, but was feeling like crap. Wow. This long journey had only started and we already had a few hurdles to jump over.

We made our way through the airport and found our way to the international section. I was able to check my carryon bag with all my "bad" stuff here so I didn't have to go through the same ordeal again...however, Just so you know, the security people won't let you have water anymore either (the hair products though were safely checked though so all was well). I bought 2 waters at LAX and they took them away. Told me I had to buy it in the terminal. No wonder I like RVing better. Steve was able to score us the emergency exit seats for our 9 hour flight to Moscow. This was a relief. We got some lunch at a chili's in the airport and waited for our flight.

The flight over really wasn't bad. We sleep quite a bit knowing it would be 11am there when we landed. So far we were still in tack and not even halfway done with traveling to our desination.

Stay tuned for day 2!

Less Than a Week to Go!

Well, we've got less than a week to go. Let me tell you, this stress has got my emotional eating habits going full throttle. I'm like a damn hoover vacuum! Look out! Things at work are ramped up as well. Exhibit A, I am working like a chicken with my head cut off today, seeing as it's the first day of the 2nd semester, when my cellphone rings. I am usually checking it now just to see if it's the agency. Low and behold, it is. It's our dossier coordinator calling to let me know she had our police clearance letters (there's a story behind that too! I'll let Steve tell you how 100% sure he is!). In all the chaos, I forgot to have them authenticated at the county level (now there's another story about how I almost "corked" on a typical county worker). Keep in mind I raced home on Friday and raced them down to FedEd to have them there. She is in the process of sending them back to us so we can get them authenticated and then overnight them back to her. She will then get them apostilled and overnighted back to us because we leave this weekend! Yikes! Are you confused yet?! Good! That makes two of us!

So, back to the trip. We have purchased all of our winter "gear" and I believe are ready to go. We have started to use the girl's room as the "trip #1" staging area. The boy's room is being used as "trip #2" staging area. I really need to get in there and start packing our stuff together so I don't forget anything. I figure I'll be like my mother and stay up til all hours of the night trying to finish packing (love ya mom!) Looks like we are really going to need those winter clothes. I checked the weather last night and this week, the low in Orenburg is going to be -7. Yes folks, that is 7 degrees BELOW zero. I can't say that I have EVER been in weather like that. During the day it's in the "teens." I can honestly say that I don't know how to prepare for that. Don't get me wrong and think that I am complaining. I would walk through 20 below zero if it meant getting these 2 kids!

I was just reading back through this blog and laughing at some of the things I said. I will give it to Steve though and give credit where credit is due. He did say that we would have these kids by spring. He is right. If all goes according to plan, we should be home in March sometime, probably toward the end. Way to go Babe! I was also talking about the cold weather! It's really hard right now to find warm weather clothes. They are all on clearance.

Well, we are in the final stages of leaving on this trip. The plane reservations have been made, the hotels booked, and I even had a conversation with one of the other couples that is going with us. Now all I have to do is find the energy to pack my suitcase! We will be taking the laptop with us and attempting to update this blog as much as possible.

Hope everyone is doing super. I'm off to get some "chores" done.

Itinerary for Our Trip

Ok, so I didn't think to post our itinerary to let you all know what a whirlwind trip this will be. I am thinking I will be tired for weeks afterwards. Guess it will prepare me for when we come home with 2 babies! Then there will really be no sleep. So here it the trip itinerary:

Sat. Feb. 3rd = stay @ hotel near LAX (los angeles)
Sun. Feb. 4th = 7:30 am flight to JFK (pray for NO snow, transfer to different flight to Moscow)
Mon. Feb. 5th = 11am, arrive into Moscow Russia, change airports to take a flight to Orenburg.
Tues. Feb.6th = Orenburg (guessing MoE this day and possibly visiting girl)
Wed. Feb. 7th = Orenburg (guessing we'll travel to Orsk this day. 3 hr trip 1 way. Have been told it's a VERY long day)
Thurs.Feb.8th = Fly back to Moscow
Fri. Feb.9-11 = Moscow on our own (SCARY! any suggestions besides the obvious on what to visit?)
Sun. Feb.11th = JFK and overnight in New York. I've never been. I would love to see Time Square!
Mon. Feb.12th = travel home to California. It's a no school day for me. Thank you President Lincoln! You know us in the public school system, we take as many holidays as possible.

So that's what we know right now. We have decided to not hire a doctor out of Moscow to accompany us to the Orenburg region. We are going to take video and pictures and send them back to a doctor here who specializes in this area. This is so hard. I question myself all the time wondering whether or not we are making the right decisions. I was just mentioning that this adoption process was very similar to IVF in the fact that one day you are on cloud 9 and excited and the very next day for no apparent reason, you are in the dumbs thinking it's going to be a bust. Don't ask me why but it just happens! Go figure. Whoever knew becoming a mom would be do difficult emotionally and physically.

Hope everyone is doing well. We here in SoCal are soooo done with this wind! I swear I feel like we live in a wind tunnel. My heat has never been on this long either. Good grief! Guess it's better this way. That way maybe Russia in the dead of winter won't be such a shock! Yah, right! It's 30 degrees there all week and probably snowing.

We've Got Travel Dates!

Wow! What a whirlwind of activity. As many of you already know, we got the call on Thursday, January 11th that they had a boy and a girl for us in the Orenburg region of Russia. This past Wednesday, the 17th of January, we got the call telling us when we needed to be in Moscow by. So, we are leaving on February 4th and will be home on the 12th. About a week turn around time. We added 2 days on to the end since it was the weekend and it's a 3 day weekend for me in order to see Moscow. Figured it'd be easier just the 2 of us rather than with 2 kids. We'll also take them to some places to have our pictures taken with them so they can have pictures of us with them in their country. So, we have been busy, busy, busy. We went out last night and bought cold weather clothes. Most of it was on clearance so we sort of had to scrounge. I am going to spend this weekend starting to put stuff together for the trip. I am just praying that the kids are healthy and that nothing happens before we get over there. There is always the possibility of losing the referral. Keep your fingers crossed for us. We are taking the laptop and will try to communicate with everyone while we are there via the internet. This blog is how you'll konw what's going on. People have asked me to post pictures here of us with the children in Russia. Sorry! Can't post them on the internet until they are legally ours. You'll just have to wait. I"ll post pictures of other things and places though. Well, it's Friday night and it's been a long week. I am going to go unwind. This is a really busy time at work right now so putting this adoption in right now wasn't the best timing but I'll take it.

BIG NEWS! We Got a Referral!

I hope everyone had a really great holiday season. Christmas was great and Steve and I had a relaxing day! New Year's was OK until some theif decided he needed my car stereo system more than me! Do you think I can write that off as a donation to the needy? Probably not. Oh well. I'll work on NOT being bitter!

Well, the big news is that this past Thursday, the agency called with a referral for a boy and girl. They were born 3 days apart and they were born this past May. That means they will be 8 months old at the end of January. For those of you wondering, yes it will be like having TWINS! Just to let everyone know, we are in the fact finding stage right now. We need to find out if these children are healthy and have not severe medical problems. This does NOT mean that we are traveling to Russia. Like I stated, we are in the fact finding stage. Once we feel like we have enough info, we will have travel dates given to us and we will travel to Orenburg Russia which is south of Moscow. We are feeling every emotion right now from being in a state of panic to happiness. I just wanted to share where we were right now. Hopefully this will be a good thing. However, if medicals come back and an International Adoption doctor tells us things don't look good, we will go back to the drawing board!

Wish us luck as we begin this new stage and keep your fingers crossed that these 2 children could turn out to be the future Brooke & Kyle Bierbaum!!