[votemom]

welllllllllllll.................

after much prodding from a certain mike and a certain debi, i have decided to share our news.

many of you may remember our very.long.and.sad.saga to bring home our yuri and sasha. 3 years ago in july, we met two very precious little boys and signed papers to make them our own. the story is too long and ugly to re-tell, but the bottom line is that we lost both of them to an insane system.

fast forward to july, 2006: when we finally knew for sure that we would never, ever be sasha's parents, we closed the books on our adoption journey. we were done.

or so we thought.

in january, of this year, our agency told us about an available child. this child was a "she" and quite a bit younger than the boys we had waited for. we were dumbfounded. at 45 & 48, we declared ourselves way too old to have an 18 month old in the house. but we agreed to think about it.

after a month, we made the decision to get on the roller coaster again. i begged God to slam the door shut if this was not what He wanted for us. i just didn't think i could do it again.

so, we started the paper chase again the third week of february.

and, interestingly and ironically, one little girl morphed into two!

the first week of may, we flew to samara and met two very precious little misses, and signed commitment papers to be their parents.

we've been home about six weeks from that trip--- and this morning, while i was doing my grocery shopping, i got THE CALL!

we have a 7/4 court date!

this trip has gone so incredibly smoothly and so incredibly quickly - we are just dumbfounded and baffled. while our hearts continue to be so sad thinking of the "sons of our heart", in siberia... we are thrilled and excited to bring home anna and kate!

to all of you who have been so amazingly supportive these last couple of year, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

if you would have told me a year ago that i would be an old mom to two toddlers still in diapers, i would have laughed at you. but, here we go!

the "russia bedroom" now has two cribs, where two twin beds once were ready. all the boy clothes have been passed on and the closet and dresser drawers are full of girl clothes.

wow - i still can hardly believe it's happening.

we are adopting from the same orphanage as kimberly, and it looks like our paths will cross at least for a day or two in a couple of weeks - hooray!

thanks again to everyone for the emails, phone calls, and pm's. it's been so meaningful to me. (and it was especially fun to pick up my phone this morning and hear, "hi, it's mikeintexas!" i'm still smiling from that greeting!)