We finally meet our daughter!

(Dave)Wednesday morning, 1/30, on the plane from Astana to Petropavlovsk, it finally hit me that we would be seeing a new member of our family within hours and our lives would forever be linked and changed. The plane was a twin-prop plane full of maybe 35 to 40 people. I guess you think about things like that when you are wondering if you'll survive the trip! The plane looked like it was about 40 or 50 years old!! My seat was stuck in the reclining position. Two rows in front of me a guy tried to recline his seat and it gave way landing in the lap of the guy behind him! And, when the stewardess opened the door to the pilot's compartment, you could see them smoking in a cockpit full of cigarette smoke! I hope it was cigarettes!! We DID land though into a land of whiteness with snow everywhere. Then the COLD hit us on that long walk (pulling all thoses bags) of 100 yds or so to the 'terminal' (haha)
That's all I have to say about that.... (aka F. Gump)

After a long wait at the Minister of Education in Petro, we got permission to go to the Baby House. The longer the waiting, the more nervous Suzanne & I got! Was this thing really going to happen? Doubt and fear start creeping in. After an hour in a hallway, we finally were invited into Dr. Rimma's office. Were they going to tell us there was no child for us? After a few questions (like "how old are you?), Valentina, our translater, left to get our baby. When she entered the room with her, she was tiny with big brown eyes. Valentina gave her to Suzanne and she looked right into Suzanne's face and smiled! It was like she was saying, "so, you're finally here for me". We were told her name was Veronika (pronounced veer-o-NEE-ka with a rol in the "R") and she was born on June 1st, 2007. She looked really good and has a sweet disposition. Her skin color is good also and she appears to be well cared for and fed well. She is small and if I had to guess, may not weigh over 10 or 12 lbs. I can't wait to get her home!! She just needs love and attention and she WILL get lots of it!! I hope she knows what's she's in for!! :)~

Dave's fun in Vienna, part II

(Dave)
What a trip! Planes, trains, and automobiles! It's Thursday, 1/31, and I finally get a moment to contribute to the blog. We've been able to overcome the language barrier relatively well getting here. In Vienna, almost everyone speaks english, so that part of it was easy. Bad idea of mine to ride the train from the Vienna airport to our hotel with all of our many bags! We were all exhausted by the time we reached our hotel. Vienna has a wonderful public transportation system, but the facilities are NOT luggage or handicapped friendly. Some stations had elevators, other didn't and the S-Train to the city center from the airport had steps to scale. You should have seen me trying to get all the luggage on the train hoping it wouldn't take off without us or any part of us! That really did happen to us once along the way though! We had made it to our last station where it would be a short walk to the hotel (2 blocks). Suzanne got off first with a couple of bags, then Nikolai hesitated to let another person off (gentleman that he is), then they waited for him and when nobody went, the doors closed with Suzanne outside and Nikolai, me, and about 5 bags still on the train!!! Nikolai and I rode to the next station, got off somehow, up, then down elevators and onto a return car back to Suzanne. Kinda scary getting separted in a strange foreign city! Overall, Vienna was amazing though. Everything else went smooth the rest of the way and we took an expensive taxi ride (45 Euros/$70) back to the airport. It was worth it!

Fun in Vienna

(Suzanne) After a 9 hour flight, we arrived in Vienna around 8:00 am. Someone had the brilliant idea (I won’t say who) that it would be a great idea to drag our luggage around Vienna to a hotel downtown rather than stay at the airport hotel. Let me just say this…..Vienna’s public transportation is not meant for transporting 4 weeks worth of luggage! I cant decide if we looked more like the Clampetts or the Griswolds. At one point when I was trying to balance the luggage with the subway moving and trying to grab Nikolai, the luggage and me fell like dominoes, skinning up my shin….ouch! The people in Vienna were so kind. Strangers helped us everywhere we went. They would either help us carry luggage or offer to help us with directions when they saw us looking at a map. They were absolutely wonderful. We received the best directions from a man who didn’t even speak English (I don’t even know how…it just worked.) We drug our luggage all over town until we finally found our hotel 2 hours later. We decided to take a two hour nap in the afternoon (which would have been 6am at home), then head out in search of dinner.
We had dinner at a cozy Austrian restaurant/pub. We had delicious soup and different kinds of sausages dishes we couldn’t pronounce. It was terrific. Nikolai tried a little of everything, which is unusual for a 6 year old. We had some Austrian wheat beer which was terrific.We went back to the hotel and slept from 8:30 pm to 8:30 am. We then headed out to explore the city, this time without the luggage. We went to an art museum which was amazing. The architecture was breathtaking as was the artwork. They had original Rembrandts and many, many other works dating back as far as the 1400’s. We could have spent hours and hours there, but we moved on. We walked all over the city, friendly people helping us along the way. We visited a Catholic church that dated back to the 1700’s. The interior was amazing. They had Mozarts actual death mask displayed. We walked…..and walked….and walked. Nikolai was such a trooper. He’s the coolest kid ever. Not even a whine. He talked to everyone we met (no surprise to those of you who know him) and flirted with the pretty girls (there are many). We sadly had to come back to the hotel , as a driver was picking us up for the airport at 5:30.
When we arrived in Vienna, I expected snow capped mountains and Julie Andrews. I was at first disappointed because there were no mountains or snow to be seen. After walking around the city, however, I was not disappointed , I was surprised at what a beautiful, historical, friendly city it is. By the way, The Sound of Music was filmed in Strassberg, about 150 miles away. I did hear they had Sound of Music sing along tours. We hope to return for that one day.
Observations about Vienna :
They eat sausage and bacon every meal, bread and butter every meal, they smoke like chimneys , and they drink beer by the gallons. Yet we saw very few people who were overweight. And why is their heart disease rate so much lower than ours? Its simple. They have 3 TV stations and people walk to their entertainment.

