A Little R and R

Monday, May 22

Everyone was a little tired this morning after our fun-filled weekend. Our power went out around 9:30am and Marina contacted us shortly after to let us know we needed to be ready at 11:30am to go to the notary to sign papers. So we took a shower under the glow of our flashlight we brought from home and prepared for who knows what. She told us we needed to leave the kids here and would get a sitter for us. It was not until we got in the car with Sharon and Ron, our friends from Canada adopting Oolia, that we found out we were going to sign many papers for powers of Attorney for court related procedures. You just never know what is going on in the morning. Each day brings new adventures! We planned to go get Passport Photos today but that all changed. I guess we will try to do that tomorrow.

In the afternoon Garrett, Sasha and Stella went “magazine”, which means shopping, at the market. Sasha was hoping to find a computer game store that he heard was in our area but they did not find one. They needed some snacks and boy did they get them! They had all kinds of fun stuff when they got back. Garrett found ice cream and decided to try it. It tasted more like ice milk. Some things are not as sweet over here like chocolate milk and chocolate ice cream. They have small amounts of chocolate in them. Sasha has a taste for chocolate and does not like the lesser chocolate taste. They have a lot of sweets here in general. In the grocery store the sweet section is huge like ¼ of the store. They have little individually wrapped candies usually and ice cream is individually wrapped and sold. I know we have a lot of sweets at our grocery stores at home but it seems like Halloween here all the time instead of seasonal like home.

We stayed in the apartment until after dinner when a serious tickle fight broke out and we realized there was a little extra energy here. So we decided to go outside around 8:00pm which is a first for us. We usually watch a movie after dinner. We enjoyed the excursion and played a little basketball. Stella grew tired of it and went over to play on the monkey bars and met a lady with a small child in a stroller. In no time she was pushing the child around talking up a storm. She has started getting up in the morning and making Chai for Momma and Papa the last couple of mornings. She likes to bring it to us on a tray with a few cookies. She is such the little hostess.

After baths we snuggled in on the sofa bed and watched Ice Age. They both liked it a lot and Sasha was especially happy to know we had games too for Ice Age. He played that for a while and then it was off to bed for us all. Good night and sweet dreams!