Settling in at Home

I apologize for the delay in this post but things have been a bit crazy. We are back home in Thompsons Station. Nolen is getting used to being around his sister and his dogs. Sadie is also having an adjustment period. The first week we were home, Nana stayed and helped out. I don't think I could have done it without her. Nolen likes to wake up early, around 4:00 am. It was nice having an extra set of hands during this time. He loves to play outside on the swing set with his sister. Nolen and Sadie both still have a lot of adjusting to do but we are making progress. I am learning to pick my battles, especially with Sadie. I recently lost one at the Disney store over a Tinkebell doll.

The big accomplishment has been with sleep. He is now sleeping in his baby bed for nap and nighttime. Yeah. This means Chad and I are sleeping much better also. He will now stand in the bathtub without screaming. He still won't sit down. Nolen will also let the dogs in the same room as him. When he first met his pets he was terrified of them.

It feels amazing to be back at home. On Wednesday we went to our small group with our church. We are looking forward to attending church at the new building on Sunday. It has been a long time since we have been to church and it is great to see everyone again.

We had an amazing welcome party at the airport. I think there were 42 people there with signs and balloons. It was wonderful and meant a lot to us. Thank you again for the support.

Part of the journey is over but another part is just beginning.

More Glory to our God

For those of you who did not have to take time off of what you were doing yesterday to help us I will tell the story. To those of you who helped thank you with all my heart. Wednesday afternoon we arrived in Moscow. Nolen did really well on the plane. He had 3 dirty diapers for his mother and father to change in that tiny bathroom on the airplane for only a two hour plane trip. He was happy as long as he had a cracker to eat. The only time he cried was during landing. During that time he kept pawing at his ears and did not like being strapped down. Getting off a plan into 21 degree weather will take your breath away if you aren't fully ready for it. It is cold here. There is snow on the ground and more is expected to fall on Friday.
Okay, so what happened. Once here, we started on more paperwork. Yes there is more paperwork (more than buying a house). We realized through a confusion with our agency that we did not have our 2006 tax return. We had our 07 and 08 but still needed our 06. Fortunately it being evening in Moscow, it was morning in Memphis. The hard copy of our tax return was in Nashville. There was just enough time for someone to go to our house and back inorder to email us a scan of the document. Chad's dad had a copy of our taxes saved on an old zip disk located in Memphis. The problem with this, nobody still has a zip drive. Both of our mothers started to try to find a zip drive. They went to most peoples work and called the majority of all family and IT people we knew. After two hours of this the Lipfords (Holly's parents) started the trip to Nashville. I knew they could find it at our house but if you know me you know how unorganized I am. All I could tell them was that it was upstairs somewhere. While they started to drive, Chad's mom continued working on the zip drive. She found an old friend at the University of Memphis that said he could do it. He was able to get the document off the disk for us and we received it by email. It only took 3-4 hours and we were back on track to come home. So thank you to all that helped or tried in the process.
While waiting to hear about the document we had a wonderful dinner at McDonalds. If you know me very well you would know that McDonalds is not somewhere I would typically visit, not unless they start serving organic food. But last night, McDonalds was wonderful. It was the busiest two story McDonalds I have ever seen and we had to wait for a table. Nolen did just as Sadie would do. He did not want to eat much. All he wanted to do was dip his french fries in ketchup and eat lick the ketchup off them.
This will truely be our last post from Russia. We had to purchase 24 hours of internet to deal with our problem yesterday. At $30.00 a day we will just wait and talk to you when we get home.
The lesson we have learned in this is to trust God. He can do anything. Like get a 3 year old document around the world in a few hours. To God be the glory for this could not have been done without him

Our Last Day in Astrakhan

Today was our last full day in Astrakhan. Tomorrow we will be flying to Moscow. Our flight leaves at 12:30 pm. We spent the day packing and bought a few last minute souveniers. We can't go outside for very long because it is cold. We have heard that it is already snowing in Moscow. I would post pictures of what a hotel room looks like after you have lived there for 4 weeks but I am too embarassed. I think Nolen is getting a little stir crazy. We are running out of ways to entertain him and haven't been able to go on many walks. He loves to watch a movie we brought about farm animals. We have seen it at least twice a day for the past week.
We are looking forward to making it one step closer to home. Moscow has some familiar places to eat such as McDonalds and TGI Fridays. We are ready for some familiar food. I most likely will not be posting after this because we are not sure what internet we will have there. Internet there is expensive and we should be busy. While there we will have an interview and a doctors appointment at the US embassy. After that Nolen will receive his immigrant visa into America.
Please keep us in your thoughs and prayers as we are traveling half way around the world with a toddler. Also pray for the other people on the plane with us.
Thank you for thinking of us and following us on this amazing adventure. The journey is just beginning.

"For this child I prayed, and God has granted me what I asked" I Samuel 1:27

Our Arrival Plans

Hey everyone we have been doing good lately. Nolen is adjusting much better. He only cries for about 15 minutes before falling to sleep. This is a great improvement. We have learned not to mess with him when he is eating. He loves physical attention.

The light switches in the hotel are very low to the ground. For some reason Chad showed him how they work. He has spent the better half of the evening turning the lights on and off. He finds it to be very entertaining. After dinner tonight we bought some ice cream. The boy loves vanilla ice cream.

We should be arriving in Memphis on Saturday, November 7th. We are on the Memphis to Amsterdam flight, Northwest #257. We are expected to arrive at 5:20 pm and it should take us approximately 30 minutes to go through customs. When Nolen first touches U.S. soil he will become an American citizen, kinda a big deal. We would love to have anyone that wants to come meet us at the airport. We plan to stay at my parents in Memphis until Monday afternoon, then we will be returning to Nashville.

For those of you that have been asking: He wears a size 12 months or 12 to 18 months. He wears a size 2 in diapers.