Happy New Year!

Here are some of my favorite moments of 2007:

December: Spending Christmas with Chris' family and getting some pretty special gifts. The locket is from my DSH, I put the pictures of our boys in it to wear close to my heart. The book is from my Mom for our boys, it's amazing! If you have boys, go and get it!! We also recieved some very generous donations towards our adoption. We are so thankful and humbled by the love and support we've been shown by so many.












November: Spending Thanksgiving with my family in NC. Both of my sisters were there with their families as well as my Aunt and Uncle. Here is a picture of Chris wearing a Russian looking hat at a general store in NC and my mom, sister, aunt and nephew are getting ready for a ride.



Also in November was our baby shower. We were so blessed!


October was a busy month! We got our referrals and traveled to Krasnoyarsk, Russia to meet our precious little boys! Sorry, no pics allowed of the kiddos but here's one of me in front of the orphanage and one of Chris and I in front of the Chapel on the hill.

While we were gone, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law painted and decorated our boy's room. What a huge blessing!! Check out the video on one of my earlier posts.

I can't think of anything exciting happening this past September so I'll skip to the summer.

August: We had our annual family vacation. This year we went to Lake Weir, we had a lot of fun. We also celebrated Bethany's birthday and Mamaw's (Chris' grandma) birthday. Her's a pic of Chris fishing with our nephew Ben.

I also was able to visit my sister and her family for my neice's first birthday! She is so cute!!


July: Our agency was reaccredited, praise the Lord!! This was a highlight of '07!

We also celebrated Chris' 35th birthday!

June: Chris and I took a trip to Epcot. We had a great time. I think it's our favorite theme park.


May: I got a pen-pal from Russia, her name is Nastya. Here's a pic with her and Sara, our first FC. I also learned how to make the best apple pie ever, from scratch!!















March: I turned 32, yikes!!!

February: I started taking Russian classes. I'm glad I did, I learned a lot of helpful phrases!

January: We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary! I can't believe we're coming up on 9 years now!
The past year was pretty eventful. I'm hoping 08' will include us bringing our boys home and many wonderful times together as a family in the new year.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to yours! May God bless us all in 2008! <[;o)

Internet's Down

Hey All! Our internet has been down for the past week or so. I don't know what the problem is. I can start it up but it shuts back down after a minute. So, I haven't been able to post or check e-mail lately. I'm actually on my friends computer right now. The good news is that we're switching providers and they are coming out tomorrow to set us up and hopefully fix the problem.
No adoption news to share. We are still hoping and praying for a court date before everything closes down in Russia on the 29th. We'll see. If not, then I guess it'll be more like Feb-Mar before we can go back for our boys. This waiting has been the hardest yet! I don't know how to update the thermometer on our blog and Chris has been kind of busy lately but a few of you have asked how we are doing with the fundraising so, we are about $15,000 from meeting our goal. God is so good and He continues to provide.
In other news, Goeppner-Kush(nika) is just around the corner. This is about 4 nights of Christmas for our family. It starts off at our house on Saturday. We're going to see a movie and then we'll go out to dinner and then everyone will come over to our house for dessert and presents from me and Chris. Sunday night we'll be going to Chris' grandmother's house for dinner, dessert and presents. Monday night we go to his Mom's for dinner, dessert and presents and Tuesday afternoon we go to his sister's house for more of the same all day long! By Wednesday we are spent and about 20 lbs heavier!!
I hope you all have wonderful Christmas plans with your families. Please share your family Christmas traditions if you'd like.

Not Much Happening

I know it's been a while since my last post but not much is going on. We're in another waiting period and that can be difficult at times. I'm doing pretty well at the moment though. The Lord has given me great peace about everything and for that I'm very thankful.
I spoke with our FC yesterday. She told me that AWAA has been swamped with referrals and court dates lately. That is great news! I love to see movement in Russia! I'm hoping our court date isn't too far behind. Chris and I are hoping that we are able to find out our court date before Russia shuts down for the holidays on the 29th. It would be so great to know our court date and be able to prepare for it at leisure instead of running around like chickens with our heads chopped off like last time! We have a shot of getting a court date at the end of January so that's what we're praying for.
In other news, I'm 99% done with my Christmas shopping. We're on a strict budget so it was a lot easier to buy for people this year. I can't wait until next Christmas when we can buy lots of toys and fun stuff for the boys!=)

Our Shower

First let me say that the trip to Tallahassee was a success and our documents are on their way to Russia. Yay!
The shower was amazing. The family who hosted it had just decorated for Christmas so it was beautifully festive. We received many gifts and financial contributions toward our adoption. We were blessed beyond measure by everyone and humbled by the love we were shown. It was an open-house shower so people came and went from about 7pm to 11pm. I was told that approximately 70 people came! Amazing, huh? My sister-in-law took a lot of great pictures, thanks Beth! I picked out a few to share with you.




The whole evening we played the video of our first trip to Russia so everyone could "meet" our boys.


This was the spread before everyone started to eat. The food was delicious, Fajitas- one of my favorites!


Here are some pics of us opening gifts.




Chris was so excited about getting Miami Hurricane sippy cups!


He loved the cute clothes we got too!


We had everyone sign the mat around our family picture. I can't wait to hang it on our wall!


We thought this was an opportune time for a family Christmas photo.


Thank you to everyone who was a part of our shower. We were truly blessed!

What's Next

The shower was great and I will tell you all about it in my next post but I haven't had the time to go through pictures and I don't want to post about it until I can show you some photos.
Saturday morning was our annual Ladies Christmas Tea for our church. It was great and our pastor's wife had a fantastic teaching on "purpose". Right after that was over I met my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and neice at my house and we drove up to St. Augustine for some outlet shopping. We got some great deals! We spent the night and got back about an hour ago