We made it home

Just wanted to let everyone know that's been following us that we made it safely home.
We headed for the airport in Sakalin at 1:00 am on the 29th and got to Chicago at about 10:30pm on the 29th. With 16 hours of time zones, that's 37.5 hours of travel. We missed the connection to Des Moines and the airline put us up in a Hotel and gave us food vouchers in Chicago. Our flight on the 30th got cancelled, so we rented a car and drove back to DSM as it was faster than waiting around for the evening flight.
Marisa and Twilla will be traveling back to Sakalin around January 15th to pick up the kids.
Lots to catch up on and get back to normal here before going back to wrok on Jan 3rd.
Thanks for all of your continued prayers.

New Parent's

The Judge granted the adoption this morning. We spent 7.5 hours in court over two days.
We're very estatic about this. The announcement was followed by some tears and many hugs and congratulations.
Our flight from Sakalin to Moscow is delayed for a few hours, but we should still make our connection at the other Moscow airport. Domedovo was without power yesterday, but flights should be catching up by the time we're there tommorrowish.

Marisa and Granny should be able to come back in Mid January to pick the boys up.
Even though we had to spend Christmas away from our families, we are so happy to have just added to our family and given two little boys a forever family.

Merry Christmas to All!

Merry Christmas Everyone! Even though we are far away from our family and friends this Christmas season, we wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We hope each of you remembers what it is that we truly celebrate at this time of year. Wishing you aj oyous holiday season!

We had to say good-bye to the boys a couple days ago. It was a sad moment but we made it through it. We have been hanging out in the hotel and making daily trips to the market to try out the various salads that they have for sale there.

Russian celebrates Christmas on January 6th, so today here is just like any other day. We have talked to our host and we will be going up the mountain for a festival. I believe they are celbrating 50 years of the ski area. It will be a good time and we are excited to spend some time outside of the hotel.

We love you all and wish you the best! Have a great Christmas day with family and friends!

One more day....

We only get one more day with the boys. We have had a great time with them.

We are still planning on our court date for Dec 27th. We're more and more sure that it will happen then. We have begun the process to change our tickets out of Moscow for the 29th.(we are told that flights are already completely full on the 29th, so we will have to see when we'll be able to get home)

Please pray that this(court) will all happen as planned as changing our flight tickets continues to be quite expensive.

We continue to be able to spend a lot of time with the boys, they begin to go a little stir crazy in the hotel room with 4 toy cars, animal magnets, two coloring books and a bag of bendaroos (thanks Julie!) and a language barrier. It really is amazing that we have had as few meltdowns as we have. They have a cry and get lots of love and hugs and are back to playing. Alik always wants to look at pictures on the camera after he has had a cry.

Today we also played with the adult size robes, a 4 liter water bottle, and then the genius idea of bath time for a couple of boys who normally only get a sponge bath. A bathtub with three empty water bottles = two VERY happy little boys. They were prunes but did not want to get out of the tub. We got Alik to close his eyes when we washed his hair, Misha didn't want to, but even with limited verbal communication skills, we were able to get Alik to help show/tell Misha how to close his eyes.

Yesterday and today we went to a mall here that has a play area for the kids. They thouroughly enjoyed that time and were able to work out plenty of energy.

We got snow here yesterday. Clearing the roads and sidewalks is nothing like at home. The sidewalks stay pretty slick and coated in a layer of ice.

Tommorrow will be our hardest day as we have to say goodbye (hopefully only for a couple of weeks).

We will miss Christmas with our families, but our family and friends are in our thoughts and prayers as we go through this unique Christmas season.

Merry Christmas.

Live from Russia!

It has been an amazing trip so far! It took us 4 planes and 16 time zones to get here but we made it.

The highlight of our trip so far? The time we have gotten to spend with the boys. We have played inside. Gone for walks outside. Shared meals. Saw a puppet show (that we didn't understand) and I think we are going to the tree lighting and fireworks tonight. They have grown a ton and the younger boy's personality has developed and grown a ton in the last 9 months (yes it has been that long!). We thank God each day for the time we get to spend with them.

