Update

Our trip to Siberia at the end of January was really smooth. I won't bore you with the details (when things go well it makes for a very uninteresting story!), but the basics are that "Samuel" is really cute and amazingly sweet and felt like he was at home the moment he was in our arms. He cried whenever we left him, and ran to us on the last day of our visit. He actually looks a little bit like Uncle Rick. I would post a picture of him but I am not certain I should do that until he is legally adopted, since technically he is not our child yet. So instead here is a picture of one of our Siberian walks. Russian winters are beautiful!

We are hoping to go back to Russia for court on February 19. All of our paperwork on this end of things is ready, but there are still two key papers that need to come from Moscow that have not yet appeared. We will most likely not know until sometime next week whether or not we will be able to go when we hope to...if those papers don't come in time then we will be looking at a whole new set of rules and uncertainties because our agency loses accreditation on March 1. So, basically, we would really like to leave on February 19. Pray for this for us, please. Lots.