You would think since this is our third trip to Russia for this adoption we would be use to the travel itinerary.  This time around we changed it up a bit in order to expedite our return home.  So here is how it went down for the first three days.

Sunday we left KC at 7:00 AM and arrived in Atlanta around 10:00 we then left Atlanta at 6:00 PM (2-hours late) and arrived in Moscow at 1:00 PM (basically 24-hours after leaving our house)

Now typically when families have a brief stop over in Moscow (say 4-8 hours) they will check you into a hotel so that you can clean up and get a little rest.  Not this time – our driver informed us when he picked us up at the airport that he will be taking us to the train station. Oh and by the way your train leaves at 12:35 AM WHAT! That’s like 11-hours from now!  He explained that the Hotel would charge us a full rate if we just stay there for the day.

 I’m not sure why Caroline nor myself didn’t immediately object and request we be taken to the hotel..but in a weak moment we both just said “OK”.

So as promised he deliver us to the train station and found us some “comfortable” metal seats in the waiting area. As soon as we sat I down I thought for sure one of us would have a mental breakdown in the coming hours.  We were tired, it was hot and the seats were very uncomfortable.

We somehow manged to survive and jumped on our train at 12:35 AM.

We arrived in Cheboksary at 10:00 AM on Tuesday morning.  Our driver and interpreter took us to the orphanage to pick up Christopher (1-1/2 drive).  Our coordinator went with another driver to Cheboksary to take care of paperwork.  6-hours later we met up at our drivers house for a quick meal and were then rushed back to the train station for our train ride back to Moscow. The temps were nearing 90+ degrees when we got on the train and then were informed our cabins don’t have air conditioning. We opened the window to our compartment but it did little to cool things off.  It wasn’t till about 9:00 that things started to cool off.

Oh and I should note, Christopher has been perfect the whole time – I mean PERFECT! He hasn’t cried or fussed one bit.

We all got a good night sleep on the train and rolled into Moscow on Wednesday at 7:00 AM.  Our driver took us to our hotel to get checked in and told us we need to leave in 45-minutes to head on over for Christopher’s medical exam. This was just enough time for us to get him cleaned up a bit and run across the street to buy some diapers.

We then headed over to the medical clinic.  Luckily we were in and out in about and hour. Finally we were back at our hotel at about 10:00 AM and were able to take our FIRST showers in over 3-days!

After that we all spent the afternoon napping and eating.

Tomorrow we head to the Embassy at 1:00 to get Christopher’s Visa after that we will head back to the hotel and we start packing up to head home the next morning.

I’ll probably post up tomorrow after we have our finished with the embassy.

(guest-posted by Caroline)

Well after a 3-year “pregnancy” (the time since we filed our adoption paperwork until now), a 27-hour “labor” (planes, trains and automobiles to get us to our region in Russia), and a 3-hour “delivery” (being grilled by the judge in court), we are now the parents of an adorable blonde-haired, blue-eyed two-year-old boy – Christopher. 

Since we chose not to spend the 10-day waiting period sitting in a hotel room in Russia staring at each other (we would only get to see Christopher once during that period), we are back in KC, frantically preparing for our new addition.

Next Sunday, we will repeat the “planes, trains and automobiles” part yet again.  The following Sunday, we will be bringing home our little treasure from Russia.

Then the Tour de Christopher will begin.  Stay tuned for a stop coming near you!

p.s.  We saw this sign from our train.  It basically says “It’s really not a good idea to jog in front of the train”.   For some reason this made us laugh hysterically.

Now that we are back in Moscow and have a day to kill.  We decided to venture out on our own and see if we can figure out the “Metro” subway and find our way to Red Square.

Thankfully Caroline payed attention in our Russian class and successfully navigated us to to our final destination.

It was raining off and on but that didn’t stop us from walking around the Kremlin and taking in the sights and having fun with our dueling cameras.

It is 9:35 am on Saturday, July 5th. We arrived at the Moscow train station at 7:00 am having left Cheboksary at 5:00 pm the previous day.

We had no problem sleeping for most of the train ride having endured a very stressful day in court.  While our coordinator did her best to prep us the night before court on what to expect, as all families that have been through this process will tell you, the process is never the same for each family and there will likely be some surprise questions that will no doubt take you off your game.

The big unknown going into court is how long it will take.  Depending on the judge it could take anywhere from 3 to 7 hours! We entered court at 9:00am Friday.  The courtroom was very large with 20-foot ceilings and a wall of windows to our right.  Even with this much natural light to courtroom seemed dark due to the fact the half of the fluorescent lights weren’t working. A fact that the judge did not appreciate. There appeared to be seating for nearly 100 people.  The judge arrived at 9:15.  He spoke in the beginning and basically outlined our rights and read our petition to adopt.  It was then my turn to stand up and give my speech…which amounted to a summary of who I am, where I work, who my family is, description of the time I spent with Sergei on our first trip and finally my request to the court that they approve our adoption of Sergei.

