GETTING THINGS TOGETHER

17 DAYS AND COUNTING...we spent part of today finishing up the photo albums we will be taking with us. We did two small 4x6 albums that has pictures of us, our house, and our families and one empty spot for the three of us together. We will leave one at the baby house for the staff to reveiw with our child in between trips. Thanks to our friend Elena for translating label titles into Russian for us so the staff will be able to know what the picture is and who is in it. The other album will stay at home as a keepsake for our child in case the one we take doesn't make it home. The third album is to show the Ministry of Education, Guardianship Council and Judge. It contains all the photos in the personal albums and also pictures of us at the Asian Festival in DC and the DC Embassy. Thought it might be nice to include photos showing us taking an interest in our child's culture. Since the child's bedroom photo doesn't have furniture we have left a spot for a photo with furniture that we will take between trip 1 and 2 and add to the album. We have some room left for photos during bonding as well and will do a 2nd album strictly of the bonding period. We have been told we should have a picture, date stamped, of each day of the bonding period for court.



We have all our new documents needed for our trip except the medical reports. I will get them on Monday. Since they are only good for 3 months at a time we wanted to wait till the last possible moment to get them. So we will be headed to the notary (Merideth we will be contacting you soon)sometime next week and then head to Annapolis to get them apostilled.

Giving me plenty of time to do something is never a good idea! I always end up getting involved with other things to pass the time and then get in fast pass mode because I suddenly realize I don't have much time. That is the state of mind I am currently in right now. With just over 2 weeks until we leave I suddenly feel like I have a million things to do and not enough time to do it even though we have been doing things along the way.

Time to make out the checklist of everything that needs to be done and start checking things off. I think most of the major things are done:

Arrange for money for trip...check
Get tickets....check
Visas...check
House sitter (THANKS SHAWNA)...check
Dog sitter (THANKS MOM AND DAD COWELL)...check
Paperwork...almost check
Photos...check
Paint room...check
Transportation to airport (THANKS MOM AND DAD ROBEY)...check
Arrange payment of bills while gone...check

Things still to do:
1)notarize,authenticate,photocopy,apostille,and photocopy updated documents
2)Figure out what we need to take
3)Figure out what we already have and what we still need to get
4)Pack
5)Figure out what we will take to use for bonding
6)Figure out what we already have and what we still want to get
7)Put together copy of paperwork and items for our US go to person in case we need something processed and sent
8)copy electronic files to thumb drive to take
9)pray that the ipod shuffle I ordered arrives on time so I can load the children's music I downloaded to take with us. I put together a montage of music to play during our bonding time. Wayne gave me a small speaker set to use with my ipod and I thought it would be nice to use it to play music at the baby house. So, yes, our child will have their own ipod before we even have our child!

I'm sure I missed something! Looking at the list I guess we really don't have a whole lot to do once we organize what we already have. We will be comparing what we have gathered with lists of what to take and what not to take from other families who have "been there done that".

Better get back to practising my Russian...

Paka (translation: bye bye...pardon the transliteration Elena)