We arrived back home early this morning at about 2:00am. This was after sitting in Atlanta for 7 1/2 hours due to the weather rolling through the southeast yesterday. So, to catch everyone up...
Thursday we spent the day going to the orphanage and spending time with Daniel. We took gifts and a cake for the staff. Daniel was in excellent spirits and played with us up until it was time for his nap at 2:00pm. We even got a tour of Daniel's group area where he and the others in his age range sleep and spend a lot of their time. Any preconceived notions of what a Russian orphanage looks like should be tossed out. The area was clean, tidy and functional. Baby beds arranged neatly in one half of the room while the play area was on the other half.
We had lunch with Katia and Vladimir, our translator and driver, and we headed back to the CSS office for a final meeting with them to go over paperwork for the third trip.
Thursday evening was consumed with packing, calling back to the States and catching up family and dinner.
The flight Friday was obviously a lot of fun. The flight from Moscow to Atlanta was uninteresting, but it gave us an opportunity to observe other families just returning with their newly adopted child from Russia. It gave us a chance to plan out how we're going to occupy a 1 year old on an 11 hour flight.
I spent this morning preparing our paperwork for the third trip's visa. I had to scramble around because the Russian Embassey has changed their processing time for visa applications. They no longer offer same day and next day processing of visas. Hopefully our visas will be back before we depart on the 19th...of course if we don't have the visas, I guess we're not departing now are we????? ;>
Thursday we spent the day going to the orphanage and spending time with Daniel. We took gifts and a cake for the staff. Daniel was in excellent spirits and played with us up until it was time for his nap at 2:00pm. We even got a tour of Daniel's group area where he and the others in his age range sleep and spend a lot of their time. Any preconceived notions of what a Russian orphanage looks like should be tossed out. The area was clean, tidy and functional. Baby beds arranged neatly in one half of the room while the play area was on the other half.
We had lunch with Katia and Vladimir, our translator and driver, and we headed back to the CSS office for a final meeting with them to go over paperwork for the third trip.
Thursday evening was consumed with packing, calling back to the States and catching up family and dinner.
The flight Friday was obviously a lot of fun. The flight from Moscow to Atlanta was uninteresting, but it gave us an opportunity to observe other families just returning with their newly adopted child from Russia. It gave us a chance to plan out how we're going to occupy a 1 year old on an 11 hour flight.
I spent this morning preparing our paperwork for the third trip's visa. I had to scramble around because the Russian Embassey has changed their processing time for visa applications. They no longer offer same day and next day processing of visas. Hopefully our visas will be back before we depart on the 19th...of course if we don't have the visas, I guess we're not departing now are we????? ;>
So, without further ado...here's our first photo we're publishing of Daniel:
5 comments:
So glad to hear that you're safely home! And Daniel is such a cutie, too! Congrats again, and good luck on finishing up all the paperwork!
Glad you are home safe. Of course as you know, Daniel is a cutie.
He is absolutley precious!
How blessed you are! Welcome home...just enough time to do laundry and re-pack.
Best wishes to you and that cutie pie!
~Laura
Daniel is so beautiful!! Congrats and safe travels!
Nicole
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