Requests received; hoping commences

Our second batch of requests for our FBI background checks have been received - this time we used the FedEx service we should have used all along. My brain was simply too full the last time (we finished the paperwork the Thursday night before we left for Russia early Saturday) to have the idea occur to me. I'll follow up tomorrow and beg someone in customer service to quarterback the checks through in hopes that we can get them complete and stay on track for our Feb. 18 court date.

It looks like we more than likely will go for court, then immediately come home without the girls and spend the 10-day waiting period here at home. Then we'll turn around and go back, take custody and wait for their Russian passports in their new names, which they will need to leave the country. Then we'll route through Moscow and get their US passports, so that the second the plane wheels hit US soil they're also US citizens. We're not 100% certain yet that this is the gameplan, but it's shaping up to appear so.

Not much else going on, which doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm taking bets on when the snow will melt - we have one drift to the top of our chain link fence.

We have a twin bed in the girls' room now, with a trundle. Here are some pics. The bed/s were my cousin, Lindsay's. We also have my cousin Nick's chest and bookshelf. At the very bottom is a pic of the bedding that will eventually be on the bed/s. There's actually more space at the foot of the bed than tbere appears!