NEWS at last...

We heard yest, but waited till this morning to get our confirmation so it is SET IN STONE!! We have our court date at long last it is DEC 10. We leave on Dec 5th to get there on the 7th and undergo the necessary medical exams by their 8 dr panel. We plan to take Brayden with us this trip and just stay over there for the duration. We had hoped to be able to stay in the little town where the orphanage is, but that isn't possible. Back to the drawing board on what we will do for the waiting period. Have to see if they will give us cut rates to go out to the orphanage a couple times or if there are other options. WINTER IN RUSSIA CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? Well we certainly couldn't have asked for a better x-mas present than bringing our little boy home. We will start the new year out fresh as a complete set of 4.

Still no news...

We still have no news to report. Haven't even heard from the agency for a while now. We know there is a mtg scheduled between the coordinator and the judge on the 30th so we wait for that. I did speak with a friend and her situation is the same, her coordinator had the first meeting with the judge to schedule the next meeting. So at least they seem to be consistent as her second meeting is sceduled for Oct 1st. Will be interesting to see if the outcome of both of our mtgs is the same or similar. Will let this do for now, but I know some are wondering if things have moved or changed, so the answer would be NO.

First day of Preschool

Brayden's first day of preschool was today, he did really pretty good. We will have to work on the tattling and constant talking, but otherwise it went good. The teacher is just out of college, so I do hope she can handle this class of 16. She really didn't have her ducks in a row today, hope thats cuz its the first day and not how the year will be. I am used to a real planner for a teacher from last year, so it was obvious she was winging it today.

found water

He found the lake and wow was it fun, a bit chilly sure, but fun. He threw water all over and ended up getting his head wet too.

Picnic at Worthum

We went on a picnic with Granny, Papa and Aunt Jean yesterday. Really had a great time...up at Worthum Reservoir on loop road.

Its news, not what I planned on...

Well we got an email today, if I were them I wouldn't want to talk to me either. :-( The email said that the previous couples had a wait of 4 1/2 months between trips. See I wouldn't want to talk to me either. Frustration tops my list of comments on this news. BUT there is NOTHING we can do to help the situation, my time just doesn't seem to match up with the time indicated. All we can say at this point is that its certainly a good thing he was just a year old when we started this process, cuz by the time he gets home he will be nearly as old as Brayden was when he came home in a much shorter process. Have to find the little things to be grateful for cuz the big things just aren't working out at least not like I want them too. We are busy as usual and that will make the time go by easier.

Wish we knew and could understand

Today proved unfruitful too. No news from the other side that would be encouraging. We are trying to maintain ourselves, actually I would be trying to CONTAIN myself. :-) I have done all I can do and have rattled all the cages I can rattle, other than to just be the squeakiest wheel I can be now to the agency. I will just be checking in really regular to see if they have anything new to report. I understand that this judge just isn't very nice and she is not pro adoption, so don't really know what would get her good side exposed, but apparently its mostly impossible. It will be very interesting to see how things go for our friend's adoption. How her agency works things and how soon she will have news. We will be staying in close contact with her too to see what she is told and how it goes. She has to go through the same judge as we do, even though her city is four hours away from Pskov, she is in our region. For some reason too our region seems to be pretty far reaching but only has one judge, sure wish there was another one. Its amazing to me the stories, how they evolve, how they change and finally how they simply seem to disappear. Was that way with Brayden's adoption too so I shouldn't be surprised. My frustration becomes apparent at times, but I am trying to keep my head fairly level. I will be very busy in Sept with school pics and such, so the time will pass quickly, but I am concerned about not getting an Oct date. At this point I am just praying that God would intercede on our part, remembering that miracles do happen, we just need another one. Now on the home front with the son we do have at home, a couple of funny stories... Yesterday morning, Brayden got a t shirt out of the drawer and asked me if it said "short and cute", I said yes, "short, cute and loveable", he smarts back "short, cute, loveable and NEVER in trouble!" Yeah right... Yesterday afternoon we got an email that said cousin Lex hurt his knee again and won't play football this weekend. Brayden knows quite a bit about this knee thing as it got attention last year during basketball season and Lex was benched for the end of the season. So last night he was in the kitchen talking to Granny on the phone and he was telling her all about how he was out playing football on the lawn and he fell and twisted his knee and this little bone was sticking out and he couldn't walk on it at all. He just kept on elaborating on this story and it was getting bigger and bigger and all the time he is walking all around the kitchen, pretty soon I hear him tell her than he couldn't walk on the one leg and now he can't hardly walk on the other leg either. Again he is standing in front of the frig and he holds one leg out and looks at it a bit flexes his toes and acts like he can't really step on it. Well he is fine, he didn't have any bones sticking out, he is in perfect health altho I had to tell him several times today to watch that knee and be careful with it, I was instructed to tell him this by himself!! :-) His imagination is in fantastic shape and really can seem quite real I would guess. Even tho things with Braxton seem so hard right now, we do have many blessings and we have one major blessing that we get to watch grow every day right here at home. We have much to be thankful for and we don't want to forget to count them everyday.