Meeting our Girls!!

Yesterday - Thursday 24 July 2008

It was an incredible day. It hard to even to put into words all the emotions that I have felt today. Our girls are beautiful, Victoria was very afraid at first, but after a short while she relaxed. Anastasia was much more brave and interacted with us more quickly. Victoria is much like Annie - particular, determined and a little mother hen. Anastasia is more relaxed and laid back. She was also very tired and almost fell asleep on the bed. We have learned that Victoria and Anastasia are their given birth names. We will likely use these as their middle names. In the orphanage - they are called Vika and Nastya -

Victoria (Norah) aka Vika

Anastasia - aka Nastya

Quick update from today - Friday 7.25.08 9 pm

We also were able to visit them today and they warmed up to us nicely. We played bubbles, with a beach ball and did lots of drinking from water bottles. They loved to carry around our Russian/English phrase books and in fact cried when we had to take them away. The orphanage is about 20 miles out of town - so getting there is no easy task - we have to rely on our driver. We plan to visit daily - for 1-2 hours at a time.

One of our challenges so far has been getting to the internet - we don't have it in our apartment and internet cafes are not as common as we thought. We have found one now in our neighborhood and after navigating 15 kinds of russian keyboards - I think we finally have a system figured out.

Thanks to all for praying and please continue - we are in a paperwork maze - our translator/facilitator/guide/cook/legal advisor - has been treating us very well and is very skilled at navigating the roadblocks. We like her so much - we are sharing an apartment - she is really wonderful to have around - and we trust that all will continue to go (Ukrainian) smooth -

We miss you and love you all -

Sammy, Annie and David - you have two awesome little sisters that very soon will be joining our family - we think you are going to love them.