The Pearl of Siberia

And some more Russian 101...

Lake Baikal is the world's largest and deepest freshwater lake. It is located in Eastern Siberia in the region of Irkustsk. It has approximately 12,000 sq. miles of surface area! It has an average depth of 2442 ft; at its deepest point it is nearly 5387ft! To give you an idea of just how big this mammoth is it would take the largest rivers in the world (Volga, Don, Dneper, Yenisei, Ural and Ob, Ganges and Orinoko, Amazon, Thames, Secne, Oder) nearly one year to fill the lake's basin. It would take nearly 400 years for all the rivers, streams, and brooks now flowing into Lake Baikal to fill the lake! Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the Western Hemisphere and it is only 1949 ft!

It represents 20% of the world's reserves for fresh water and contains 80% of the fresh water for the former Soviet Union. It is home to over 1700 species--2/3 of which can only be found there. It is also one of the clearest lakes on the Earth. It usually freezes in January with the ice 2-3 ft thick. It will start to thaw in May.

How awesome is that? It almost makes me want to grab a train and head up there in the middle of a Siberian winter while we're there. I know that's not going to happen, but it sounds like it is an incredible sight doesn't it?

The Story About Baby Brother

Our case worker told me this week that she thought the couple in front of us would be getting their referral this week. So, we continue to wait. While we wait, I did some more shopping for our travels. Going with many people's advice from FRUA , I decided to purchase a power strip that we could use to plug in all our electronics at the same time. I ordered ours from East West International in Houston. You just tell them what country you will be using it in, and they send you the strip with the correct plug in. And all for $40 including shipping! By the way, those of you adopting from Eastern European countries, if you haven't perused the FRUA website and visited their chat boards, you can find a wealth of information there.

My 6 year old wrote a story this morning about her soon to be brother. She prefaced reading it to me by saying, "This is a very special story." So true Baby Girl!


(This is the picture she drew. You have an airplane going to Russia. The blue is the ocean we have to fly over, and the building is the orphanage. The sky is black because we have to fly at night.)






(This is her story titled Baby Brother: One day my mom and dad went to Russia. They yelled, "Baby Brother!" Then they took him home.)


Thank You Lord for these precious children you've given me! They never cease to amaze me!

Funnel of Favor

Man, three posts in one week! Yes, blog history is in the making right now! :)

Just a little hallelujah shout this morning. Our case worker emailed me yesterday evening and said they just got word that the psychiatric exam is no longer required in our region!!!!!!! Whoo Hooo! That was the one "big" thing left on our dossier in order for us to get a court date. With glee I will go ahead and mark through that item!

"Let no mercy and truth forsake you; Bind them around your neck, write them on the table of your heart, And so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and man." Proverbs 3:3-4

The Last Train Home

Every day for the past week Doug asks me the same question when he gets home in the afternoon, "Have we heard anything from our agency?" No Dear. Trust me, you'll be the first to know!

My girls decided to make their baby brother some pictures to decorate his wall with. I'll put them in a frame and hang them when we have his room ready. I am so thankful that they are so excited about adding a brother to our family--at least in theory right now!



I broke down, scratched the itch and did some shopping the other day for our little boy. Nothing too serious, and when I was in Kohl's the other day, I did manage to just give a sweeping glance at the glow of orange, blue, and green emitting from the infant boys 75% off clearance racks. Can clothes designers come up with anything other than those colors for boys????

Thanks to my sister, our little boy even has a few boy toys to play with. She graciously donated some her sons' baby toys, so now his dad doesn't need to be so concerned that he'll be playing with Barbie and making truck noises at the same time. I have serious doubts that he will be deficient in the area of "boy toys" anyway knowing the past history of his soon to be grandmas!


Our little boy now has these things in his repertoire...Sassy Poppin' Car (my girls both loved the one they had) and a new set of stacking cups as the ones the girls had are now filled with dirt for making mud pies.

This Taggie Lion hopefully will be left with our son at the orphanage on our first trip. My girls loved their taggie blankets, but this is the first "stuffed animal" taggie that I've seen. It's amazing the new stuff they've come out with since my girls were little!




This book was marked down to $4.99 at Hastings the other day. This is absolutely the cutest little book I think I've ever seen! Every page is interactive. It has a page with 4 tires that rotate and has a tire pressure gauge that you remove to check the tires. I has a page with the engine, and you pull tabs to check the oil. There is even a page that has a steering wheel that turns and a removable key to insert into the ignition. This one screams BOY! :)


This book is absolutely precious. I love the end of the book..."Little Fox was glad that he had a cozy home and good food and a mama who loved him very, very much. And he went to sleep dreaming about the day he came to the big woods...and first smelled his mama...and knew he was loved...and finally was home."
And finally was home...those words just hit me over the head when I read them. Our little boy is in this orphanage (a depot if you will) and waiting for the last train of his journey to take him home. Our home. The home God has designated for him to grow up and be loved in. The orphanage is simply a vehicle that God is using so we can "find" him and bring him home to rest. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11 Isn't that an awesome thought?

