Has It Been A Year Already??

I was looking at the calendar today and suddenly realized that just one year ago Daryle and I left for Russia on a wing and a prayer, literally! We had lost our original referral just two weeks prior to leaving and went on this trip completely "blind". I can remember feeling a sense of peace about the whole thing, I just knew we were going to meet our child. Then I would feel weird for feeling that way and would think that maybe I should be more scared. What if we went on this trip and didn't meet our child? Then I would think, no, of course we are going to meet him or her. It was a crazy mental battle all the way there. I figured it would be fun to go down memory lane this week and post about what we did each day a year ago this week. For us this is the whole "labor and delivery" story! Enjoy!

Here was Daryle on the plane leaving from Atlanta to Moscow. We couldn't believe we were finally headed back to Russia to meet another child of ours.
This was how we spent the entire first day at Svetlana's apartment. We waited all day to hear from our coordinator. It was very quiet and was actually a good day to just rest up since we were a bit jet lagged. Daryle enjoyed cuddling up with her dog Tyson.

We enjoyed this nice view out the window of our room. We were too scared to leave the apartment since we didn't really know where we were at this point. Thank goodness the following day we became braver!

This was her front door, it was so welcoming! The doors over there are different. It was padded and the locks are very different to work. She actually gave us both a lesson and made us show her we could figure it out before we went to bed that night! You can even see the white chalk marks she made by the lock as a "cheat sheet" for us.

More of our room, pardon the sloppiness!

It is so strange sometimes when I reflect back on our adoption of Connor, it was such a different experience for us. With Travis we went through such emotional turmoil that it literally took me 3 years to recover from the craziness. (Those of you who know me that this is NOT an exaggeration at all! Seriously.) Every day I would think to myself, "I remember last year/2 years ago/3 years ago right now that &*$## judge was doing this and that..." (you get the picture). However, with Connor it was completely different. We didn't carry his picture around with us for 10 long months before meeting him. We found out about him one night and met him the next day. While we waited for court we had tons of pictures and short videos to get us through and the wait was only about 2 months. It wasn't until earlier today that I realized we were over there one year ago today. With Travis' adoption it was all consuming for us. With Connor it was all so surreal. Now I have a hard time remembering what life was like "before Connor", it feels like he has been here forever. He was without a doubt the missing person from our family. Today we did our second post placement report that will be sent to Russia. It is amazing to me that God has entrusted these two boys to our care, and the manner in which they each came to us amazes and humbles me each and every day.