Ready To Go!!!!

Today we got the new money that we needed from the bank....finally!!!
It almost took an act of Congress to get it!!! Our bank called Suntrust came through for us, when no one else would even try!!! Debbie you are amazing!!!
Yet another friend helping us out on this journey... Where would we be without our family and our friends help. We also got our visa's back today!!! The only thing left to do this weekend is to pack. This should be very interesting, since usually when we travel I find a reason to bring more than I really need. This trip will definitely teach me to pack light. We cannot believe that in a couple of days we will be flying out to see our little girl!!! LORD, thank you for blessing our family on this journey so far... we cannot wait to see what YOU have in store for us next.....

First Trip Travel Dates!!!

We just received an email of our first trip travel dates!!! Praise the Lord!!!
We will be leaving on our first trip on Tuesday, June 3rd, and we will be returning on June 7th or June 8th. Excited and nervous are not the only words that we can express receiving this wonderful news!!! We have waited so long to find our daughter, and to know that we will be seeing her in just over a week, it just takes our breath away!!! At church this morning we made the announcement about our little girl. There were a few happy tears shed by myself, and a few by our church friends. Our journey so far has just been amazing. Our family is so incredibly blessed, and we are always so amazed how the Lord has worked in our lives and our adoption. We know that our daughter Alyssa will truly be blessed to have all of you in her life!!!

WE GOT OUR REFERRAL!!!!

Praise the Lord!!! We have a referral!!! She is a 12 month old little girl in the region of Krasnoyarsk. We just accepted the referral today. Hopefully in the next couple of days we will learn when we will be traveling on our first trip. Kristen at AWAA told us that we should expect to travel in the next 2 weeks!!! We would like to take just a minute to thank all of our family and friends for praying for us during this long and eventful adoption process. We have learned so much in the past 2 years, and we have made some new amazing friends!!! We would love to post a picture of our daughter, but we will have to wait until after our court date. We will let you know soon, when we will be leaving on our first trip to meet our baby girl named Alyssa Marie...

Our Adoption Journey

We start this blog today as a way for our family and friends to follow us in our amazing adoption journey to find our little girl. This process began back in 2004 when we decided to adopt after trying to have a child for 9 years, with no pregnancy. We began to gather information about adoption, and we attended many adoption group meetings. In April of 2006 we learned of an adoption group meeting at a church in Knoxville sponsored by America World Adoptions. After the meeting, and the video, there was not a dry eye in the room. We knew that our hearts belonged to Russia, and we would find our little girl there.
We started the paperwork called our dossier for the "paper pregnancy"
of our journey. After gathering all of our paperwork and having had a home study complete, we were ready to send our dossier to Russia in October 2006. Unfortunately at the time our dossier was sent in, re-accreditation had put a hold on all international Russian adoptions. Our agency along with all of the other agency's in the U.S. had to reapply to be able to work through Russia. This delayed all adoptions out of Russia until July 2007. In July we learned that our agency's umbrella company had gotten their re-accreditation, and the adoption's could begin again. While waiting through re-accreditation our dossier was expiring. All paperwork expires after a year, so we had to work on keeping it up to date. As the fall and winter of 2007 approached we started to hear of movement in Russia with families getting referrals and of families traveling to bring their children home. We were told that we should hear something in the spring of 2008 about getting officially registered in our region.
We got a call from America World in January and was told that we would probably be registered in Krasnoyarsk Russia. As we started to work on region specific documents for this region, we knew the day had to be getting close. We then got a call from Kristen at our agency, and she said that we were officially registered for Krasnoyarsk Russia as of March 2008!!!! We were so excited!!! All of the paperwork and the waiting was finally coming to and end. When will we get our referral??? It can't be that far away....