JANUARY 2009 CON'T

WEEK OF JANUARY 26 THROUGH JANUARY 31st


Dear All:

This week has been crazy..... to say the least.... A great friend of mine had warned me that when the moment came of getting "The Call", things were going to start happening super fast.... and I think you know who you are (Ms. A. G.). Well, that has turned out to be soo true. First, it was a challenge to get the travel dates from CHI. We had to wait since Friday (when we got the call) all the way until late Wednesday afternoon to finally receive confirmation from our Coordinator. I have been told that as soon as you receive a referral there should be travel dates available to the parents, in order for them to be able to start the process of ordering the Russian visas and purchase plane tickets. It took a lot of hustling around and a lot of emails, but we finally got the dates. Therefore, we will be leaving on February 7th. Mauri and I will spend a week in Russia while we get to meet our little girl. Right now the visa requests have been overnighted and have been already received, and are currently being processed. We should receive them by Wednesday of next week. Plane tickets were purchased Wednesday night.

We are leaving to Chicago first thing in the morning on the 8th. We will have a layover of about 8 hours until we take our next flight to Moscow at 5:30pm. The good thing is that we will get to see Claudia, Donnie and Buddy. In regards to paperwork, Tver sent me a new list of documents that need to be prepared for trip 1. Therefore, 18 Apostilles left to Tallahassee on Thursday and arrived there on Friday in order to be Apostilled. There was also the request of redoing some court documents (Warranty Deed) because the one we had submitted before, the notary seal expired 3 weeks ago. Therefore, 2 new certified copies had to ordered. Once we receive them, we will have to send it to Tallahassee to be re-certified. With God's help we will have to have all the paperwork ready by the time we leave, which is a great thing, because the more ready we are in terms of paperwork, the sooner our court date will be.



Ok let me walk you through some of the things we will have to do while we are in Russia in terms of our itinerary. After we formally decide to adopt our little girl, we will have to go through a series of medical examinations. We have to go thru seven different medical specialists while in Russia. We also have to go before a Notary to formally petition to adopt her. After a whole bunch of other stuff, we have to go before the judge so she could give us a court date. After we receive a court date Mauri and I will fly back to the states and then we will have to start the travel process all over again. We will have to reorder visas, yes, we have to request new visas for travel. This time instead of being a single entry tourist visa, it will a double entry business visa. We are all puzzled as to why we have to go through something like this because it will make more sense to only request a multiple entry business visa once. Unfortunately, our agency CHI do not allow us to to get a business visa from the first trip. They make us go throughout a more complicated and more expensive process. One thing that we have learned throughout this adoption is that you have to expect the unexpected.

We also have to get any paperwork ready that the Judge and/or the prosecutor decide that it might be needed for court. On the day of court, Mauri and I will go before a Russian Judge, Prosecutor, Baby house Director and Social Worker, CHI Interpreter and the CHI Coordinator. We have been told that the court hearings will take two days. On the first court date, all the mountains of paperwork that have been tuned in will be addressed, to make sure that we are not missing anything. The second court date will be dealing directly with Mauri and I. By the time we are done with our adoption, the Russian government will know absolutely everything there is to know about us!!!! We know most of this information is required in order to make sure that we are fit to be adoptive parents, but some things that they require we still do not understand why they request them, but we have to do whatever its requested from us in order to bring our baby home. Please continue to pray for us. Stay tuned....

JANUARY 2009 (CON'T)

WEEKS OF JANUARY 19th THROUGH JANUARY 23rd

We have GREAT NEWS!!!

Today Friday, January 23, 2009 @ 10:47am (est) we got the call..................... We are going to be the parents of a little girl!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are in shock!!!! to say the lease. For whatever reason, we thought it was going to be a boy. We even had names if it was a "he" and also names if it was a "she". Her Russian name is Antonina. She was born July 2008. We know that she was born at 36 weeks. a little bit premature. We are going to change her name to Maya Antonina Guillen Codina. Its a little bit long, but we love it. She will have daddy's initials (MAG).
Please pray for us. Pray that God will lead the way. We are taking a Leap of Faith..... We are in God's hands and we trust that God will assist us in making the best decision for us and for the child.
We should be traveling in the next 2 weeks. If we are approved, we should be leaving the US on February 7th arriving in Moscow, February 8th. We can't wait to travel to Russia to meet her. Our visit with her will be approximately on Monday, February 9th. I will post more when I know more. Until then...

JANUARY 2009

WEEK OF JANUARY 12th THROUGH JANUARY 18TH, 2009

Our friends, the "G's" are leaving to Tver, Russia today to attend court on Friday. Please keep them in your prayers. This will be the second part of their Adoption Journey. After they have a positive result with the court, they will have to wait for 10 days before the adoption becomes official. This is another regulation that Russia enforces. As for us, still no news, we are praying and praying that our Coordinator, Pam will call us with the good news. I will post more when I have more information. Until then....


