Da svidaniya,sweet girls

We saw the girls again today but our visit was cut short because of the cold. We were supposed to leave Tver, where our hotel is - it's the main city in the region - for Kashin, where the baby home is - at 8 a.m., get there around 10 and have until 12:30 or so to play. But, it's so cold here (negative 8 or something at last check) that the van door wouldn't latch and we were delayed until it would shut and stay shut. We didn't leave until nearly 10 and had about 1/2 hour or so at the baby home with the girls.Everyone's advice to us coming here was just to try to go with the flow and, really, that's all we can do!

We took every toy we'd brought with us today and we're glad; we didn't know this would be our last visit on this trip until we were getting ready to leave the baby home today. Tomorrow we get to go see a slate of Russian doctors (8!!!) and then Thursday or Friday will sign the official paperwork in court saying we'll accept the adoption and return when a court date is assigned. We likely won't get assigned a court date until after the Russian government offices reopen in mid-January after the holidays.

Today we did puzzles, played with stuffed fruit (Brian and I are trying to learn the Russian words for the ones they know and then teach them the English words for the ones they don't!) and they did some coloring - and I use that term loosely! A/L did let Brian hold her on his lap briefly (he'd been trying to see what size her clothing tag said and then she sat there for a few moments before wanting down) and I got some belly laughs out of N/H while holding her. It's all very surreal!

Now w'ere back in our hotel and it's freezing and we're bushed and even though it's only 5:30 we're going to stretch out on the bed and read for a bit. I might post more later, but I might fall asleep! But if I fall asleep I might wake up at midnight local time, so you just never know what I might do to keep myself occupied when we only have the BBC in English on the TV!!

Here are a couple of pics - we can't post of the girls until the adoption is finalized. The red building is our hotel, there's one frosty shot of the countryside (it's so cold the van windows ice up on the inside, even with the heat on, and we can't really see much out the windows!) and another of the baby home - it's the yellow building.

As the girls left today they waved to us and said Da Svidaniya, which means until later/until we meet again. Hopefully that phrase is one we can eliminate from all of our vocabularies soon!