Our story....part 5

We got the referral of Roman Dmitriovich Zimin in December, 2007.  What a happy Christmas we had that year.

It appeared that our times of taking 'one-last-trip-without-children' had finally come to an end.

You know.  I think lots of couples do it.  Let's take one more vacation before children join our home.  We did, too.  Oh yes.  We did.

One summer we went to Colorado for a couple weeks.

One winter we went to Puerto Rico.  You know, we had to fly somewhere before we went to Russia, cause Jason had never been on an airplane.

This dude was hanging out in a McDonalds flower bed.

Another winter we went to Arizona to visit my grandparents.

Yet another summer we went to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan.

We did our fair share of traveling, I suppose.

Anyway.  That Christmas was fun.  We got a few little gifts for our son who lived overseas.  We prayed for his brother...as we were sure the second child would also be a boy....oops.  Should have been praying for his big sister.

January 28, we received a phone call telling us that we had a picture waiting in the inbox.  They told us it was an adorable little girl.  We couldn't believe it.  You simply don't get a girl if you don't specifically ask for one. 

She was pretty cute.  But she looked so sad.  Even to this day, when Addie sees her picture from back then, she hardly recognizes herself.  She used to call that girl Zhanna while calling recent pictures Addie. 

As fun as it was to have a picture of an adorable little girl hanging on our fridge, we didn't know for sure if she was to be our daughter for several days.

Supposedly, she had some health issues.  And we weren't sure that we were equipped to handle them.