update

Well, we fixed one paperwork glitch, then the Russian Department of Education (which runs the orphanage system) found another. We have hopefully fixed it today and the document is in the mail. It involved Rob taking the day off to drive to Tallahassee, so we sure hope this will be the last of the re-doing paperwork for our initial application in the region.

Unfortunately, this may mean we need to wait one more week before we travel -- so we'd leave around May 16 instead of May 9. This is disappointing, but buying tickets this late would also be really expensive so maybe there is some advantage to waiting a week. (I'm just trying to convince myself - you know we would leave TOMORROW if we could!).

Meanwhile, we are finalizing the last few documents for bringing on our trip. The travel process will roughly go like this:

day 1: travel all day, including a 4-5 hour car ride from Moscow after we fly in
day 2: sleep/recover all day
day 3: meet our baby boy!!
day 4: visit him again!
day 5: hopefully visit him again and "sign on the dotted line" to request his name to be removed from the list of available children for adoption
day 6: travel back to Moscow (without our boy) and get our medical exam there
day 7: head home

There may be another day of buffer in there, but that is basically what the trip will look like.

I have heard the time after we get home is the worst - we will know our son and yet we will not be able to get him until we have a court date in Russia. Heart-wrenching! The wait is usually 1-2 months, so we hope to return in mid-late summer. However, you may remember that Russians take long summer vacations, so it will depend on what the judge's vacation schedule looks like. Friends of ours traveled on their first trip in late May last year and didn't get to go back until early August. We hope ours will go faster, but there are no guarantees.

I'll update the blog when our travel dates are finalized or when there is any news!