And we wait...

We have been keeping in close contact with our social worker regarding the status of Russian adoptions. As of right now, adoptions continue. The delegates from the US were scheduled to meet with Russian officials last Tuesday, but were unable to travel due to the volcanic ash cloud. They have rescheduled their talks for April 29th. We are hoping and praying that they will come to a quick agreement, and that nothing will delay bringing our little girl home. In addition to keeping the US delegates from getting to Russia, the ash cloud also prevented our last few documents from getting there as well. :( We were really hoping that our Russian coordinator would have been able to request our court date already. Our agency ended up sending our paperwork over with another family who is traveling this weekend. So, hopefully our documents will be where they need to be early this next week. I'm not sure how long it will take the judge to review our papers, but there is always the possibility that she will have us redo something, or request something additional.
In the meantime, we are getting our house ready to bring her home! Today, we moved all of the extra bedroom furniture into the basement bedroom, and picked up the crib. Now that her room is empty, we can get to painting and decorating. So much fun!!

Home

Sorry for the delayed post! We made it home okay, after many hours of travel. We flew to Moscow on Thursday morning, and had the day there. Moscow was a lot different than Kras, and so much more expensive. Luckily, we only had to stay one night! Both Mark and I have been trying to recover from the time change, and me from a nasty cold I brought home with me. Hopefully it's not some rare Russian virus! Tomorrow we will turn in the remainder of our paperwork, just three documents that couldn't be done until we returned from the 1st trip. All of our other paperwork is done, so once our Russian coordinator gets these last three, she can apply for a court date. We are hoping for this summer! This evening we had dinner with our families and shared the videos and pics of our girl. It was a lot of fun for them to see more of her cute little personality. We are so thankful for the time we were able to spend with her, and can't wait to bring her home! This week we are going to start buying furniture for her room. We left the buying, painting, and decorating for the time between our 1st and 2nd trips. We hope that it will help the time pass quickly!

Our last day in Kras

What an emotional day for everyone! The roads were extra slick this morning, and it was close to zero degrees. We slipped and slided our way to the orphanage to have our last visit with our little girl. She remembered us right away! We played and played, (her fav of the day was the slide), until finally she was tired and cranky. Naptime was getting close, and we witnessed our first Siberian meltdown! She ended up calming down with the offer of snacks...she is a Johnson already :) We ended up playing a little longer, and then she climbed into my lap and cuddled up to me. I walked her for just a few minutes and she was fast asleep. Such a busy three days for her! Our time with her was amazing as usual, but the end wasn't the way we would have chosen it to be. Since she was asleep when our time was up, they just took her from my arms and walked out. We were really upset that we weren't able to tell her goodbye, or to give her a kiss and a hug! :( Our hearts broke a little more with each mile we drove away from her. Pray that we are able to see her again soon! They keep mentioning June for our second trip, so that is what we are hoping for. Tomorrow morning, super early, we leave Krasnoyarsk for Moscow. We will overnight there, and will hopefully be able to see some of Red Square. Friday morning we fly back the US and get home late that night. We are not looking forward to that 10hour flight! Thanks for all of your prayers so far, and your never-ending support from home. We aren't sure if we will be able to blog these next couple of days, so just in case...see you soon.

Sweet smiles

Today was so much fun! Our little girl was so much more open and comfortable with us. We had her giggling and smiling a lot, and she loved getting and giving hugs. She even said a few words...which included "mama" :) We will definately need to buy her a doll stroller, it was her favorite toy of the day! We are really tired and have to get up early, so we are off to bed. Tomorrow morning they are picking us up at 8am to have a morning visit, and then we go to sign some papers in front of a notary. We are so excited to spend more time with her, but super disappointed that it will be our last day!

We are in Love!

Today was an amazing day! First we went to the Ministry of Education and received approval to go visit our girl. Then, after lunch we drove an hour to the city of Sosnovoborsk where her orphanage is located. The orphanage seemed very clean (no one is allowed to walk around without covers on their shoes) and all of the caregivers wear scrubs. When they brought her in she was timid at first, but we showed her some toys and the caregiver was able to sneak out. She is so sweet! We even got a few smiles:) And guess what ... she is potty trained! Our translator said that in Krasnoyarsk the kids go to kindergarten at age 3, so they potty train them very early. We were able to spend two hours playing with her, and she sat on both of our laps. She was definately more cautious with Mark because there are no male workers in the orphanage. But, she warmed up to him quickly and was soon leading him around the room! They work with the children as though they are in preschool, and we were really impressed with how smart is. When the caregiver came back in to get her, she smiled and ran over to her. Even though we were sad to leave, we were so thankful to see that she is well cared for. Before leaving, her caregiver told her to go back and give us each hugs, and she did! We can't wait to see her again tomorrow!

Our first day in Kras

Our street

Pizza and Sushi?!?

Our apartment

The view from our window

Wow, I can't even tell you how different it is here! We are pretty proud of ourselves for making it through the afternoon on our own :). Once we woke up from our nap, we walked to lunch at "California Pizza." The pizza was good, and it was easy to communicate because we could just point at which type we wanted. However, when we stopped at Subway to grab sandwiches for later, it was a different story. Luckily, we had a really sweet girl waiting on us, and were thankful for her patience! Next we went to the flea market to buy two more gifts that we will need for tomorrow. It was very interesting! Somehow, we managed to buy two nice scarves, at what we think was $10 a piece :) Then, on the way to the food market, we witnessed a mangy dog getting hit by a car. We were horrified! No one seemed to notice or care, as people just kept walking and the driver kept going. Luckily, the dog jumped up and ran away, so we are hoping that he is okay! The food market was uneventful, but we had a hard time getting back into our apartment. A Russian man helped us out, and we were able to get into the building, only to find out (after going all the way up to the 9th floor) that we were in the wrong side. Luckily, the man was gone when we left to go around to the door that accessed our side! We came back, unpacked, and assembled all of the gift bags for tomorrow. Our coordinator Yelena, and our driver Serge will pick us up at 12pm and we will first go to the Ministry of Education to officially receive our referral. Then at 3pm we go to the orphanage to meet our little girl! Words cannot describe how excited we are :). We hope everyone has a Happy Easter!

Two days and three flights later...

We are finally in Krasnoyarsk! It is 830am on Sunday here, and is a snowy 17F. Our apartment is really nice, and there are plenty of restaurants and markets within walking distance, even a Subway. We haven't slept much since we left on Friday! The flights were pretty full and cramped, but we were able to sleep a little more on the last flight (thanks to Aeroflot for seating us in the exit row!). We just ate some Ramen noodles for breakfast :) and now we're going to take a super long nap. Once we feel like human beings again we are going out to explore. Will blog later, thanks for the prayers for safe travel!

Here we go...

We are leaving in the morning! I can't believe we are actually going :) Our VISAs are here (finally today at 1pm!) and our bags are packed. Thanks to our generous families and friends, we have an entire suitcase full of clothes for the children and gifts for the caregivers! This time tomorrow night we will be somewhere over the ocean, a little more than halfway to Moscow. Our apartment in Krasnoyarsk is supposed to have Wi-Fi, so we should be able to post updates. Pray for safe travels!