Wait Day 9

Second to last day before Gotcha Day! We are almost there!

This morning was spent doing the usual stuff around the apartment. Got a load of laundry done. Chatted with friends and family on the Internet. Read all of your wonderful comments! Played a few computer games. Which. by the way, we thank you for the tips on Pogo. We will definitely go to that game site once we are off of our Fishdom kick. I also tried to study a little bit to complete my CEU's for this year, as I know I wont have much time after the Little Princess arrives.

At 3pm, Dasha arrived right on time to take us to the orphanage to see the Little Princess. This is my favorite time of day. Our visits get better and better each time. Today the Princess came singing down the hallway, her Mama song. Something like I'm going to see my Mama, my Mama. It's very cute what ever she is saying. Then into the music room she came today with a great big smile, and crawled right up into my lap. This girl most definitely has stolen my heart, if I haven't mentioned that before! It was great to see her smile when she entered the room. Normally she will come over to me and crawl into my lap or grab hold of me once I walk over to her a little, but she has never smiled when she first comes in. She has always been a little shy and kind of quiet at first. So this is a big step!

Princess had on the prettiest little pink (Princess) dress today too! Ver, very cute! Pink Satin type material, with some lace and ribbons. Just what a Princess should be wearing right? I have only seen a couple of different outfits on her, so it was a surprise to see this Princess dress. Normally it is a red cordaroy jumper with hearts on it and a white shirt with little hearts or polka dots underneath. The other outfit has been a pair of blue jeans and an orange Halloween shirt. The only other surprise outfit was that one day when they dressed her in one of the outfits I had brought on the first trip and left, which was a little small then, but very small now. That was funny!

Our activities today included, playing with the Snow Princess dolly, of course, and pulling her around the room in her little sled. Playing with another dolly that we found in a drawer that sings the alphabet and the head sort of lights up like a glow worm doll. We then read Dasha's English book, several times. This book was way more fasinating than the Princesses books because it was Dasha's of course. Princess was good with it though. We pointed at pictures, she'd tell me something in Russian and I'd say the English word for it. Easy stuff like man, lady, boy, girl, etc.. The Princess did really well repeating back to me in English. I just love the sound of her little voice too! We also played on the kids balance beam. The Princess loves this! I see gymnastics class in the very near future!

Once again 5pm arrived and it was time to go. Only difference this time was that I think they forgot to come and get the Princess. Dasha had to go and tell someone that she was still with us so they would come and get her. Would have loved to play longer, but we had to get going ourselves. I'll get to keep her longer in another day or so! YEah!

After our orphanage visit today, Dasha took us to the travel agent to get our plane tickets back to Moscow for next Thursday! We are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. It was funny when we were at the travel agent, Mom asked to know the price of the tickets before they put it on my credit card so we would know. (That part not funny!) The travel agent lady showed Mom the price in Rubles on the calculator. Then we converted to dollars. Mom says, "thats not right, is this the price for all three?" Dasha and the travel agent lady just look at her. Mom says, "show me again, total price for all three tickets". Both Dasha and the lady are looking at my Mom like what the heck is wrong with you kind of look. So they type in the Ruble price again, and we do the math conversion. Mom and I just look at each other, and then tell Dasha why we are double checking. It is because the price is very inexpensive compared to the price we paid to get to Krasnoyarsk for the two of us. Dasha, being so cute says , don't worry be happy! We both chimed in.. "We are, we just can't believe such a good price, but we will take it". Now how often in the adoption process do you get to say that something is cheap? Hahaha.. Never! So that was a very nice blessing!

Once our tickets were purchased it was time to go back to the apartment and decide what to do for dinner. We decided to wait for Friday to go to peppers and the toy store, so off to the supermarket I went. I got a few things in preparation for the Princesses arrival, like yoghurt, and chicken, and juice to start. For our dinner, Mom wanted me to pick more stuff from the Deli. For tonight we ended up with chiken breast topped with a cheesy sauce and a little onion. A salad of cucumber, hard boiled egg, bologna, onion, salad dressing of some kind and an herb mixed in that we really like, but aren't sure yet what to call it. Sort of like parsley but much finer. Tastes yummy anyway. I also picked out a scalloped potato with cheese and chicken side to go with the chicken breast. All of the salads and sides come with some sort of meat mixed in it too. Very interesting! Delicious choices tonight! We liked everything!

Last but not least, our evenning concluded with National Treasure (the first movie) on DVD.

One more day to go before the Princess arrives! Yeah!
So long from Russia...until tomorrow!
Shannon