WEEK OF JANUARY 5th THROUGH JANUARY 11th, 2009

!!!!HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES!!!

We pray that the beginning of this year finds everybody well. We are so thankful for all your support throughout the past 2 years since we started our adoption journey... Yes, you read right, we decided to adopt 2 years ago and we submitted the application to adopt on January 7th, 2007. We are very positive that we are going to receive the CALL sometime next week. Our good friends the "G's" have their cour date next week. We wish them the best of luck and many many blessings. Please pray so they can have a positive court so they can bring baby "S" home soon :0).

On the other hand, we are back to work.... it has been rough after having 2 beautiful weeks off. It is amazing how fast we can get used to the "good life" :0). Well, we had to have so many documents updated this week. Thanks God we were able to send them to be Apostilled and they will arriving today. So far, we have everything ready that we will need to travel in the next few weeks. We will have to wait and see what Tver is going to request. So far, I calculate that our entire adoption file weights about 20 pounds (I am not kidding). There is sooo much paperwork.... Please keep us in your prayers..... Take care....

DECEMBER 2008 (CON'T)

WEEK OF DECEMBER 8th THROUGH DECEMBER 31st, 2008

I am sorry I have not been able to write during the past few weeks. I have been really really busy. First of all, let me tell you that we still have no news in regards to our little one. Unfortunately, we were caught up with the Holidays and CHI closed their offices from December 20th throughout January 5th, 2009, and the Ministry of Education in Tver, along with the CHI staff in Russia closed down from December 20th throughout January 12, 2009. The CHI Tver staff enjoyed a very long holiday season, ours and theirs. So, we have had no choice but to wait for good news.

On a different note, we had a nice and calm 2 week winter break. Mauri requested 2 weeks vacation during the last 2 weeks in January so he could spend it with me during my 2 weeks off. We are very fortunately that were I work we are given 2 weeks during the winter break. Well 2 days we started our Holiday, Mauri fell from the ladder while putting upd the Christmas lights from the roof. Thanks to God he is ok, but he had 2 fractured ribs and he was told that he needed to rest. We thought that we were going to have to cancel our Christmas trip to Chicago, since we were leaving on the 20th and returning on the 29th. Our plan was to spend Christmas with my sister Claudia, her husband Donnie, and Buddy (their 9 month old dog). After talking with Mauri for 2 days to see how he was responding to the pain medication and the care I was giving him, he decided not to cancel our trip and we flew to Chicago on the 20th.

Well, I can tell you that we had a really nice time with my sister, Donnie and Buddy. Since we did not have an agenda of things to do and see, we basically slept, drank hot cocoa during the first 5 days, while Mauri rested, and me too :0). I think that the last 4 days we used to go out to the movies, we went to Chicago twice, and we also went to Navy Pier. It was really really nice. It was soooo cold during our visit. We reached -6 degrees one day. That has been the coldest I have ever encountered. I think God was preparing for our upcoming trip to Russia. We visited a small town, Elmherst and we fell in love with it. Ohh my God, I loved the houses there, they were like little castles, so beautiful..... I wish we could move there.... When it was time to come back, I did not want to leave my sister, I wanted to stay there with her :0(
I pray that we see them again very very soon.

We came back around 2:00 in the morning Monday. We were really exhausted. We were scheduled to do so many things for the adoption on Tuesday the 30th that we couldn't postpone it. So there we went, we did everything we were supposed to do, it was a busy, but productive day :0)

The afternoon of the 30th, we found out that our niece Susie, was not feeling very well and her mommy was going to take to the doctor that afternoon. Well, it ended up that Susie had to be taken to the hospital because she had symptoms of appendicitis and they left her in observation overnight. In the morning of the 31st, I found out that she had to undergo an emergency laparoscopic appendectomy. Just the name sounds scary. Everything happened so fast after that. Thanks God, Susie's surgery went very well (according to the doctors). The sad thing was that she had to spend New Years in the hospital with a lot pain, along with her Mom and Dad. The important thing was she came out ok. There will many more New Years to celebrate with her family :0).

We spent New Years at home with my sister Ana Maria, her husband Nelson, their 2 puppies (Chiron and Luna) and my Mom, but we did not feel that we wanted to go to any parties. We were just happy that we were able to end the year on a positive note. We are so thankful for everything God and our Guardian angels have done for us. They always look after us and take care of us. We look forward to starting 2009 with getting the call that there is a baby available for us to become his/her parents. We have soo much love to give our child that we cannot wait to bring him/her home. Until the next post.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!