Ahhhh...It's Good to be Home

Well, we made it back to the US with no travel problems! Praise the Lord for that! As far as our luggage - ended up it spent the week in Munich, Germany. It was delivered to the airport in Moscow Friday morning at 4am. Our flight home left at 7am. (three hours later) So, we checked it all "out" at customs (hassle)then walked right over and turned around to check it "in" at customs (hassle), put it on the plane and then left Russia. Besides the fact that Rob looks like a mountain man for not shaving the whole week and my hair-do was major spazy for lack of hair products, we are not too bad off!

Oh, I wish I could share some of our pictures of little chickie-po, but we can't until we've had our court date. They are kind of estimating we will go back to Russia for court the middle of September. Then, the next trips will fall close in behind those. They're still thinking we'll have her home by October.

Surprisingly, the weather was beautiful. I imagine Russia as cold and gloomy. But, it was sunny and about 70 degrees everyday. Perfect fall-ish weather. On our one free night we walked to "Red Square" and the Kremlin. It was about and hour walk away from our hotel. Part of the walk was in this, sort of, "art district". Very interesting. We saw three guys rapping in Russian and break-dancing, an odd looking girl who was dancing with strings and appeared to be a little drugged out, and my favorite - a old Russian woman with a monkey and a sign that said, "Monkey Photos Here".

We walked to the big red brick walls of the Kremlin and took pictures of the "Pokrovsky Cathedral" at Red Square. I'll post pictures soon.

But, man, it is so nice to be home! It just smells good. Nothing like the smell of home. I missed our kids so bad! We are so thankful for our parents and my sister for staying with them while we were gone. It was pretty much life as usual for the kids. School, football, gymnastics and dinner around the table. We are incredibly blessed.

It was so cute. When we got home last night Audrey walked around with the video camera watching the videos of her new little sister. She went to her room and laid on her tummy on her bed and watched it all three times! I made a very simple photo album for our little Ruskie-baby which thankfully I kept in my backpack so I was able to leave it with her. In one of the videos I am pointing to each person in our family and she is repeating me, "sestra" (Russian for sister), "Audrey"... Such a cutie pie! Of course all three of the kids loved hearing her talk in Russian!

Sorry I couldn't post more while we were in Russia. Between lack of WiFi access, little battery power and scarce time, it was impossible! Hopefully the next trip will go a little more smoothly. Rob and I just kept reminding each other while we were there that it was not a vacation. It was a "business trip". Praise the Lord we accomplished what we set out to do. We got to meet our new little girl and the court paperwork is moving forward. Good deal!