1 Year Ago today

We met our sweet baby boy!!!!!!! Oh my gosh....somedays I can't believe it has been a year but most days I can't even imagine what our life used to be like without our sweet Matthew. We woke up that morning feeling refreshed after being up for 48+ hours and were so anxious and could not wait for the time to get here when our girls from our agency would be picking us up. Our drive to the Baby Home took about 1 hour. We took in the sights of Vladivostok as we drove thru the unbelievable amounts of traffic. We made one last turn and there it was the Baby Home where our little boy was waiting for his forever family. When we got there we were taken to a small office where the Baby Home Social Worker was waiting to meet with us. She was such a sweet lady and had lots of pictures of forever families spread around her office. She had our little boys file and was going over his information with us. Meanwhile, the Baby Home Doctor came in and began to go over the medical information with us. I (Mama) was trying to take as many notes as I could but it was so hard to concentrate. They told us that our little boy had woken up from his nap and they were getting him ready. A little while passed and all of a sudden there was a knock on the door, the door opened and there he was...this little person bundled up so warm all we could see was his little face which took one look at all these people in one room and started to scream. Tears poured down his face....I tried to keep in together but no sooner were tears pouring down my face as well. The caregiver kept telling him it was ok that this was his Mama and Papa which made the tears stream even harder. They handed him to me and he screamed even harder. They were able to calm him down and then gave him back to us. He was the most beautiful little boy we had ever seen. We just could not believe our eyes!! Everyone that was in the room with us then left and it was just the 3 of us. We sat him on the floor and tried to make him comfortable and showed him some of the toys we had brought for him. All he seemed to want was to be loved and hugged on....we were thrilled. We wanted nothing more than to just sit and love on this little angel. We had the opportunity to spend about 2 hours with him and then our visit was over. We knew we would have 3 more days with him but it was heart breaking to have to leave him behind. This was definately the best day of our entire lives!!!! Here are some pictures from our 1st trip.