Saturday 28 October 2006
There is quite a storm at the moment (rain, wind.....), I have lost power a few times today.
No news from our agency yet....hopefully they will call this week.
It was my birthday on Thursday......my mother made a delicious dinner at her house and all the family was there. I received some lovely gifts......my sister Suzanne gave me a white feather Christmas tree (I have always wanted one!), and a sailboat beaded bracelet from Angela Moore. My sister Pam and my parents gave me a very generous gift as well! Scott gave me an accessory for our new car. I received two books from Scotts family in Australia as well. I had dinner on Friday with 3 friends from work (Donna, Cece and Laurie) and they gave me a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. We have also received our first "baby" gift! My friend Jody gave me an adorable stuffed elephant that has many hidden surprises!
While we wait work on the house continues. Scott is in the process of building a small cedar closet in our attic to store our off season clothes. Once that is complete my shoe tree will have to be relocated from the spare bedroom (soon to be baby room) to upstairs.
While waiting, I have been following Lauren and Marias progress as well as reading Jen's "lists" - she had very detailed lists which she shares on her blog from "what to ask the adoption director" to what to bring for travel.
Check back next week for more news!

18 October 2006
Today we received word that our agency has received their NGO! For those of you that don't what NGO is.....it stands for non-governmental organization. Starting this year Russia requires that all agencies working in Russia are accredited (which ours is) and has NGO status (Oct 18th is the "official" deadline). Fortunately for us, ours now has both!
We are still waiting to hear from our agency on news of a referral, but we are optomistic that they will be calling soon!
Happy Birthday to Lauren!
Have a great week!

Congratulations to Lauren and Marco!
They received a referral for a little girl in Kazan today! If you haven't already, check out their blog listed in my blogroll.
Hope to see more people making travel plans soon!

Good Evening,
After waiting for what seemed to be eternity we spoke with our agency. Unfortunately, the little boy we hoping to adopt has some problems with his paperwork and is not eligible for adoption at this time. As you can imagine we are extremely disappointed as we grew quite attached to the little guy. So now we are back to waiting for a referral for another child, however, we are confident that our agency will have another child for us soon. Thanks so much to everyone who has sent us words of encouragement - we realize that many of you (fellow bloggers) have been or are in the same place.
On the homefront, we spent one day last weekend visiting a nearby Ikea (Stoughton, MA) - it was our first time there and maybe the weekend wasn't such a great time to go - the place was packed! We were looking for shelving units for our upstairs loft area in an effort to get organized. We came home with a few large boxes of shelving units that are yet to be assembled. Scott is leaving for Tortola (BVI) in two weeks on business so hopefully they will be completed before he leaves so I have something to keep me occupied while he is gone.
I look forward to hearing of more people receiving referrals or making travel plans!
Have a great week!
Lisa

Welcome!
G'day and welcome to our blog. First, I want to thank Lauren for creating this lovely blog.
Just a little background information.....my name is Lisa and my husband Scott and I are in the process of adopting a child from Moscow. We live in Newport, RI where I work as a Registered Dietitian and Scott, who is Australian, is a sailboat captain. We originally planned to adopt from the Ukraine, where our friends Jody and Steve adopted their child. However, adoptions closed there and we put our focus on Russia.
We had all of our paperwork completed by mid August and were in "hurry up and wait mode" until two weeks ago when we received a phone call from our agency that we have a referral for a little boy who will be two next month. We received photos and some medical info, which sent to a physican who specializes in adoption. We accepted the referral and proceeded to make arrangements for trip #1. However, Thursday night we received a phone call from our agency that there is a "glitch" which might affect our travel plans and we should talk more on Tuesday. It is a holiday weekend, so, of course I am contemplating every possible "glitch". So, stay tuned and I will keep you informed as to when we will be travelling!

Just a test to see if I am doing this correctly!