Psalm 91

(On a topic totally unrelated to today's post...Annsley currently has a walking stick crawling all over her. This child can't be from my genes!)

My oldest daughter has everything compartmentalized into black or white. There is no gray. (With Kennedi, the world is various shades of gray. Some days are darker than others--literally.) Annsley's structured world can be a good thing--and sometimes it's a "lighten up Girl! It'll be OK if we do it differently this time around". You show her how to do something the first time, and that's the way it will be done forever--so you better show her the way you want it done that first time. She gets all up in arms about people's handwriting for example. The printed block "Y" has no curves in it; when she began printing, my little then 4 year old would get so mad in the car coming home from church because her teacher wrote her name with the wrong "y". (Her teacher had used the cursive "y" in her name--oh the sacrilege!) She said to us as much as herself, "I'm gonna have to have a talk with her next Sunday. She better not write my "y" wrong again!" She is also great at keeping you accountable although I'm not always sure I fully appreciate my 6 year old in that respect. It is often a bit daunting.

Lately I have felt impressed to daily pray Psalm 91 over all three of my children. In order to make it tangible for them to know what mommy and daddy are doing, I bought a jar and marbles, and for each day we pray that, Doug and I each deposit one marble into our Psalm 91 jar. Every morning Annsley is checking to see if more marbles have been added. I did forget one morning and I experienced her "wrath." (Hands on hips, wrinkled up face, and that "Mommmm! You said you were going to say Psalm 91 every day!") Oh the pressure! Kennedi is just happy to get to put my marble into the jar for me. She now is telling me that she prayed Psalm 91 over daddy and me trying to get to add still another marble to the jar. (She actually says something like, "Mommy, I prayed Psalms ninety-one two eighty over you and daddy!") It is such a comforting scripture, especially when I think about our little boy spending his days in a government run orphanage so many miles away.

Psalm 91
1 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust.”

3 Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler[a]
And from the perilous pestilence.
4 He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
5 You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
6 Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

7 A thousand may fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall not come near you.
8 Only with your eyes shall you look,
And see the reward of the wicked.

9 Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
10 No evil shall befall you,
Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
11 For He shall give His angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
12 In their hands they shall bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
13 You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

14 “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him,
And show him My salvation."

Matryoshkas!

Just when you thought your crash course in Russian-ology was over...


Matryoshka dolls (pronounced MOT-TREE-OSH-KAH) are famous all over the world. They are the wooden nesting dolls. The first matryosha was made in 1890. The name stems from the Old Russian peasant female name Matryona, which was a popular among the peasants. Its Latin root means mother, and it is associated with the image of a mother of a big peasant family who was not only healthy but portly. Typically, the biggest doll is a woman and the inner pieces can be either gender. A baby is typically the smallest inner piece. They traditionally follow a theme--from dress to fairy tale characters to Soviet leaders.

The largest matryoshka contained 72 pieces. It cost approximately 3000 rubles in 1970. A popular Soviet car at that time cost 5000 rubles! I personally can't imagine a dolls costing as much as my car, but then again, I'm not Russian...

Here is a matryoshka of famous Soviet leaders:

Smile for the Birdy!

After our case worker had suggested last month that we start looking into visas, I decided this week to get proactive about it and go ahead and have our photos taken. The more time we have to get these visas processed, the cheaper, so I'm thinking that if I already have the photos ready to go, I can overnight the paperwork immediately when the time comes and maybe save on some expedited fees, which equates to several hundreds of dollars saved. (All in a perfect world, right?)

Let me back up and tell you about my photo for my passport. Knowing that my passport was going to be good for 10 years or so, I wanted a good--no great--picture in there. I mean, there is nothing worse than taking a horrible driver's license picture and having to look at it for the next four years. So, I actually put earrings on and applied makeup for my passport debut. And, not trying to toot my own horn, it is truly one of the best pictures I've had taken in about 5 years. (Then again, it doesn't take a lot to beat the stay at home mom look I've got going on...)

