Fireman and Policeman

Just hanging out being such big boys. The next one they are helping some poor injured soul on the floor. Brayden had the blood pressure cuff out and was checking things out!! Hunter was watching and helping some, they apparently pretend this stuff quite regular.

Brayden is 5 yrs old...

A little montage of pics from preschool today. This has been safety week so they have seen the firetruck, ambulance and then today the sherriffs car, tools etc. I stayed for school today as Brayden has been asking me to stay. He is still a little wary of firetrucks and ambulances etc, so he really wanted me to be there. I decided that since next year I really can't stay, being Kindergarten and all, I better stay this year. I must say our little boy is growing up. He really is quite the individual and quite the yacker too. The day began when he came upstairs and crawled in with us. I told him happy birthday and he was instantly WIDE awake!! We finally got up and got dressed and headed for breakfast. He opened one package at breakfast, one at lunch and one after his nap this afternoon. Thanks to the gifts that were mailed in we could spread them out alittle thru the day. He really had a great day.

Trip details are FINAL

At long last I now have the plane tickets in hand, the apt in Moscow is rented, the room in St Pete is arranged and we have made one trip to Casper for trip items. We are getting so excited to go now. Brayden goes along on this trip and he is super pumped about that. I know the long plane rides will take care of this "pumped" feeling he has now, but we are still thrilled to take him along. We leave from Casper on Dec 6th, fly to Denver, then on to Frankfurt, and to St Pete. We spend one night in St Pete and have our 8 dr medicals done on the 8th and transfer to Pskov that afternoon-evening. On the 9th we go visit Braxton, and on the 10th we have court. The 11th we will go see Braxton again and then transfer back to St Pete perhaps via train. There is a lady there Tamara that rents out rooms. We can rent a room from her for $50/night so we will stay in St Pete for that weekend, the next week and following weekend, special mtg is on the 20th. Then transfer back to Pskov on Monday and see Braxton, then on Wed we should have the paperwork final and be able to go get him. On thurs night we board the train in Pskov to transfer to Moscow. We arrive in Moscow Christmas eve day, arrive in our two bedroom apt we are sharing with Jill and Yuri, and take our paperwork to the US Embassy. Of course Fri, Sat and sun all is closed, so Monday we will go back to the Embassy for the visas, Tues we register at the Moscow Consulate, and Wed we head for home on the noon flight Moscow to Washington DC. Then on to Denver and back into Casper on the 10:30 p.m. flight. We have our hotel room in Casper reserved and so we will drive home on thurs. Thats the trip in a nutshell. Unless the judge would change the length of time we must stay...if she would take pity on Jill and Yuri and let them come home to spend Christmas with their family. But we were told to NOT plan on that happening at all. We are thrilled with the way things have worked out. We will have lots of wonderful opportunity to see all kinds of things. We will have "private" guided tours in St Pete at least one day and maybe a couple more depending on who is available to guide us!! :-) Jill will stay in Pskov while we are in St Pete, she feels she needs to be seeing more of Yuri. We will all be together in the apt in Moscow though so that will be great for the boys. We have been blessed with many ways of saving money so this time in Russia won't be as terribly expensive as it could have been. Our apt can be seen at http://go-russia.com/apartment/rentals/TVERSKAYA%20AREA%20MOSCOW/319 Thats it for the Braxton update. Brayden turns 5 on Wednesday. That is hard for me to wrap my head around, but it is happening. The party is over the weekend, so will post pics of that event. He will have treats with his classmates on Wed though, so that will be fun for him too. He is growing up toooo tooo fast for me. We are enjoying a beautiful day here today, won't last long, but its nice today. No golden leaves for us this year, just freezer burnt brown. The early snow really fixed that for us. Best get to work, much to do and holding job interviews this week for my job...exciting stuff let me tell you!! But it will be nice to begin working with someone new toward the end of the month and thru Nov. Time to get this office moved again!!

Snow Snow Snow in October

Snow came on Sunday to our little corner of the world. We got quite a bit and it is heavy wet snow, the kind that break trees off. It is still snowing now though just little tiny beads of snow. Brayden and Daddy built this snow man after mtg yest and this morning he had more snow over his head covering the hair. We had to shake off the little trees so they wouldn't break and had to shake them some more today. Its not terribly cold, we have puddles standing in the driveway that aren't iced up, so its ok, just snowy. We did have power out here yest as well and our phone service doesn't work so good in this weather. Have to see how that goes all winter long.

Funny Day

This morning I had to run to town and fix some stuff for a dance tonight so I don't have to go and do some other shopping etc. Anyway, I was in Walmart visiting with Brenda Leonhardt and Brayden got bored so he crawled under the cart and was "resting" down there with his head pillowed on his arms. Anyway, when we finished visiting I told Brayden to make sure his hands were not by the wheels and he could stay down there while I shopped. So off we went up and down aisles getting a few groceries. Anyway we went down the baking aisle and Brayden was being so good and quiet, this lady looked down at the bottom of my cart and said "um did you know there is little boy down there?" I looked at her and said "well yes..." She said "ok, just wanted to be sure." I went over one aisle and saw Brenda again and I said "would you believe that a lady just stopped me to be sure I knew there was a little boy down there." Brenda and I had a good laugh, I wanted to tell her NO, wonder who he might belong to. Did anyone out there know that Walmart has a special deal on little boys, every once in a while you go in and get a cart and there is one asleep on the bottom of the cart!! :-) If only it were that easy!! We went out to the parking lot and there was an older man out there finishing up putting his stuff away and he looked down and told Brayden he thought that must be quite the place to ride, so I told him what the lady asked me, he got quite a laugh out of it too.

Well I suppose its good to be concerned once in a while, but really that was just FUNNY!!

NEWS at last...

We heard yest, but waited till this morning to get our confirmation so it is SET IN STONE!! We have our court date at long last it is DEC 10. We leave on Dec 5th to get there on the 7th and undergo the necessary medical exams by their 8 dr panel. We plan to take Brayden with us this trip and just stay over there for the duration. We had hoped to be able to stay in the little town where the orphanage is, but that isn't possible. Back to the drawing board on what we will do for the waiting period. Have to see if they will give us cut rates to go out to the orphanage a couple times or if there are other options. WINTER IN RUSSIA CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? Well we certainly couldn't have asked for a better x-mas present than bringing our little boy home. We will start the new year out fresh as a complete set of 4.

Still no news...

We still have no news to report. Haven't even heard from the agency for a while now. We know there is a mtg scheduled between the coordinator and the judge on the 30th so we wait for that. I did speak with a friend and her situation is the same, her coordinator had the first meeting with the judge to schedule the next meeting. So at least they seem to be consistent as her second meeting is sceduled for Oct 1st. Will be interesting to see if the outcome of both of our mtgs is the same or similar. Will let this do for now, but I know some are wondering if things have moved or changed, so the answer would be NO.