One more thing about the beer. I have solved the southern states obesity problem. All we have to do is import Austrian beer to Alabama. Then all the Bubbas would drink one daily beer instead of 12……believe me! Nascar would never be the same!


(Nikolai)the church was the coolest and I love you i hope you take care I miss you are hotel was cool we wiil take care if you want to now just call us or e mail us

Ready to go

We’re ready to travel!
Our visas arrived today 1/25/08 and we will leave for Kazakhstan 1/27/08. Since it will be a 24 hour trip, we decided to stay in Vienna Austria overnight on the way over. I have always wanted to visit Austria since I saw “Sound of Music” as a kid. I want to go to a mountaintop and sing “The hills are alive……”.

Sweet send off

1/23/08
(Suzanne)We are leaving in 4 days. At Wednesday night church activivites, we were surprised when our minister called us all in to the sanctuary. He asked Me, Dave, and Nikolai to the altar. We knelt while every member there came to the altar with us and our minister prayed for our safety. I was very touched and very emotional. I’m not sure why, but I cried and cried as my church family hugged us. My dear friend Bobbie said it was because I was pregnant! I agreed. To Pinson United Methodist church family: you are my rock. I am so blessed to have you and I thank God for you all every day. I cant imagine a month without you, especially a month without choir practice! I love you all more than you will ever know.

Crazy Coincidences

We submitted our dossier to Russia in January , 2004. Just as we sent it, adoptions halted so the Russian government could rearrange the adoption process. We waited for adoptions to resume until October 2005 when we gave up hope that we would be able to adopt from Russia again. We were devastated.

We started the process all over. We decided to adopt from China. We submitted our dossier to China and received a "log in date" of January 5, 2006. The wait for a baby at that time was 7 months. Shortly after we cancelled our Russian dossier, Russia resumed adoptions.

The wait for a baby in China suddenly increased. By the time our dossier was finally reviewed, our INS approval had expired. We were put farther back in the line, receiving a new log in date of May, 2005. We were told this was not the usual practice. Parents rarely lose their place in line due to expiring INS approvals, they just need to have them current by the time they travel to China. Our bad luck continued. Our additional wait extended at least another 2 years.

We decided to try another route. Nikolai was now 5 years old, so the potential age difference grew and grew. We submitted yet another dossier..........to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan? We had never even considered that country because the in country stay was sooooo long. However, the processs progressed quite smoothly and our dossier was sent August 2007. Suddenly, for the forst time since Jan 2004, we truly felt at peace. This must have been the plan all along. We are now waiting for our invitation to travel to meet our daughter.

How we got started

Around June of 2001, my wonderful aunt shared stories of her mission trips to orphanages in Eastern Europe. I looked at the pictures of her trip, including the ones of the beautiful children who so desperately needed a family. I thought "oh...how sad", and didn’t much more about it.
We began fertility treatments later that year. On the way to one of many ultrasounds, a thought came to me that I couldn't stop thinking about. I said to my husband "please promise me that if this doesn’t work, we can adopt a baby from Russia". He didn’t even flinch about this crazy idea that came out of the blue. We had never even discussed this option. His response..."OK, that sounds like a good idea".
Later that week, on the way to yet another fertility appointment, my plea changed to "PLEASE promise me we will adopt a baby from Russia even if this DOES work". Again, his reassurances continued.
After discovering our first attempt of infertility treatments was unsuccessful, I simply told the Nurse Practitioner "That’s ok....MY baby is in Russia". The Nurse Practitioner was quite surprised of my response, stating in 20 years of work in an infertility clinic, she had never seen anyone respond to "bad news" like I did. We went to an adoption agency the following week.
9 months later we were traveling to adopt our son Nikolai, who was 14 months old at the time. Interestingly, when our foreign fee was due, 2 checks unexpectedly appeared in our mailbox. They were both from the infertility clinic. The checks simply read "refund". The amount was within $10 of the amount of the foreign fee that was due later that same week.
Before we left on our trip to Russia, our plan was to try infertility treatments again. After seeing all the babies living in Nikolai's baby home, that plan seemed ridiculous. We realized God chose a different kind of creation of a family for us. Early in 2004, we sent our dossier to Russia to adopt a second child.