Almost time to come home....

Ugh.  We are all tired of being here.  This hotel room is like a shoebox and they are adamant about not letting us upgrade to a bigger room.  We can't understand that one at all.  Food is mediocre, but not much choice otherwise since it's a land of snow and ice.  Thank goodness they have ice cream though.  Dale and Gabe make midnight runs down to the restaurant for ice cream and Coca-Cola (see Gabe below).  I'm getting some reading/writing done for my dissertation.....so I guess that's a plus.  Jake has a fever and has been sleeping most of the day (teething?).
This trip has been sooooooo draining.  Nobody in Russia knows how to smile.  Or be pleasant.  Although the doctor that examined Jake the other day was really jovial and made a few jokes.  It was really nice.  We get to go to the American Embassy tomorrow......YAY!!!!!  After that, we'll probably go out to eat one last time with Ilya. Yes, I'm sure it will be American cuisine!!!  (We tried the Friday's here and it was actually good.  We despise the one in College Station.  Ilya told us that Friday's is THE place to go for really good American food.....hahaha)  We've had more than our fill of Russian cuisine.

Merry Christmas!!!!

This is the first day that we've had with no flying, driving through blizzards or waiting for someone or something.  A day to do nothing!  The only thing I wanted to do today was to be home, but we have a few more days to wait for that.  I hope that everyone had a nice Christmas.

This was the best I could do with Jake sitting still in his Santa hat.

Jake is a riot!!!  He cracks us (and himself) up constantly.  Very happy kid.

We took a stroll this afternoon for snowball fights and fresh air.  

Here we go again.......

Well, we're back in Stavropol after a LONG day and a half of traveling.  This time, we thoroughly enjoyed the flight from Houston to Moscow on Singapore Air.  They're AWESOME!  Food was really good, seats were comfy, and they spoiled Gabe!  I would highly recommend Singapore Air if you ever fly on one of their routes.
Moscow was really cold.  Massive amounts of snow falling all day.  Traffic was horrendous.  I'm pretty sure I was in the beginning stages of frostbite as we waited to board the second plane from Moscow to Stavropol last night.  (You have to take a shuttle bus to the tarmac, then wait to board the plane.........like herding cattle).  Anyway, Stavropol is a bit warmer.  We're only here until tomorrow though, then back to the Arctic.......with Jake!

Luggage is M.I.A........but we're home!!!

All work and no play.......

(Reference The Shining)  I've finally hit a breaking point with sitting in the airport.  Gabe and I took another walk and started having fun with crazy hairstyles.  The mullet is alive and well in NYC!!!!!!

Are we actually leaving this place???

Maybe.......
Playing Hangman and Tic Tac Toe on the iPads here in the terminal.  It's a pretty neat internet cafe.  Can you tell that I'm bored??  Oh....and the fire alarms just went off.  Twice.  I laugh in the face of danger!  Nothing would surprise me at this point.

Airport food

This part of JFK is a lot nicer than last night.  We chose to eat lunch at Bonfire (Todd English's place)......I had a delicious bleu cheese wedge type salad (see below).  This was the culinary highlight of my trip.  Although my vegetarian plane food was pretty good too (not kidding).  And I finally had some sort of appetite, so it was especially delicious.  So were Gabe's parmesan fries.  But I digress........
We're waiting on another delayed flight.

Flight delay update

After learning that our flight was canceled this afternoon, Dale stood in line for what seemed like 7 hours to hopefully get us lodging for the night from Delta.  No such luck.  Since it's Mother Nature's fault that our flight was canceled, we were on our own.  By this time, we're all exhausted from the Moscow flight,  my stomach has been queasy all day, head pounding, etc.   We now have to pay for a hotel room in Jamaica Queens, take a flight to Cincinnati tomorrow afternoon, then to Houston arriving home tomorrow night.   Really?  I thought the flight from Moscow was bad with all of the intoxicated Russian youths techno dancing and then fighting randomly through the flight.  The day only got worse.

Gabe's been a real trooper.  He made some new friends in the airport while we all waited for Delta to tell us NOTHING.  They even exchanged phone numbers!

At least next trip we're going non-stop both ways......

Russian protests

Here's a link to the events that took place right outside of our hotel in the Kremlin and Red Square.  Good thing we didn't venture out to buy souvenirs yesterday!!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101213/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_protests

Yes, that's our hotel in the background.

AARRRRRGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!

Well, of course our flight tonight was canceled. Why?  No idea.

Now we get to enjoy the ambience of beautiful JFK airport.  Jeez.  Could this trip get ANY LONGER???????????    Oh.....and I just realized that our clothes and toiletries are in the suitcases waiting somewhere in this airport for the flight home.  Great.  So we'll all probably be wearing an "I Love NY" t-shirts tomorrow.    

I'm off to find some Rolaids.

Home

We're finally headed back home........arriving in Houston late Sunday.  Talk to everyone soon!

He's officially our son!!!!

