Ivanna's Last Night!!!!

Tonight will be Ivanna's last night in the orphanage tomorrow she becomes "an orphan no more".  Our translator has scheduled a driver to pick us up at 11 (not our normal driver) and he will take us to a spot right outside the city to meet up with her and our facilitator.  Then we are off to court to pick up our documents and then off to the orphanage to break out our daughter.  Tomorrow we officially become a family of five.

We are just so excited that right now it's another one of those times when it just doesn't seem real.  Tonight as we ate dinner I was thinking that it was most probably one of the very few times in our lives that we would ever eat dinner alone together again.  I didn't say anything I just thought about it and I thought about how wonderful that will be even though we both enjoy our alone time.  Baby girl still has to sleep and we can still have our quiet moments together.  Love is absolutely amazing and we can only hope that each of you get to experience the amazing love that we have for each other.

Please say prayers that all goes well tomorrow.  Tomorrow night we will be meeting up with Ivanna's biological parents and we are so very happy that they get to share in this joy.  I've said from the beginning it's bitter sweet.  They will ALWAYS have a special place in our hearts and in hers.  Without them we wouldn't have her at all.  They will be part of her life from here on after as well as they continue to watch her grow and thrive and live a happy, productive life.  It is just the beginning of a new life.  Continue to pray not only for our family but her biological family as well.  They have been so good and so gracious to us while we were here. Hopefully tomorrow night they will go with us to dinner we can walk right up the street to our favorite Italian Rest.  It will be baby girl's first experience and if she upsets someone then oh well, life is good.  I doubt it though we'll just have to play it all by ear.

We have her clothes all laid out and are even taking a change of clothes JUST IN CASE there is some type of accident :D.  We are taking chocolates and flowers to the baby house tomorrow.  We have previously taken diapers and realized that they were never used on Ivanna which was a little aggravating.  I made sure to get some big enough to fit her and they continued to put the small ones on her.  Tomorrow she's wearing big girl pull ups.  We'll work again on her being potty trained once we get home we probably won't give that too much time during our last days here. 

Our next blog will be to tell you all that she is in the apartment with us.

Love to all,
The Stratton Family