This is when the fun started…at this point the judge began his questioning of me…right off the bat he did not appreciate my short answers to his questions and instructed our interpreters to encourage me to go into greater detail when answering his questions.  Most of his questions centered around the dates and times that I visited the orphanage, details regarding the adoption process, etc. Then came the question that took me off my game…when had I been presented the interpreted version of Sergei’s medical report…this is when my brain locked up…my first response was that I had seen his medical report on our first visit…to which the judge replied “how could you have seen the medical report that was prepared in May when our first visit was in April. SHIT! Did I just say something wrong?  Then I realized he was talking about the medical report that was shown to us that morning by our coordinator…I still don’t know why at that point when I realized what report he was talking about that I stated I saw it the day BEFORE court.  It was apparent to him I was confused and he must have seemed satisfied and we moved on to other basic questions.  At that point he asked the prosecutor if she had any questions for me to which she replied “no” and I was instructed to be seated. So 45-minutes later I took my seat – GLADLY!

Now it was Caroline’s turn.  Like me she gave a speech very similar to me and then moved on to the questions.  This time the judge focused on how Caroline would raise the child and referred to recent cases in the US where adopted (Russian) children had been abused or killed by their parents – asking Caroline how she felt about that and how she could convince him that she would not do the same.  Caroline did her best to answer his question, but yet again it took several responses before he seemed satisfied.  After that the Prosecutor had numerous questions for Caroline regarding our finances and how long she planned on being a stay at home mom – she was then asked to be seated. I gave her a big pat on the back as I feel she did much better than I in her fielding of questions.

Caroline’s note:  I was so happy not to go first!  Thanks, sweetie! 

The orphanage director and social worker each gave a speech and supported our petition to adopt Sergei. After this the judge reviewed each of each our documents making comments as he went along.  After this the prosecutor made a speech in support of our petition.

Then again Caroline and I each had to stand and restate our desire for the court to support our petition to adopt Sergei.  It was at this point the judge stated he would return in 30-minutes with his decision.

We waited outside the courtroom and made small talk until it was time to return to the courtroom.  The judge reentered the courtroom and read his decision:

The Russian Federation approves the petition of Randall Scott Braley & Caroline Corrigan Braley to adopt Sergei!

So for us court only lasted three hours!  This was a huge surprise for our coordinator since she called the courts yesterday and another family who had gone into court with this judge at 9:00 and were still there at 4:00 – which is apparently the norm for this judge.

So why did we get so lucky?  Well our coordinator bumped into the judge on our 5:00 train and found out he was on his way to Moscow and then on to Egypt for vacation.  So he needed to wrap up our trial so that he could get home to pack. I can’t imagine having to be in court for 7-hours – by my impression the courts were more than thorough in their procedure and questioning us to determine if we were qualified to be parents for another child.

Now it was time to celebrate!  I will save that story for another post.

So in about one week we will return to Moscow and head back to Cheboksary to pick up Christopher and bring him home.

Note to Alex:  You now have approximately 2-weeks left of being an only child…you better take full advantage of it

It is Wednesday morning and Caroline and I just finished having breakfast in our hotel. We arrived in Moscow yesterday at the Sheremetyevo airport about 30 minutes early. This all seemed very familiar, as this was the same airport we flew into when we adopted Alex 4 years ago. It took us a good 30 minutes to get through passport control. After grabbing our luggage we met up with our driver who informed us he was also picking up two other families. One was a couple from Tulsa and the other was a lady and her daughter from Tennessee. Both were adopting out of the Moscow Region and were here for their third and final visit having elected not to stay during the 10-day waiting period.

After dropping the other families off at their hotel, the driver took us to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Sokoliniki. It is a very new hotel with an attached conference center.  We got settled into our room about 1:00 PM and by 1:30 the drapes were closed and we laid down for a much needed nap. A SIX-hour nap!

Once we were awake we decided to head across the street and pick up some bread, cheese and some drinks for our dinner, which we brought back to the hotel.  While the TV does offer some English TV, mostly CNN and BBC, we opted to watch a Russian movie.  Even though we couldn’t understand anything they were saying it was fun trying to figure out the basic story line – a woman whose future mother-in-law is trying to kill her b/c she doesn’t approve of her son being in love with her – but nobody believes her…layered into this is the fact that she found a dead body in the trunk of her car, she gets run over and ends up in the hospital then gets run off an icy road and is rescued by another older gentleman who she ultimately falls in love with…oh and did I mention she has the stereotypical “attractive girlfriend” that uses her looks to help her friend find the killer.  Unfortunately the movie abruptly ended (not sure why) and another show started. After exhausting all our TV options we called home to talk to mom and dad and see how things were going with Alex. Then it was back to bed for a good night sleep.