Fast forward to the passport photos to be used for our visas... I actually had the photos taken last week, but I went back to the photo place this morning to have them redo them. Doug came home with his earlier this week, and well, they look really good. I noticed that mine had about 3 glare spots on my face, the printer put some kind of ghastly herpes looking sore on my bottom lip, and I was smiling. I vaguely remember reading that these visa pictures were to have a neutral expression. The photo place gladly offer to redo them for me this morning. In an effort to get rid of the glare, they closed every blind in the place. When that didn't work, they hauled out a huge bill board and covered the front door. When that didn't work, they had me tilt my glasses forward on my face. I somehow managed to entangle the ear pieces in my hair to get them to stay that way long enough for the girl to snap the picture, and alas it was met with success. Of course, I remembered to keep my "neutral" face on.

I look like a convict getting her picture taken after being fingerprinted. The only things missing are the orange overalls and the yardstick to measure your height behind the picture. The picture that will be seen by the Russian Consulate and attached forever in my beautiful, still crackles when you open it passport book, looks likes a mug shot. Makeup? No. Earrings? No. Happy to be going to Russia look? No. I did slap on the lip gloss just minutes before taking the picture, but that effort could be akin to trying to kill a plague of locust with a fly swatter. Trust me when I say that did NOTHING to make my photo more aesthetic! The lady showed Annsley the digital picture before she printed it out and said, "I think your mom should have smiled."

Homage to Rachel Ray and the like

OK, I hate cooking. For whatever reason, I love to bake, and it's somehow not the same thing to me. I'm the black sheep of my family. Up until Annsley was born, Doug told me that in our 15 years of marriage I had only cooked him 20 different meals...probably so, Honey! Both of my grandmothers were awesome cooks, my mother was a great cook (I say was because it doesn't happen very often any more!), my sister Kristin actually knows how to fry a chicken...I missed that gene.

Since I hate cooking, the less I do of it the better. I learned after Kennedi was born that I could brown 2 packages of hamburger meat at one time and save the extra for next time; it didn't take any more effort to bake 12 chicken breasts and freeze the extra than it did to bake only 4 at a time. In an effort to better manage my time with the soon to be addition of #3, I decided to embark on my next leg of kitchen know how. I tried the cooking once a month method Saturday. I will have to say that I think I actually saved quite a bit of money because I picked all my recipes from the stuff that was on sale at the grocery store. However, my kitchen looked like something from Hee Haw's Ironing Board Lady's house. I (whether correctly or incorrectly) assumed the goal of the day was to get through it as fast as possible, so there was little cleanup. If my floor wasn't sticky, it was slippery from those pesky little mushrooms that got away. My trash sacks leaked; my stove looked like a tomato and rice bomb had exploded all over it. My sink was piled high with pots, pans, dishes, and measuring spoons. By the end of the day, I had 22 meals in the freezer (I miscalculated and was short the full 30 meals--go figure), and at 11:00 at night as I was scrubbing my stove, I was seriously wondering if it had been worth it. It was so bad that I even decided to clean the oven. Ask me in a few weeks if it was worth it, but as of today, I have serious doubts as to whether I'll ever by able to "woman up" enough to do that again. Maybe a week's worth will be more my style...

And continuing with my Julia Child Wanna Be Side...Annsley read a story the other week about a family making applesauce, so we made our applesauce. It was my first, it was very easy, and I will say it was a little bit of heaven--especially when it was still warm. Oh my!

In honor of our son's Russian heritage, I made stroganoff yesterday. I got this recipe from a Russian cookbook, Please to the Table. The recipe call for filet mignon, but I used some sort of roast on sale. Really, aren't they both cow? One's just cheaper cow??? I love, love, love my "American" version of beef stroganoff (yes, it's one of the 20 meals Doug has come to know so well...). As a result of last night's meal, I may slowly starve to death while in Russia. I suppose it would have been better if the lid of the dijon mustard hadn't fallen into the sauce, so let's just say it was a bit on the tangy side...Even allowing for that, I hope the people who actually live in that country have a better version of it. There was so much left over that I asked Doug if he wanted to take it to school for lunch. He said no.

Before we ate my stroganoff offering, Annsley, who is already incredibly spiritually sensitive and will be used mightily by God, said this prayer at the table, "Heavenly Father, tonight we are celebrating my baby brother in Russia. Thank you for giving us somebody to love." Yeah, I cried.

On a paperwork note, the Texas Medical Board is AWESOME! I understand from reading countless testimonies that often doctors are very reluctant to give adoptive parents a copy of their license for the dossier. Rather than risk rejection and frustration, I just ordered our pediatrician's license from TMB just to get a time frame of what to expect time wise and money wise because we'll need to have our psychiatrist's license as well when the time comes. I got the copies of the license mailed to me the next day, they notarized it, and billed me! This is the first time in anything adoption that we got something without first paying for it. Kuddos to the Texas Medical Board and your check is in the mail!