And so today, I begin. I never thought that I would be a blogger; after all, who really wants to read my personal diary??? No offense, but there are a lot of boring blogs out there, so I will try to keep mine brief and to the point. The other adoption bloggers out there inspired me, so here I am today, writing my first entry. When we travel to Russia, it will be a wonderful way to communicate with all of you who are wondering where we are and what is happening. And of course, see pictures of Marat.

We have finally completed the dossier, the international package of documents required to adopt a child internationally. We accepted a referral for a 17 month old boy named Marat last month. He lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. We have 2 photos of him, a DVD that is about 4 minutes long and a growth chart. That's it. After looking through this tiny bit of information and having Dr. Jane Aronson (www.orphandoctor.com) review it as well, we decided this was our son. Well honestly, I knew it was our son when I opened the Fed Ex package and saw the pictures of him. But if you dont know this already, Scott and I are very cautious practical people. So ok, we sleep in huts (with indoor plumbing only, thank you very much) in central america and visit the gold souks in dubai for vacations, BUT, we wanted this referral to be "right" and thus, the delay in telling everybody. But I knew immediately...I really did.

And so, please come with us on our journey to Russia to bring our son Marat home.