Meeting with Ministry of Education.

We finnaly got to the meeting that we were so worried about. It went great.They asked us a lot of guestions about where we work , why not adopt in u.s. ect. We could not go to meet Noah until this afternoon because of his sleep routine of naping in the morning and afternoon. We will go to see him at 3:00 pm today. Tomorrow we will be able to go see him early in the morning and maybe once more during the day depending on his routine. We were able to go buy groceries today, soooo different than home. You can only go by the way the products are packaged for what to need to buy. Maybe tonight we will be able to download pictures of everything we have been doing. We also took a nice walk on th beach of the Sea of Japan. The park was nice but the sand was wery nasty, ( cigarette butts, beer, vodka ect.) By the way vodka is sold like water here, on every corner, store, hotel, plane EVERYWHERE! Gotta go for now th get ready to see Noah . Love everyone and again keep blogging, its great to here from you. Shout out to Keelie & Lindsie, We love you.

We arrived in Vladovistok.

We thought we would never make it, but through 3 flights and 22 hours in the air we're hear!! It is so good to hear form everyone.We got to Moscow at 10:45 Sunday morning, it's now Sunday at 10:20pm. We have mostly slept the day away.We were met by Irena and Lana today at the airport, they work for Children's Hope in Vlad.They are really nice and told us not to worry about anything because they would let us know when to do everything. The hotel is called the Vlad Inn, The workers can all speak english here so that is nice to hear for a change. Irena and Lana can speak english well also.The internet seems to be a lot cheaper here than in Moscow, so maybe we can catch up on more that is going on.

While we were in Mosow our drivers name was Vitaly, he was nice and very helpful at the airport. We will be pickes up at 9:00am on Monday morning to go meet with the Ministry of Education. I am pretty sur that we will then go to meet Noah. It should take us about an hour to get to the orphanage that Noah is in, from our hotel in Vlad. That may seem like a lot of riding back and forth for a week, but we know people who had to ride 3 hours one way daily.

There are a lot of people in the hotel that are adopting.Some of them are on their first trip and some are on their second. We need to buddy up with them and find out where to buy a few groceries, among other things. We may have to borrow someones laptop because it does not look like we will be able to hook our camera up to this computer, sorry.

Tomorrow is our BIG DAY!!! We are going to record everything so just be patient and you'll all see it soon enough. We are not able to send photos of Noah anyway. I can't wait to see him for the first time, I know it is going to be the most special thing in the world .

Thank you to everyone who is reading and writing on the blog, it is very uplifting to hear from family and friends when you are over half way around the world and don't know anyone.

2nd day in Moscow, Russia

Hello from Moscow. We have made it through our first night, finally. We were able to find McDonalds , it was ok, it tasted just like it does at home so you can understand where i am coming from. We exchanged some Dollars to rubles yesterday. It looks like we have a ton of money now because it looks like monopoly money. It is very colorful. We ate breakfast in the hotel this morning, they had a lot of western food to choose from, (eggs, bacon, orange juice, ect.). Our room is nice, at least better than we were expecting.

In response to Melissa, we are not sure of the drivers name , but he was nice and helpful. We are staying in the hotel Holiday Inn, Sokolniki. The weather as you can see on the web site is cool, feels great.The people drive like maniacs here but they sure do get the job done!! Today we are killing a little time waiting for the driver to come back to get us at 4:30. Last night we hit the streets for an evening walk, lots of people drinking and smoking all around. We noticed that you could walk up to basically any store and purchace alchohol.YOU BETTER WATCH OUT FOR THE CARS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT WATCHING FOR YOU!!! We are soooo glad to hear from everyone back home, keep in contact.

This will be our last blog from Moscow. Next time you read we will be in Vlad, and meeting Noah.

We 're in Moscow, Russia!!!!

Hey to everyone, just wanted to let you all know that we made it fine. We we'lll be spinding the night here at the Holiday Inn, in Moscow. It seams to be very very nice so far. The plane trip was great as far as turbulance but the food and trying to sleep was terrible!!! The trip was 10 hours long from Atlanta to Moscow and it felt like 20. Our driver met us at the airport and was really nice. He will be picking us up tomorrow at 4:30 and taking us back to start our jurney to Vladovistok. That is another 10 hours on the plane that we are not looking foward to , but we'll be fine. We will arrive in Vlad on Sunday, and Monday we'll go meet the Ministry of Education. He will then let us go meet our son that same day.We hope to be visiting him daily.

Sorry that we had to keep it short today, but we can only be on the internet for 30 minutes today and 30 minutes tomorrow. Maybe whe we get to Vlad we will be able to tell you more. We love ya'll and we will be keeping you posted.

Chaos

Chaos in the Housley household today!! We have been trying to get some things packed for the trip. While we are going by a packing list generously created by our great friends Melissa and Nathan, it still is crazy around here. We thought oh we'll get the things together that are on the list and the few things that we don't have yet , we'll just make a trip to Wal-mart and get.Oh no , that's so not what is happening!!! We are practically taking a pharmacy with us for any ailment we may or may not get, 10-15 lbs of our suitcase limit gone already. Our clothes have been packed as lightly as possible, but still as you can imagine I have probably over packed, so that may bring my bag alone up to around 60lbs. My hair products alone weigh 20 lbs (well maybe not but they sure do feel like it. We have already packed the items we're taking for" little man", His bag does in fact weigh 10 lbs. So here it is Sunday and my suitcase it weighing 100lbs, I think I may need to reevaluate what I'm taking. I know this may not be very interesting reading for a blog, but hey it's what's going on in our hectic lives right now.

