Hooray!!

This is our last afternoon here in Petrozavodsk. We leave tonight on the 7:00 train to Moscow!! We are so excited. Tomorrow will be a big day. We will go to the Doctors office and then to the US embassy. Everything should work out there and we will have Wednesday to see some sights.

These past days have been nice. We walked downtown again on Saturday. It is amazing how much you can walk here and find new things. It is a city that is built for public transit and walking so it makes it nice. We were unable to find the ice cream, however, because of the cooler weather we were not sure we wanted any. Instead we found a little dessert cafe and had some cake and brownie type snacks. Sunday we went to church. It was nice. However, because we thought we had forgotten a diaper for Katya (we later found the one like I knew we had) we left after Sacrament Meeting.

Katya can fall asleep anywhere. She always falls asleep on Joseph’s shoulder while we are walking home from church. We can hope this lasts through the 11-hour flight from Moscow to Atlanta. We sure want her to sleep a lot. She continues to have issues with food. We are not sure how to help her get over that. Maybe it will just take time.

Daniel is very excited to be getting on the train tonight. He can’t wait to get to America. Today he said he is never coming back here and will always be in America. Also that he will never live at the orphanage with his group again. He is happy to be in a family now.
When we first took him from the orphanage he had dark circles around his eyes. We are unsure as to why. Those circles are pretty much gone now. Today he informed us that they never drank water at the orphanage. We had already figured out that they were quite dehydrated, but had not idea they didn’t get water, only milk, juice and tea. We wonder if that was part of the dark circles around his eyes.

We can’t wait to see you all. We are hoping that the kids continue to do well in their adjustment when we get home. We want to let everyone meet them as soon as possible.

Brigham and Kyler are working hard to prepare the house. They are moving all of the books to higher places, out of Katya’s reach. They are also moving the remotes. They are very excited for mom and dad to come home. Last night Kyler asked if we were bringing Daniel and Katya this time. She is very happy to have them part of our family.

Continue to check this post as we will give updates on our progress of being a family of 6. There may be a great story about our travels home, hopefully not, but you never know with 2 kids traveling for about 18 hours straight. I will also be posting photos from our trip early next week.

America here we come!