 Today we will be reviewing some of our paperwork in preparation for court on Friday and will head over for our physicals around 3:00 – after that we will need to kill some time since our train to Cheboksary doesn’t leave until midnight.  At this point we still don’t know if we need to check out of our hotel at 1:00 PM or if they will allow us to stay in our room until it is time to leave.

The next time I post I should have news about how court went on Friday.  Good-bye for now…

It was a very early morning…I can’t remember the last time I got up at 3:30 AM.  We got out of the house on time and dad dropped us off at the airport.

Well we made it to Atlanta after leaving KC 1-1/2 hours late.  Apparentley the flight crew needed their government regulated beauty sleep after getting into KC 3-hours late the night before. As of 1:30 Atlanta time we appear to be on-time for our departure to Moscow.

Hopefully the next time I post up we will be settled into our hotel room in Moscow.

We are once again going through the familiar routine of preparing to fly off to Russia.  We have a court date of July 4th.  We will be leaving KC on Monday morning and will arrive in Moscow on Tuesday.

We will spend a day in Moscow getting physicals and will then jump on the overnight train to Cheboksary.  We will get a chance to see Christopher on Thursday and from what we have heard we can expect court on Friday to be an all day ordeal.  Caroline & I have decided to not stay in the region for the the 10-day waiting period and are opting to fly back to the states to spend a week at home and then fly back to Russia to pick up Christopher.  This decision was based on the fact that it was unlikely that we would have custody of Christopher during those 10-days and we really didn’t want to be away from Alex for three weeks. So it looks like we are officially int he home stretch…

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 

To fully appreciate the day I had you must first realize a few things.

First, I put in my notice at work two weeks ago and tomorrow will be my last day at BWR.

Second, I found out on Tuesday that the tremendous pain I had been experiencing over the past week, which resulted in me spending most of Fathers Day weekend in bed under the influence of painkillers, was a result of a large kidney stone.  The CT scan showed that it was trapped at the entrance of the bladder.  The doc informed me that this is the constriction point in the plumbing system and wasn’t very optimistic that it would complete its journey from my body without the help of a “PROCEDURE”.

Third, any day now we could be getting a phone call that we need to be back in Russia for our adoption court date.

So back to the procedure.  Based on my research immediately following this outpatient procedure I will be in some pain for up to three days…no biggie…send me home with some painkillers and I’ll be good to go.  However, during this procedure they will place a stent between my kidney and bladder to help in the healing process.  This stint would not be removed until seven days after the procedure. Again all my Internet research showed that other people experience many days of pain after the removal of the stent. So all in all we are looking at nearly 10+ days before I will start feeling better.  This fact creates a significant problem should we get a call from our agency telling us we need to leave for Russia in 10 days. (worse case scenario – RIGHT?) Wrong!

After calling our adoption agency coordinator and informing her of my situation and telling her that should we get a call in the next 5-days for a court date we will have to decline and have them pic a later date.  Not 20-minutes after I spoke to her, she called me back to tell me that we in fact now have a court date for July 4th. CRAP! I informed her that won’t work and to inform them of this fact.

Here we have been working on this adoption for 3-years and it has to be postponed because of a kidney stone.

After I got off the phone I was a bit depressed…but at that point I thought to myself if I can pass this stone today we will be good to go and won’t have to push things back.  So I proceeded to consume large amounts of water, coffee and tea. At one point a co-worker found me at the sink in our break room slamming a large glass of water – to which he said “hey man did you just get done running up the stairs” to which I proudly replied “nope, I’m going to pass a kidney stone today come hell or high water”  Words cannot describe the look he gave me. So as I sat at my computer pushing on my bladder I started to feel some pain.  This could mean only one thing – the stone is on the move.  I knew from looking at the CT scan the stone was very close to the bladder and if I could get it into the bladder I would have no problem passing it today.

I immediately picked up the phone and called our agency to tell them not to reschedule our court date until I call them back later in the afternoon.

Sure enough over the next hour and a half I was able to pass my stone.

In a matter of hours I went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs.

So hear I sit today knowing that on July 4th, 2008 I will be in a Russian court putting the finishing touches on this process and officially becoming the father of Christopher Sergei Braley.