Happy Birthday to Almira

Well, it is finally here. This is day 14 of bonding and also Almira's birthday. I dreamed about this day in the U.S. for weeks. We are up early here in Kaz, a little before 7AM. We just had our morning call with Mom and Sarah. Sarah sounded much better and was a little happier this evening. I know this is hard on her. We should find out about our court date this evening.

Yesterday (Sunday) when we were out walking, the smoke in the city was awful. Everyone is cleaning up here. It was in the mid 60's here. It is like spring has suddenly sprung. You can actually start to see grass popping up. I was beginning to think that the town is always so muddy looking, but I'm seeing signs of spring and the mud is going away. We are sitting in our stuffy apartment this morning, unable to open the windows because of all the leaves and things burning around us. Okay. That's all for this morning, I'll post more this evening.

Today was Day 14 of bonding and also Almira’s birthday. Today didn’t go as we had hoped. We left and went to the orphanage at 2PM for the performance. There was some sort of inspection, but I’m not sure we ever saw those people. Several groups of the children sang and there were several ladies that had birthdays, along with an older boy and Almira. Each of them were recognized and then an older group of children came out and did a wonderful dance in colorful outfits. We saw Michael (Dee’s son in his suit), Vika and Saltant in their school uniforms. We just didn’t have a chance to get pictures, but Jon tried.

We then left the orphanage and took Almira out for her birthday. She had already eaten lunch so we headed back to the apartment and she worked on her scrapbook. I put on Finding Nemo, just for something to listen do and Almira worked on her scrapbook for about 2 hours. Then Almira opened her birthday presents from Jon and I and from Memmie and Pawpaw. She loved them all. Still her favorite gift so far is the kitten, Milky, from Sarah. I brought it to the orphanage with us today to pick her up. When I pulled it out of the bag she exclaimed “Milky” and hugged her kitten. Then we had to run back to the orphanage to get the director to sign something else and had to take Almira back. She did a great job working on her scrap book. She didn’t finish, so I will take it with us tomorrow to the orphanage. Maria dropped us off and went to the court to meet Svetlana. About 30 minutes later our door bell rang and it was Maria, Svetlana and Lena. They came in and said they had been to see the judge and took all our documents. They had declared May 1st, 2nd and 3rd national holidays. So it looked like our court date would probably be on Monday, April 30th. We talked some more about other things and I mentioned about Sarah being sick and went to the doctor on Thursday. I told them her asthma was really flared up and we were hoping to get home as soon as possible. Svetlana said she would talk to the judge again tomorrow and let us know as soon as possible when court would be set. We will hopefully have a firm date set tomorrow. We are a little disheartened right now, but knew this could happen. We will continue to visit with Almira every day at the orphanage. I will post tomorrow as soon as we know a firm court date.