5 down 5 to go

Half way point

We are inching closer to the day our son comes home. Dee Dee and I are counting down every morning. He is such a positive aspect of our life and we are ready for him to join us. I must start off my saying thanks to all of the family and friends back home in Birmingham that are still helping us get the house ready and taking care of my business. Thank you all very much.
Well last night Dee Dee and I were going to go to the bar and get a couple of beers and hang out on our last Saturday night. We went downstairs to discover that the bar is closed on the weekend. That was not what I wanted to see. I was looking forward to a hot meal and a cold beer. Instead we went downstairs and in the lobby we found that they sell wine. So we bought a bottle of French wine very cheap and went back up to the room for bread, cheese and wine. Not a bad evening after all. That is until Dee Dee made me watch the Notebook. That is the saddest movie ever. I told her that is the last time I will watch it. I don’t know why people enjoy watching movies over and over that make you cry. Now Dee Dee does not cry during movies but I do, and I don’t enjoy it.

This morning we woke up late and went down for our normal breakfast and came back up for our morning work out. We decided to go walk to this new grocery store we were told about, a few blocks away. We started walking and about half way there remembered that we don’t speak or read Russian which would make it difficult to figure out if we passed it or not. Grocery stores here don’t look like our grocery stores and there are no windows so that you can see in to see if you are going into the right place. Fortunately we saw people walking down the street with bags and followed them to the store. It was about the same as the store we go to except the extra meat, cheese, and pizza. Unfortunately we don’t speak Russian so I could not tell them what I wanted and how to slice it. We did find one thing there very good, Rotisserie chicken. This was the best thing I have eaten in Russia since I arrived. I loved every bite. We saved a bunch for dinner or lunch tomorrow.

Dee Dee did some more laundry today and I tried to figure out why the DVD player stopped working. This is not a good thing. We can watch them on the computer but it does not have loud volume and it makes it difficult when we are trying to do yoga. Anyway things could be worse. We are going to take it easy the rest of the day. We are watching an indoor soccer / football game right now. I think there is another one to follow this one, which will be nice. I also just saw online that Georges St. Pierre won his UFC fight last night. That is awesome for me.

Other good news is that the interpreter called and said that they will be picking us up Tuesday morning to go see Alex. We are definitely looking forward to that. Well as usual I hope you all have a great day and go Pittsburg. We are going to try and watch a little bit of the game on the computer downstairs in the business center.
Brad

DD’s daily input:

Mom told me that her, Kelly (my sister in law), Karla (Kelly’s mother aka Mamee), Jan and Debbie (aka Baby Doll), all went over to our house on Saturday and got us organized and cleaned everything. Mom even painted our laundry room that was full of lint and dust. Brad’s mother wanted to know what we needed at the grocery because she was going to stock our fridge for when we got back. Brad’s dad is taking care of Brad’s businesses while we are gone and he is even taking care of our #2 baby (Zoe). Suzanne and Elizabeth let me borrow their DVD player and gave us 500 kiddie movies for when Alex gets home. (By the way E-Beth, we are going to probably have to buy you a new DVD player if we can’t get yours back in action. We were doing our “Biggest Loser Cardio Workout” and all of a sudden it stopped working.)

Our jaws are dropping at how helpful everyone has been over the past few months. We always knew we had wonderful family and friends, but we never in our wildest dreams ever thought that we would be so blessed. About 25 of our girlfriends threw the best baby shower on Earth (I will post pictures of that party when we get home). My “Wednesday night running group” friends bought all of the jackets and shoes for our donation to the orphanage. I have met other people that have adopted from our region and they are providing much needed information. I mean, we really don’t have words to explain how thankful we are to each and every one of you.

My mom always said that it takes a village to raise a child and Alex has the best village ever. He doesn’t know yet how lucky he is to have the support group that he will have once we get home. My mom is going to keep him one day a week and Brad’s dad (Bobert) is going to keep him the other 4 days. I have already signed him up for Mother’s Day Out that starts in Sept. He will go there from 9:30-1:30 Mon, Wed, and Friday assuming that he is ready for that. Mom is going to take him on her way to work since she opens her store at 10am and Bob will pick him up at 1:30. I know that Alex is going to be soooo close to his grandparents and I know the grandparents are going to enjoy loving Alex! We can’t wait to get home so we can share Alex with you all!

Love,
DD