We are home.

I titled the blog ending it with an exclamation point and then retyped it ending in a period. It is such a bittersweet time. We are thankful to be home where it is familiar but are so sad that we are home without her.

On Saturday, we checked out of our hotel at noon and were picked up by Natasha. We drove to the Hermitage museum for a tour. Words or pictures cannot even begin to describe this place. With a large part of the items in storage and not even displayed, it would still take 7 years to spend one minute at each exhibit. This should give you some idea of the size. Paintings, sculptures, etc. from all over the world.....including the famous one "The Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt. We basically just walked through the place with our mouths wide open trying to take in what we were seeing. If you ever get a chance to go to St. Pete, this place is a must see!

Now here are the details of our last meeting. It was a Saturday, so there was not a whole lot going on at the baby home. They brought her to us and she was as cute as ever. I felt like we had such a great amount of time to play with her. She had on about 4 layers and the room was extremely hot. They like to keep the babies warm there. We noticed so much that really encouraged our hearts about her. In just 3 visits and those few hours of one on one attention, we saw many positive changes with her. I am blown away by this and can't wait to see how far she comes when she gets to be with her forever family! After about 2 hours came the time we were not looking forward to....the time for them to take her away. We sadly told her bye and the caregiver took her along with all the items that we left with her. I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut at this point. I soon after had the urgent desire to get home so we could get everything done to get back here as soon as possible. I talked with Natasha about how hard it was to leave her and she agreed it was the most difficult part of the process. She too wished that we could have taken her. We then drove to the airport and were thankful that we were able to end the trip with one last visit with her.

I wanted to call each and every one of you to tell you that we were home, but I feel asleep around 8:00 pm. We had quite the day(s) of travel to get home. We left St. Pete at 8:30 P.M their time and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany at 8:45 P.M. It looks as though our flight was 15 minutes, but no there is a 3 hour time change in there. This was our first gain of 3 hours. We arrived in Germany and spent the night in the recliners at the airport to be able to catch our flight the next morning at 8:10 German time. We left Germany and flew for 8 hours to land in Chicago at 10:00 central time (another time change). We caught our next flight in Chicago at 12:10 and arrived in Houston around 3:00 PM. We were laughing because we basically experienced Sunday two times! We left Houston around 5:30 and drove back to Buda.

I know you all are excited for me to post pictures, but I am sad to say that I cannot. She is in our hearts "ours", but legally she won't be until after court. We are being over the top careful until then. I wish I could sit down with each of you and show you the pictures and the video that we have. I think I have watched the videos three times and can't even tell you how many times I have looked at the pictures. We are in awe of her and can't believe that she will soon be home with us.

I know you are wondering what is next. Well, it is a bit complicated and frustrating. We now have to wait for our court date. Natasha is thinking this will take 2 months. Here is where the prayer request comes. Please pray that the judge that we are assigned will move forward quickly and give us a court date. There is a adoption treaty between the US and Russia that was signed last summer. It was signed by both sides, but Russia has not ratified it yet. Natasha's team heard it should be ratified in a month. Some judges are unaffected by this and are continuing to assign court dates. Others are holding off on assigning court dates until the treaty is officially ratified. Pray our judge is one that will go ahead and give our date.

After court, we return home to wait the official 30 days before we go back to get her (trip 3). As you can only imagine this is a hard waiting time for us. Pray for us!

I am going to try to keep this blog going in between trips. In the meantime, please feel free to ask any questions about the process. We love to share about our journey.

Thank you for praying for us. We have seen so much of the Lord's favor with this little girl's life and with us on trip one. What an amazing testimony she has and will be able to share one day!

Love,
David and Amy