Today is a special day

Dear Bryson,

Today is a special day. It's your first birthday. We are very sad that we did not get the opportunity to meet you before you turned one. We hope we get to see you VERY SOON. We often wonder how much you've changed (since your referral picture is at least 6 months old). You are a very lucky little boy because you are already loved so much. Not just by your mommy & daddy, but also by your grandparents, great grandparents, aunt, uncles, cousins. It is crazy to think that we have fallen completely in love with you just from a picture, but we have. We think of you every day and look at your picture a million times. We dream about all the things we are going to do with you and all the places we will take you. In our hearts, you are perfect and we can't wait for the moment we get to hold you in our arms. Take care little man. We will be there soon (hopefully). HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY BRYSON.

Love,
Daddy & Mommy

Bad news

No we didn't lose our referral, but we won't be traveling as expected on Saturday. To sum it up without going into detail, the paperwork is not in order for us to travel yet. Russia will be issuing us new travel dates shortly. We will still be traveling to see our little man, just not yet. I am pretty upset about it. I had everything planned and ready to go for Saturday. We have already fallen in love with his picture, we were ready to visit him this coming week. I will let you know once we hear about our new travel dates.

3 days

Just in case anyone will be wondering what time it will be in Russia while we are there. Moscow, is 8 hours ahead of us (in Florida) and Novosibirsk is 11 hours ahead of us.

5 days

For our local family and friends: The cost of this adoption is expensive. Since the beginning of the year, we have been slowly cleaning out things around our house and now have boxes in various rooms with these items. We are going to have a yard sale and hope to make some money to be used towards this adoption. We will probably have it a few weeks after we get back from our 1st trip. I will let everyone know the dates for sure once we decide. What we ask of you, is if you have anything you are getting rid of and would like to donate to our yard sale, we would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

6 days

Like Amy, I figured I would also post our itinerary.

Sat 10/20- leave U.S.
Sun 10/21- arrive in Moscow, fly to Novosibirsk that afternoon
Mon 10/22 - Wed 10/24- visit with our little man
Thurs 10/25- fly back to Moscow, have doctor exam done, go sightseeing (hopefully)
Fri 10/26- Fly home

After talking with Amy, we discovered we are on the same flight from JFK to Moscow. It will be nice to be to talk with someone else that is in this process as well. We got some shopping done yesterday and will finish up the rest today. I haven't even begun to pack.

7 days

We are definitely going to use Alexander as the middle name, but we have been trying to decide whether we should use Alexander (the American spelling) or Aleksandr (the Russian spelling). What are your thoughts?

8 days

A lot of family and friends have been asking if we get to bring him home with us on this trip. Unfortunately we don't. Russia requires two trips. The first is to meet him. The second is to go to court and bring him home.

flight to Moscow - $2200

hotel for 1 night in Moscow - $700

the excitement we feel right now - PRICELESS

Our travel dates

We got our travel dates last night. We are leaving Florida on 10/20 and will return on 10/26. I can't tell you how much I am starting to freak out. There is so much to do. I don't even know where to begin. Do you?

His name

If you can't tell by the new ticker we added above, we have decided on his name. We choose not to use his given name because we didn't care for it and the name we had already picked out sounded so much better.
Bryson Alexander

We got the call

And it totally took us by surprise, but I can't tell you how excited we are. He is perfect. He will be one this month. He has dark hair and dark eyes. Our agency said we will be traveling sometime this month. The range of emotions you feel once you get that call is indescribable. We are so excited and in love already. We spent all afternoon telling our families about him and they couldn't be happier. Now there is so much to do while we wait for those travel dates!

We are #2

After speaking with our agency awhile back, we had decided to register our dossier in the region of Novosibirsk. They felt that would bring us a quicker referral than waiting in "the pool." We just found out yesterday that we are number 2 in this region for our agency. We are excited about being so close and we are also excited about this region. We love what we have learned so far. A little bit about Novosibirsk:

"Novosibirsk is Russia's third largest city (after Moscow and Saint Petersburg) and the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast. It is also the largest city in Siberia and the administrative center of Siberian Federal District, in the southwest of which it is located.

Industries include machine manufacturing and metallurgy. It is the homes of one of Novosibirsk State University, a number of institutes and a scientific research center. Novosibirsk boasts opera and ballet companies, several theaters, museums, and art galleries. The city is widely considered to be the cultural center of Siberia.

The climate is sharply continental, with severely cold and snowy winters, and hot and dry summers. Temperatures in summer range from 20 to 25C (75F), in winter -18 to -20C, but can reach -40C (-40F) in winter and 35-40C (100F) in summer. The difference between the highest and the lowest temperature is 88C (158F). Most of the time the weather is sunny, with an average of 2880 hours of sunshine per year."

If we would not have lost our first referral, we would have already traveled on our first trip, so we hope to hear something in the next few weeks. It appears that things have slowed down in Russia and referrals are not coming at a fast pace, so I pray things start to pick up soon. There are many children waiting for their forever families.