And the winner is...

The complete list of winners is located here. Thanks to all of you who entered and donated to help Angelina come home!

An update on our progress:

Next week we are submitting our application and fees to begin our official home study. We are almost finished collecting the documents required for our dossier. We have been through this before and know what needs to be gotten. Actually, it needs to be RE-gotten because if a notary is close to expiring, Russia does not accept it or if the document was certified longer than a year ago they also won't accept it. Who knew marriage certificates expired? It is our goal to move this along as quickly as we can.

The kids are on spring break. Actually, Michael was on spring break for a week, then Masha was on for a week and next week our big girls get their spring break. Then mama and daddy get a break! Looks like daddy is going to need it most. Since we live in Minnesota and are up to our butts in snow, the girls have been inside a lot (rounds of colds and sniffles) and daddy has become their playground equipment.

but hey, it beats getting in front of Caelia and her Wii boxing!

A Birthday and Christmas!!

On December 23rd our Masha turned 4 years old. It's hard to believe it was almost exactly one years since our first trip to Moscow to get her right before her 3rd birthday, we are so glad to have her home and to be able to celebrate her birthdays with a family. She of course loved the cake and the singing that went along with it.

We ended up celebrating her birthday on Christmas since the whole family was over. The kids all had a great christmas....it's official our kids are just way to spoiled, we tried not to go overboard with gifts, but it seemed like everywhere we turned we found something they would love. The best part of course is Christmas morning after Santa Claus came, they managed to sleep in a bit so Mom and Dad were happy. The only bummer for me was losing our digital camera so I could only get a few shots with my phone so the pics didn't turn out as good as I hoped. Although the trip to visit Santa Claus pics turned out really good!



I had to throw in this last picture, it's the snowsuit Masha wears to school everyday. Alexey bought it for her before we left Russia, it's super cute and keeps her toasty warm.

Lots going on.....

We've had a busy last few months and the blog has been long neglected, so I am going to help Sheila out and put up a few posts. We got the kids school photos back a few months ago and think they all turned out great!!



Our first baby Michael is starting to look like a man, it's scary sometimes to realize he is quickly approaching adulthood. Caelia and Lera have both done awesome in school and are making a lot of progress on their speech this year and they are both really getting the fashion bug and love clothes shopping....yes I am scared!! Our little Mashinka loves preschool, she really likes to be around kids her size and her teachers say she is doing great and is very sociable. It's a shame we don't have someone in the family her age like Caelia has Lera.