Looking back. Looking forward.

How do you explain this whole journey, from the day that you decided you wanted to stop with the hundreds and hundreds of dollars which seemed to be thrown away on fertility treatments which were not covered by health insurance, embarrassing and turning our love life into a biology experiement, from that moment that you didn't want to risk $10,000 on an invitro treatment which would only have about a 28 percent success rate for a couple our age and risk utter devastation of both the heart and bank account if it failed, the moment when you pretty much give up on having biological children and therefore children which will never look like you, never have your beautiful wife's features (and perhaps thankfully none of yours).

It was the moment when we decided we would invest our entire savings, all that we had saved and worked for, into a pair of children and a process which seemed to take forever -- though only 22 months -- and feels like it ended today, even though we know there is still some journey left.

We finally made it past all the highs and lows..
...the huge list of paperwork,
...the endless times we needed a notary,
... all the letters of recommendation,
...the two separate trips to be fingerprinted in both Syracuse and Auburn because the process took so long that the first clearances expired,
the months of research we did in selecting an agency and a region to adopt from.
...the health requirement procedure which changed three times during the process,
...the fact that twice during this process Russia put all agencies through a reaccreditation which hed upp the process for months (and our agency has not been reaccredited yet, and therefore we are adopting as independents)
the weekly phone calls from our agency rep in Seattle.
the day in March when we turned down a referral for a boy, because we had wanted a boy and girl and it cost us 5 more months of waiting.
...the fees, fees, fees, which at some point, you just can't think about, because you don't want to know and -- in the end -- it won't matter.
...the new job, and our worry that it would somehow adversely affect our adoption or set it back even longer ... so we didn't list our house until after our first trip to ensure our home address would remain the same in Russia (though it winds up costing us duplicate rents in the coming months).
the first referral we received for a girl, that we agonized over and cried over in a hotel room here in Siberia, before deciding to reject her.
...the second referral, which our doctor said had an above average risk for some type of fetal alcohol exposure due to her mother's drinking habits, and her low birth weight. We decided to take a chance on Yana, because of her huge increase in weight, and head circumference, and our visit with her in which she impressed us with her intelligence.
...the three schedule changes in booking our flights for our second trip, which cost us hundreds of dollars in change fees with the airlines.
...and the nerve-wrecking court date.

Today, as I write this, we have two beautiful children sleeping in their cribs in our hotel room upstairs.

Was it all worth it?

Yes it was.

But what a journey.

And what a new journey ahead.