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Couple makes ‘A Loving Choice’ to adopt  by Chris West Public Relations For one MUSC couple, an eight-month commitment and two trips to Russia have yielded what they dreamed of most—a family. “We had talked about adoption ever since we got married,” said Kathy Miles, program coordinator for the South Carolina Geriatric Education Center. “It was in the last year that we really made the decision to go through with it.” It was this decision that moved them closer to creating a complete family through adoption. With help from A Loving Choice International (ALCI), Miles and her husband, Howard, a retired Navy master chief, began the process of finding and adopting two young children from Russia. “My father is from Lithuania and we found A Loving Choice International which specializes in international adoptions, especially from Russia and Latvia,” Miles said. “So we went to our first meeting in September and received our referral the following month. We also found that the adoption process was easier through Russia.” Soon after the Mileses were visited by a social worker who conducted a home study of the couple. What followed was the heavy load of paperwork for Immigration and Naturalization Services. “Prior to this I had no fingerprints on record, so throughout the whole process I ended up being fingerprinted three times,” Miles confessed. With all bases covered on the American end of things, the eager couple found themselves jetting to Russia. And in what could have been a difficult situation, A Loving Choice came through again, providing a translator/liaison to ease the language barrier and helping  with the rest of the adoption process in Russia. Enter Val and Regina. Two and three year-olds respectively, the blond-haired, blue-eyed siblings were being cared for in a baby house in Pskov, which is the equivalent of an American orphanage. The children were matched to the Mileses after consideration and evaluation of the couple’s questionnaire outlining what type of children they were interested in adopting. “Val and Regina were clearly well cared for and in good health when we went to see them,” she said. “They had obviously received good medical care prior to our visit.” Finally the new family went to the American embassy to acquire passports and visas for the children, allowing them to leave the country with their new parents. “The adjustment has gone well so far,” Miles said of her two new children. “Their first English words were car, apple and most importantly mommy and daddy. What lies ahead is simply working on their speech and English. “What this means to Howard and me is that we now have a family,” she said. “It has truly been a wonderful journey. The hardest part of the whole process was having to say good-bye to the 98 other children in the baby home. Every child deserves a good home.”