GOOD NEWS !!!!!

Friday we finally got the news that we had been waiting on for 19 long months. We got our travel dates and will be leaving on Thursday (Sep 27, 07) yes, that's only 5 days to prepair for the trip of our lives. We are going crazy trying to sort out what needs to be done before Wednesday. We will be leaving on Thursday (Sep 27, 07) and returning to the U.S. on Saturday (Oct 6, 07). Our travel plans look like we should be in Moscow, Russia on Friday, leaving on Saturday going to Vladivostok, arriving in Vlad on Sunday, MEETING OUR CHILD ON MONDAY!!!, back to Moscow on Friday, and finally back home on Saturday. I'm trying to let it sink in that this is actually going to happen but it still feels like a dream. We have already contacted Dr. Chambers to let here know our recent news and that she will soon be in need. I also took some very good advice from a few friends of ours that have traveled for adoptions before, they said load up on the meds. Be prepared for any illness while you are gone, the worst thing that you can do is be that far away from home and sick as a dog. We are also taking nausea meds for the flight because this will only be my second time to fly and Josh's first time.

IT'S A BOY!!!! For those of you who may not be aware of our referral it is a boy, he's 2, blond hair , blue eyes , and 17 lbs. Yes, we know he is small for his age ,but that is to be expected from a child in an orphanage in that area. They tell us that that is no big deal and he will gain weight when he comes home in no time. He is healthy, but may be behind in some areas.

We plan to update our blog daily for anyone who would like to "follow our trip".We want to keep you as updated as possible. I plan to rent a laptop while we are in Vlad, for many reasons, communicating with Dr. Chambers, family and friends. We may not be posting any photos of our little man right away, while we want to share them, we still have rules that we have to follow from our agency and the Russian Federation. Please feel free to email us at any time at ,housleyadoption@yahoo.com.We plan to check our email daily and we would love to here from you.

"not much change"

There is not a whol lot of change today. Ii spoke with Karen earlier and she needed one more document from our home study agency, a document that has just been added by home study agencies this year. It shouldn't be any trouble to get and we don't need it right away (just before our court date on our second trip.) Karen will be contacting Irena in Vlad by email today and hopes to be getting our exact travel dates Friday or Monday. Just a small change of subject but I have had so much fun buying by "stuff". I thought it would be hard to put up all of our girl things, but I've really had fun with blue and brown. We have decided to repaint our nursery from pink and green stripes to blue and brown. We have also bought blue and brown bedding for our white Generation Next 4 in 1 crib. If anyone can give me any tips on where to buy cute boy clothes please let me know!!! Mabey next time I blog there will be some real news to tell.

Expecting travel dates soon. Tuesday 18, 2007

We are expecting travel dates to be coming to us any day. We got a phone call from Washington D.C. last night asking us what travel dates needed to be on our (Travel) Visa. We told her that all we knew at this time was that we were supposed to travel anywhere from Sep 21, 07-Oct 21, 07. Apparently the dates have been issued wrong before. Karen at CHI told us to double check those dates on our visa as soon as we get them in the mail which should be this week according to the lady in Washington (she is Fed-Ex-ing them).( Just a tip for anyone waiting on Visa's from the government.)

Game Day

Today is SEC football college extravaganza day, or Saturday for normal people. Roll Tide Roll !! I worked on our child's room a little more last night , that seams to be how I work through my anxiety about the waiting. I just feel like everything needs to be perfect for this child. I know that the kids in Russia do not very much or sometimes nothing at all, but I feel like I need to make up for that in some ways. I know that we will give them enough love to make up for the past 2 years of their life without parents but there is so much more that they deserve. I pray that God will show us all the ways that I child may need love and special attention in ways we may have otherwise never thought of. They say that adopted children need and demand special care in their younger years as apposed to a birth child, but I think as long as you love and care for your child to your best abilities that your family will be fine, and God will always be there for everything else.

Lil' bit of good news.

We talked to Karen again this afternoon and she had some news for us finally!!!! She told us that our visa had been accepted to vlad and we would be traveling between September 21 and October 10, 07. We are sooo excited about this because we didn't know when they would even start to process that paperwork. This is huge news for us today.

Waiting for the travel dates.

Today I talked to Karen (our contact person) nothing much new going on. She still seams to think that we should travel the first week in October, although we have no official travel dates yet. We are trying to be patient but that's starting to change. I hope we will here something soon because going by their timeline, if we travel the first week in October then we will not go back for our second trip until 4-5 months later in February or March. That's already long enough to wait considering we turned our paperwork in to our agency in August of 2006. We heard that Russia was a difficult country to work with but we never thought it would be like this. To anyone who would like to adopt a child in Russia prepare to wait at least 5 years on a female and 2-3 years on a male.(just a warning) We are trying to cherish our time together while we are waiting but my gosh it's been 10 years that we have now been married and we are ready for this child. It is true that you should cherish that time that you have alone. We have gone on numerous vacations this past year, Gatlinberg, Pensacola Beach, Gulf Shores, New York but nothing gets your mind off of your child.