The first bump in the road - it's a doozy

No more can I say "Yay for bureaucracy."

We've just learned that while our agency had hoped to get us on the road to Russia in the next few weeks, it is not going to happen. This is a disappointment, though it is one of the most common types of delays.

As with most American agencies, ours needs to be re-accredited every year by the Russian government around this time (our agency's expiration date is June 6). While this used to be a formality and create no delays, there were some serious child abuse cases last year regarding Russia adoptive children. These have made the government much more cautious about automatic renewals. This means our agency and all the others will likely take some time to be re-accredited.

Because the Russian government almost shuts down over the summer due to to the bureaucrats' vacations, our agency's best guess is that new travel dates won't be established until at least August. This means the earliest we might likely come home with the baby after a second trip would be around October or November. Please pray with us that we will have a baby home by Christmas!

We will keep you updated, though there won't likely be much news for a while now. Thanks for following our story and keep in touch.

Sarah (& Rob)

The time is near....

I got an email from our caseworker today. She said she had talked to our agency's associate in Siberia and the associate had told her that our travel date would likely be selected within a week! Typically, when they inform us of the travel date, it is about 2 weeks away. This means there's a chance we will actually be traveling by the end of May!

We'll keep you updated.

Sarah

An Early Baby Shower!

While we are waiting for our invitation to travel (hopefully coming in the next few weeks!) our dear friend Burcin and roomie Sara Joy decided to throw me a baby shower!

It was a great mix of friends from my department and church. The guests had to be creative, since we don't know the gender or exact age of our child. I thought I'd post some pictures of my friends and of their clever gifts!

Here are SJ and Burcin getting ready!

The food was awesome: chocolate fondue and other goodies :) I may also be the only mommy-to-be to be able to drink sangria at my shower!

This food was less delicious, but a fun game (I got second place for correctly identifying unlabeled baby food).



Me and my girls :)



Present time!


I put one of my old dolls on this great snail rocker from Kristine:

Eve got me a beautiful baby scrapbook, and Krista got stickers to go with it...

...along with an adorable cow puppet (right). Mandy got us the finger puppets (left) and Lynne won the prize for the most creative gift with the Philosopher Puppets (middle)!

And Katie gave the gifts most appreciated by Rob!

I couldn't put everything here, but you get the idea. We SO appreciate people's generosity, creativity, and support in this adventure! Thanks for helping bring this whole thing to life day by day as we get ready to go. We'll update the blog as soon as we get our travel dates!

Sarah