A court date!

Well, we got some great news today. Our court date is tomorrow afternoon at 3:30PM! It appears everyone worked to make our court date happen sooner than later. We should be back home on Friday, worn out but home. We will be sad to leave the boys and our new friends the Woods, but we’ve got to get some things taken care of at home so our boys can have a great new room to sleep and play in. And we probably should do our taxes so we do not incur the wrath of the IRS!

Our first visit found Aidan not having a good day and Liam having a fantastic day. I went to get Aidan who cried as he left his group this morning. Liam saw Terri come in from the back of the room, smiled and crawled at breakneck speeds to the edge of his play area and pulled himself up and smiled. Once we got Aidan to the room he whined a little more and then Terri coaxed him into yogurt and some playtime. Liam was in the exersaucer, just smiling the entire time. Mama played with flash cards with Aidan and showed him the family photo book, which he seemed to enjoy. I swung him upside down and then tossed him in the air to which he giggled enthusiastically. He decided he wanted to leave a little early today. When he realized he had no control over this he became quite upset and cried and tried to break free of our comforting hugs. But when Anya came to take him back he did calm down and give us hugs. Liam was just the happiest kid the entire time. He didn’t look sick today although he still had a cough. But he was just incredibly happy. He was giving mama some nice smiles—making mama feel better since she doesn’t think he smiles at her a lot. He was really cute when he tore out a page from the coloring book and just scooted around with it. He was so pleased with himself and his recent page carnage.

We had lunch with the Woods, who we must congratulate as their court date went well and are now officially the proud parents of Maksim. They are going to stay the entire time—hopefully they will not succumb to ”space madness”. (Ren and Stimpy yet again) We plan on having dinner at a Georgian (no, not Atlanta) restaurant tomorrow night after our court appearance. They supposedly have great shashlik (kabobs) there. After lunch we went to a photo shop and dropped off our flash card to get the photos of the two weeks of bonding printed. We will need these in court to show that we did spend the required two weeks with the children. The boy’s caregivers want copies of one of the pictures so we will need to have some more printed. We did give Anya a copy of one of the photos. And since I looked pretty good in it, well, how could I say no. Terri and the boys seemed to look good too.

Before we went back to the baby house we went over to the travel agent to secure our tickets to Almaty, then it was off to see the kids. The afternoon visit was much the same (as far as attitudes go) as the morning. Terri went to get Aidan hoping that a parent change would change his disposition. Sorry—thanks for playing the game! He obviously was going to hold on to this for a while. Liam was still happy. He was at the table when he saw me come in and just started smiling. He wanted to go mobile again in the exersaucer. Terri caught Aidan’s attention by actually making something with the Legos instead of Aidan’s favorite game of scattering them all over creation. Terri needs to make sure she stays away from the engineering field as some of her creations seemed quite unstable. But engineering skills aside, they had fun together. This time he appeared more reluctant to go at the end of our visit. Liam wanted to be in the middle of everything, attempting to terrorize Terri’s precarious Lego tower. We showed both boys the pictures of home, trying to get a head start on letting them know we will be back for them. Obviously, Liam is not going to understand this and Aidan may not completely get it either but it was comforting for Terri and I to show them the family that awaits them.

After our visit we went to KazPost to try to get some more stamps (a certain series that we really liked) only to find out that they were out. Anya was amused when I asked if I could get one of the International stickers that I see on the cars here—you know, the oval stickers with the national identity, in this case, KZ. We went to this auto parts store that was hardly bigger than a closet. Terri was laughing the entire time. I guess it was kinda amusing: a Kazakh, a Russian woman who looked really out of place in this environment and two American tourists. I bought a handful of these stickers and another type of sticker and I asked the clerk if I could get a carburetor for a ’68 Camaro. Fortunately for him he did not understand my bad joke. We next asked to go to the supermarket since our time in Ust was quickly coming to an end we needed a few more items to take back home. We picked up a hand basket and went to the vodka aisle. Supposedly you can bring back a liter of alcohol per person. Amusingly, the kids are allowed to bring one liter each with them when we come back with them. Terri and I picked up these small bottles of vodka to take back to friends. We selected local varieties with great looking labels. We have no clue if they are any good but if nothing else they are great souvenirs. And they are cheap. All vodka here is cheap. Stuff you pay $40-$50 at home you can get for just a few dollars. It is also interesting that they have the hard liquors in the supermarket—not something you find in Texas. We also loaded up on these bags of what I can only call croutons, but they aren’t used on salads. They are more of a snack item that is often eaten while drinking beer. So to recap so far; our hand basket has four bottles of vodka and about a billion mini bags of faux croutons. And right before we hit the checkout line Terri found these small packets of coffee, obviously for the hangover caused by the vodka. So Anya was laughing at us in the checkout line and the lady ringing us up looked at us like we were idiots. I told Anya I was going to let my friends know that the items we just bought were part of a traditional Russian meal. Then it was back to the apartment to practice our court speeches and pack for our return home. Everything is moving quickly now.

Note: For whatever reason, we have not been able to upload and photos for the past two days!!