Our host here is phenominal. She knows everyone and seems to know about all the places that we can take the boys so they are not stuck inside all day.

We know we keep putting out prayer requests, so maybe it is time to list some blessings...first, the two boys! Second, the boys were able to come to Yuzhno, this saved us a train trip and they are able to expeirence the city. Third, our wonderful host, she is a big blessing to us and all families that she helps with adoption.

Thanks again for all of your prayers it is much appreciated. Along those lines....we heard today that our friends Rob and Ami's adoption has been delayed. They were supposed to leave in the next couple of days to pick up their 9 month old son from Ethiopia, however, there has been a delay and they do not know if it will be a couple days or months. They have met Ricky and speaking from experience, waiting for that return trip can be challenging (to say the least). Please remember them in your in prayers.

From Russia with Love!

By God's grace, we are in Sahkalin.

The events of the last few days have certainly allowed us to see God's hands working in a way that we weren't prepared for.

We left Satuday morning out of Des Moines and through Chicago.

All of you who live in the midwest know what happened on Saturday/Sunday with the weather.

As we were finishing breatfast and waiting for our ride to the airport, it started snowing, HARD. The ground was white in minutes. We were at the airport in plenty of time and ended up running into some folks that Marisa works with. They were on the same flight to Chicago and then on to Finland. We spent some time with them in DM and then were able to have lunch with them in Chicago. One of them was even so kind to buy us lunch, completely unexpected, but very much appreciated.

We got out of Chicago about 45 minutes late, They had some last minute checks to do on the airplane to insure our safety. There were 1300+ flights cancelled out of Chicago on this day, so we felt quite fortunate to be able to get out when we did.

We missed our connecting flight in Frankfurt but were able to get on another flight to Moscow about 3 hours later. We were even able to track down our Russian contact to let them know that we'd be late.

Got to Moscow and through customs without issue. We waited forever for our luggage to come out and were beginning to worry that it may have gotten lost. I suspect it was some of the first put onto the plane in Frankfurt and some of the last off.

We met our translator and driver and off we went for the hotel. One thing that we weren't quite prepared for was the traffic in Moscow. It was roughly 1.5 hours to get to our hotel. Traffic was pretty bad, especially for a Sunday night. It was really interesting seeing the parking arangements on Monday. Double parking EVERYWHERE, right in a lane of traffic, which is part of the reason there is such a traffic problem.

We got through the medical exam in two days. The doctors were very busy so it took longer then expected.

Monday night we we went to a walking street just a few blocks from our hotel to find something to eat. We ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe, Moscow, not what we expected to find, but figured we would take the opportunity to eat there.

We tried to buy a bottle of water on the way back to the hotel, and gave the lady 1000 Rubles(about $33). She said something in Russian that we didn't understand and then said "small" That was the smallest we had. She shook her head no and off we went without our water. Our translator said this was common, but she argues with them and tells them Money is Money.... no matter what size it is.... our russian language skills are not that good......

Tuesday afternoon was a bit of a mad dash to finish up some paperwork, get checked out of the hotel, and to the airport. With the very able assistance of Anna, our translator, we were able to get through everything and out on our flight to Sahkalin.

Svetlana was soo exicted to see us and we were excited to see her as well.

We heard a little about the plans for the next few days. The boys will be coming here and staying at the same hotel as we are in for several days. We will get to see them significantly more than we had anticipated. Svetlana tells us that Mikhail has grown significantly(what 3 year old doesn't in a 9 month span?) and that Alik is excited to be with his brother now(they are in the same children's home now).

Court is planned for the 20th or 21st, but it is possible that it may get pushed back.

That's the nexxt thing on our prayer list, That it would happen on the 20th/21st and that the Judge would look on everything favorably.

Just a bit of info, Moscow is 9 timezones different than Iowa and Sahkalin is an additional 7.
We're actually closer to home time here than in Moscow, it's just almost a whole day off.

We should have internet access all week so we'll try to keep this up to date.

Thank you for your prayers and Merry Christmas!