April is here!!!

It’s finally April and things are starting to feel more “real” every day. It’s hard to wipe the smile off my face when I know that in just 3 weeks (from today!!!) we will be visiting Alexander in the orphanage! We have kicked the conversations about Alexander into high gear with Marina, trying to get her to really understand what will be happening. She loves talking about “my Alexander” and all of her toys and books that she wants to show him and she’s picked out some of his toys that she is sure he will want to share with her! We look at his pictures every day and she has seen the video of him from our first trip quite a few times.

Marina and I went to the airport to pick up Mike this past weekend and while we were there we purchased the airline tickets for Alexander. Yep…..we have tickets for Alexander Froehlich!!! Other than the paperwork we had to fill out for our agency, that is the first time I’ve seen his name written like that. It truly warms my heart!

Alexander’s room has become the staging area for all of our stuff to be packed. It’s becoming a little intimidating. I haven’t quite figured out yet how in the world we are going to be able to pack lightly with all of the items we need to take, but we’ll keep working on it! I’m sure it will take us packing, unpacking and repacking many times before we get to where we need to be, but we’re up for the challenge! I feel like Mike and I can get by with a relatively small amount, but the stuff for the kids’ more than makes up for that!

There are several (I think about 8-10) families in Krasnoyarsk right now, and not a single family has been able to get the 10-day waiting period waived, so we have no hope of being able to either. Based on our experience with Marina, I really do think it will be a blessing to have the time to visit Alexander in the orphanage before we take him to the hotel with us and then on to Moscow and home, but on the flip side of that we will all be very anxious just to get home!

For those of you that haven’t heard about our travel arrangements, we have decided to take Marina with us, as well as John and Joyce (Mike’s parents.) Since our trip is going to be 3 ½ weeks long, we just weren’t comfortable leaving Marina here without us for so long. So, John and Joyce graciously accepted our offer to have them travel with us and watch Marina for us while we are at court, visiting the orphanage and completing paperwork for the adoption. I don’t think they really know how much they will be helping us out! And we really hope they enjoy their first trip to Russia!

I feel like we are getting closer to “crunch time.” With Easter coming up next weekend, I think we’ll find ourselves in a rush to get everything done that we need to, but we are so looking forward to boarding that plane on the 20th, and even more so, getting off the plane in Krasnoyarsk on the 23rd! We’ll keep you updated…… :O)