Tuesday, September 16

Good News! We found out today that one of our major obstacles is out of our way. We now just have to get though our rescheduled court hearing on Thursday and everything should be back on track. This was such a relief to us. Most of you don’t even know what we’re talking about but believe me, it was a BIG DEAL! Thanks to all of you for your prayers and kind words.

More good news is that Russ and Monica arrived safely today. We just had dinner with them here in the hotel and while tired, they were in good spirits. It was great to see them and now we have someone else here to keep us company. Another family is scheduled to arrive on Monday for their first trip, so we’ll have a whole gang here. It should make the days go by a lot faster.

The documents also arrived safely with Monica and Russ. Thanks, Mom, for the Altoids and Gummy Savers. You always know exactly what we need, even if we don’t.

Each visit with our little one gets better than the last. Today she did lots of walking again, with handholding of course. I would hold her hands and Kyley would sit across the room with her hands out, encouraging her to come to Mamma. She did it grinning the whole time. But here’s the funny part. In her concentration to keep her feet moving she had her tongue sticking out. Does that sound like RB’s great granddaughter or what? For those of you in the dark, RB was Kyley’s grandfather, and sticking his tongue out when he was concentrating on something was one of his, well, trademarks, I guess.

We brought some brightly colored stacking cups with us for the first time today, but all she was interested in was chewing on them. She has two bottom teeth now and at least one on top. It’s kind of hard to tell. Kyley put her finger in there today and got bit! It even left a mark! So we know they work, we’ll just have to count them some other time. Vica, our translator took more pictures of the three of us today. Sorry we can’t post them yet but hopefully in a couple weeks we can.

We did less walking around town today. We walked to the local mall to buy some water since we were about out. We also found a store there that sells pretty nice jackets by Columbia, Adidas, Nike, etc. at pretty normal prices, which we may need to take advantage of. The weather has turned cooler here, with highs around 70 and lows in the 50s. That’s about ten degrees colder than when we arrived. We’re told that it’s pretty cold in Moscow already. Due to luggage restrictions, Kyley only brought one light jacket and I brought two sweatshirts. We’re thinking that by the time October rolls around, we’ll need something warmer, especially for Moscow.

We also walked down one of the more major streets near the hotel, hoping to find where it crossed one of the many rivers here. Astrakhan is at the delta of the Volga where it meets the Caspian Sea, so there is the Volga, and lots of smaller rivers nearby. Anyway, we didn’t find it. That road actually takes a turn and ends up being parallel to the river. We thought it was like not being able to find Lake Michigan while already in Michigan. Sorry, Treadwell family joke that Kyley asked me to include.

It’s Tuesday evening, about 10:00 PM as I’m typing this, 2:00 in the afternoon back home. We don’t have Internet access AGAIN, so we’ll try to post this in the morning.