Whoo hoo!!!  Day 2 of court is finally over and the judge granted that Jake is officially OUR SON!  (and today wasn't that much easier than yesterday in front of the judge)  We still have to wait 10 days to pick him up, so we'll be coming home this weekend but returning to Russia on the 20th.....back to Texas for good on the 29th/30th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off of our shoulders.  Had a nice lunch in town to celebrate with Paulina.

Well, we're off for our last visit with Jake before we leave.  Gabe is coloring a cool picture to leave with Jake.  Back to Moscow tomorrow (and the bitterly cold weather.....it's been beautiful here in Stavropol).  Then home on Sunday.  Rockin' Rhodes here we come!

Court Day 1 - DONE

Whew.  That was a little intense.  This was apparently our tough day of questioning and tomorrow should be a bit easier.  Now, a few Advil and some Lipton with lemon.

Oh.....and apparently Gabe is pretty fluent in Russian.  He can translate any word that you give him into his version of Russian.  He's very serious about it too.  It's priceless!!

Real men wear pink

Jake is feeling a million times better today!  As soon as we walked in, he ran straight to Dale to be picked up with a huge grin on his face.  He was very cuddly and laughed a lot.  Loves playing chase with Gabe and Daddy.  Lots of smiles and hugs!

Court tomorrow

The first day of court is tomorrow (Thursday).  A little nervous since we hear that this is a pretty stern judge, but we've been told that she's happy with our paperwork (miracles never cease), so we'll see.   Friday is another day of court, but less of us talking and more of other people involved in the adoption on the Stavropol side of it talking.

Jake has the flu :(  

Second day visit

Well, this morning Jake wasn't feeling well.  He was in isolation with a fever.  Poor baby!  He looked like he really felt bad too.  I walked around with him and just as he was about to fall asleep on my shoulder, the vomit came.  Twice.  Needless to say, we may not get to visit again this afternoon.  :(

Menu??

The hotel has a restaurant and the food is great......but for some reason they don't have and English version of the menu like they did last trip.  So, the only thing I could order the first night was stroganoff (same in both languages).  We now have an interpreted version of things that we think we'll like.  I take this with us every time and point to what I want.  VERY handy.

Brothers!

Gabe finally met his new brother!

Americana in Moscow...then off to Stavropol

This afternoon, we really got daring and ate lunch at Hard Rock Moscow (haha).  It's exactly like any other one.  No surprise there.  Gabe slept the entire time, even with the deafening music.

  And we passed everyone's favorite coffee shop.  I was afraid to even see what the Moscow price for a cup of coffee was!!!!  

We are finally in Stavropol!  The plane ride here is pretty......umm.....different.  And on a Tu154.  (Reference current news events)  But we're here, the hotel is great (I love the food in this hotel...seriously), and we're ready to visit Jake!!!

SNOW DAY!!!!!

It snowed last night and Gabe is loving it!  We've been playing in the snow all day......  Ate lunch at Sbarro in the mall under Red Square.  Saw a military parade through Red Square and walked around watching people and taking pictures.

My face hurts.....

After being in the hotel room all day (sleeping mostly), we were getting a little stir crazy.  Gabe was swan diving into the pillows and we couldn't watch another movie.  

So we decided to take a midnight stroll to the little store across the street.  It was REALLY COLD....below zero.  My face hurt.  As you can see, the hotel is literally right across the street from Red Square.  Very pretty at night.

МАКДОНАЛДС

McDonalds.  Not my favorite, but familiar and affordable in Moscow.  Everything actually tastes better!

Medicals

We had our medicals yesterday at the American Medical Clinic in Moscow.  Funny.....we were the ONLY Americans there.  Eight doctors asking some quick questions and doing a few tests.  The psychiatrist asked us the usual questions and then asked if we kept guns in the house.  We both said "No", which is true.  The doctor had a smirk on his face and spoke quickly in Russian to his interpreter, who chuckled and looked at us and said "Are you sure you don't have any guns??  Not even for protection??"  The doctor said that we were unusual since we didn't.  Apparently, since we live in TEXAS, it's assumed that we own multiple firearms.  I guess we should have worn our cowboy boots and Carhartt jackets with big Texas hair and chewing tobacco to seem more authentic.

We miss Garrett!

Gabe drew a picture of his best buddy, Garrett.  

Pizza

After the traveling and medicals and lack of sleep, we finally made it back to the hotel room and enjoyed one of the best pizzas we've ever had!  Seriously.  From a place called Jack's that serves EVERYTHING from sushi to pizza to burgers to pierogis.  I was a little worried, but it was delicious!

Such a long trip....

So, we made it here safely.  Gabe enjoyed the plane rides.  I wish that Delta had the individual monitors at each seat for movie watching!  Oh well.  Dale had multiple pc's for our entertainment (of course).
Gabe earned his Delta wings and got to meet the pilot....very exciting!








We had lunch in Atlanta.....mmmmmmmm Nathan's!