Twas the Week Before Christmas...

It seems so hard to believe that Christmas is only a few days away! I'm sure everyone is running down their mental check lists, checking them twice, to make sure all they had planned to do has been done. As I sit back and rest a bit, I pray that you, too, might have the chance to relax, reflecting on WHY and WHO we are celebrating.  May your Christmas this year be less of you and more of the ONE whom we are celebrating. 

Update from us- so sorry I have not kept up with everything over the past 3 weeks.  Not sure, but possibly a mild pneumonia, or severe bronchitis, has kept me from accomplishing all but the necessary things recently.  But Hallelujah!! I am starting to feel better!! Yeah, God!!

On the adoption front.  We received some perplexing news last Tuesday.  This is what we heard:

This past Spring it was announced that the United States and Russia had finally developed a bi-lateral agreement that all parties would accept. Since this agreement we’ve known that some changes would be taking place with the Russian adoption process. As we move into 2012 we will doubtless begin to see those change go into effect and we will update each adoptive family and our informational documents (guidelines, website, etc.) accordingly.

A new law that is going into effect as of January 1, 2012 is the extension of the 10 day waiting/appeal period post court finalization. This waiting period will now be a mandated 30 days, thus turning the Russia adoption process into a three short trip process rather than two trips. We anticipate that each trip will be approximately 5-7 days in duration. We realize that a family’s first concern will be the additional costs of traveling, and while you will be making three round trips to Russia, we do want to highlight some positive aspects of this change:

1. Less vacation and FMLA time will be spent actually traveling and more will be available to each family to spend in post adoption with the child(ren)in their new home, helping to make the transition better.

2. The old process required families to spend several thousand dollars actually living in Russia for up to a month, now, instead of expending money to reside in the country for several weeks you will expend approximately the same, if not less, simply on the travel portion. Theoretically, the overall cost of the adoption will not increase because of the change, the money will just be spent elsewhere.

3. Think of all the frequent flyer miles!

While the process will now require three trips, families do have the option of remaining in Russia during the 30 day wait period. This would mean that the second trip will be 5-6 weeks. All families still waiting to receive a referral or travel will be effected by this change as it will be implemented immediately beginning in January 2012.

As I was telling a friend at work about this news, I realized that, in a way, it was an answer to prayer.  We had been concerned repeating the process in Russia that we would compare our second child to Eli, saying stuff like- wow, this is more difficult that with Eli, or boy, this is easier.  God has definitely delivered!! This trip will be nothing like our first was:)  

So, looks like we will actually have about 2 1-week trips and 1 2 to 21/2- week trip to bring home our second child.  This will make it easier to not be away from Eli for so long, though I do hope and pray that we will have adequate time to visit with our child in the babyhome so we are the known entity as we take them out into the unknown world.  Hang on baby!! We are praying and praying that we can bring you home soon!!