We're still in Russia

Hey, everyone!! We passed court last Monday, so we are officially Taylor's parents!! Now we are waiting out our 10 day waiting period. There's not much to do here in Kemerovo other than walk around and look at all the over priced things we could buy. We have been sleeping A LOT!! We wish we could go see Taylor, but it is a 3 hour drive on the worst road ever, and it would cost us $250 each trip. We also decided that even if it was free, it's probably better for him to not see us come and leave over and over, but rather come one last time and take him with us instead. He got so sad when we had to leave the last time, he got a huge pucker on his face and put his head down, it was soooo pitiful!! It made us really sad, because he didn't want us to leave him. He was also so excited to see us and he gave us each a big hug when we got there. We CAN'T WAIT to go back and get him, and come home!! After we go get him, we'll bring him back here to our hotel in Kemerovo and have to stay here for a few more days while we finish our paperwork, before we head to Moscow for 6 more nights. But we are excited to bring him back here because just down the street, both ways, there is a bunch of fun things for little kids to play on, so he will have a blast!!

It's great weather here, it's been about 60-70 degrees everyday with a few rain showers here and there throughout the day. It's really weird because everyday, it will all of sudden cloud up, rain a little, and then clear up and be sunny again, sometimes a couple times a day.

Not much happening right now, but we will hopefully have some pictures to put up of Taylor soon once we have him with us. Our plane landed Saturday morning at about 5:30 in the morning, we went to our hotel to drop our bags off and then straight to the orphanage on a 3 hr drive. So going on just the couple hours of sleep we had on the plane, we were literally half asleep and didn't think about taking pictures, we only took video when we went to visit him (but we forgot the cords to connect the video player to the computer).

We will keep you updated as much as possible as our time here goes on. See you all later!!

This is a BIG update

We have finally been scheduled a court date!!! We leave the USA on August 17th and we have our court date on August 22nd. We are so excited we can hardly wait to go get our son and bring him home!! Our prayer now is that our judge would waive the 10 day waiting period. We plan to request it, but they say this judge almost never waives it. But we know a God that can change the hearts of kings, so we know he can change the heart of a judge in Russia. There are so many reasons why we need the judge to waive the 10 day waiting period....for one, Taylor has waited in that orphanage long enough and he needs to be with his forever family so he can begin to thrive....two, Jesse needs to get back in case the crops are about ready to need harvesting....three, the cost of staying in a hotel for an extra 10 days wouldn't be cheap....and four, we can hardly stand the thought of being away from our little Reesey girl for ANY longer than we absolutely have to. The last trip was only a week long and we were aching to get back to our Reesey. At least we won't have to leave our Taylor man behind this time, and he will be with us for a big part of this trip.

So we need lots of prayer that we would have a safe trip, that we will pass court with absolutely no problems, and that the judge would waive the 10 day waiting period. And if anyone has any suggestions on what we can say to convince the judge that it is in the best interest of the child to waive the 10 days, please let us know!! All we can do is pray and ask God to help the judge see that waiving the 10 days is best, but even if she doesn't, we will know that whatever happens is God's will.

We are so excited and we will try to post new pictures of Taylor as soon as possible. I tried to upload one of the videos we took while we were there, but for some reason, I can't get it to finish uploading. Maybe I'll get it to work one of these days.