BringOurBabiesHome

I not sure if anyone still reads this, but I thought I would update. I am still reading another blog from a family who is now in China adopting little girl. Ok, so I will give a short overview of what has happened since our last post. We put the girls in pre-school shortly after their Grandparents left. That helped their English a lot. I highly recommend it especially to the stay at home mom who is in a house with kids speaking a different language all day! We had nice holidays with family. The biggest excitement for all of us was in February the family went to Disney World. Katie's parents celebrated their 40th anniversary this year so they along with the four of us and Katie's brothers family spent a week. Princess are a huge thing for little girls! The girls have also enjoyed swimming lessons. Easter weekend we celebrated both girls birthdays (they are a week apart) Katie's parents actually anniversary and had the girls baptized in our church we loved having close to 45 family and friends come to mark the special weekend. We have also been to the beach and the Atlanta Aquarium. The girls are back in school and really enjoying it. I am still getting used to the schedule as one is out at 10:30 and the other out at 2:25.
Thanks to everyone for all the support in this big change in our lives.

On Sunday Duane's parents arrived for their first chance to meet the girls. They drove from Montana(editors note: they brought bad weather).Both girls were very excited to meet the other Grandparents. Sorry for taking so long to post my focus has been to very active little girls.

We finally got around to posting this picture. Anna is 3 years old has the blonde with very short hair(thanks to the Baby Home). Olivia is 4 years old has the dark hair. We are very thankful for all the love and support of our family and friends during this journey.

Our 10 day waiting period has moved along; though not necessarily as fast as we would like.

So far this week we have seen a number of events take place:
1) Passed out or perhaps dead man on a trap being loaded into an ambulance
2) Lady riding her horse down the middle of the road in traffic (leading her pack mule)
3) Mother and her adult daughter fighting on the side of the canal, with the daughter at one point jumping into the water and at another point the daughter standing in the middle of the intersection in traffic yelling at the mother (This was followed by the daugher throwing items into the street and the mother walking into traffic to retrieve them).

On a note more related to what actually brought us here to Russia:
We have Sunday off and then as long as the paperwork is completed on time; we will bring the girls to our hotel at the beginning of the week.

Saturday was our day off with no visits, so we spent a bit of time exploring the city.

-found the Subway restaurant just over a 10 minute walk from the hotel and it was nice to have lunch from a place with a familiar menu.
-The Astrakhan Kremlin is a short walk from our hotel in a different direction and we have been there a couple of times, but yesterday afternoon we took a longer walk and circled the Kremlin. This walk included a visit to the swan pond, walk through Lenin square, and some time spent in the park across the street from the Kremlin bell tower.
- During our walks we passed the Love bridge a couple of times (near the hotel) and since it was a Saturday there were multiple wedding parties taking photos on the bridge each time. At one time there were 3 wedding parties all on the bridge at once.

Today we have the French Family who traveled with us on trip #1 and the Stewart Family who is here for their first trip. We will now have more people to talk to in English besides each other!