Sorry No Post Yesterday, Auntie Elizabeth!

So for today, you will get a bunch of pictures even if it cost me 1000 tenge!

The visit to the baby house yesterday morning was uneventful. More of the same Lagooshka and cell phone button pushing. We ate an apple. Steve and Candy from South Africa came in seperately and met Maksim. He was a little ham and loved their attention. They were jealous of Maksim's apple. :) It was officially woman's day yesterday so the caregivers needed the afternoon free from visitors. We knew that we would miss the little bugger. Boo Hoo. Seymone too us to Daniel (the supermarket) and we bought a few groceries. When we came back out, he aksed us to wait "one minute". He speaks a tiny bit of English. We waited in the car and he came back with flowers and chocolate for Melissa for Woman's Day! It was very sweet. We are lucky to have Lena and Seymone as our guides. Then, we went back home and took a nap.

Then Steve called us from his hotel so we decided to be brave. (We had decided to buy this DVD player from them that they had purchased here. Then we will pass it on the the next family so that they can also watch some movies.) We hailed a taxi and had the driver write down our address (we don't know where we live or our phone number). Then he took us to the Irytish Hotel. We had wine and dinner with Steve, Candy (South Africa), Sue, Pam and June (US). It was really fun and relaxing and we got to talk about everything. We were glad that we got to have one last meeting with Steve and Candy. They are a fun couple. Lucky for them they were able to pick up their son this morning and then they left Ust. We are sad we didn't find them earlier. It would have helped to pass the time. Then, we got to see if the taxi driver had written our correct address. He had! Yeah! Our adventure was very fun. We will definately feel braver to venture out of "jail" soon.

Today was a great day of visits with Maksim. He loves it when we arrive with an apple for him. We sat and ate the apple together. After that, we went for a walk. We ran into Mama Lena and the older children today. I think that they are about 4 years old. She is wonderful and the children love her. She talked to Maksim and the children and they all said goodbye one by one to Maksim. We wanted to tell her that we are still in jail and probably won't be able to take Maksim out of the orphanage for at least 19 more days! Maybe they are holding us hostage. :) But it was really cute. There was one girl who was really sad. Maksim leaned in and kissed her cheek as he sad goodbye. Can't we take them all home??

We came home for lunch so that Lena could help see everyone off at the airport. I made pizza for Jason with real tomato sauce. It was pretty good. We miss American style food, Mexican food, and Asian food. The food here is a lot like the food my family on the Johnson side eat. Meat, potatoes, meat and mayonnaise.

Our afternoon visit was really cool. Our favorite caregiver (Tanya) was there. She let us come to see where the children sleep, use the bathroom, bathe, and eat. Maksim was really cute and held his Momma's hand to show her all of the locations. He showed us his garshok, his towel, his bed, and his seat at the table. He is just soooo friggin cute!! We love him so much.

Then we went out for a walk. We were happy to be able to walk outside again. The weather has been pretty cold and snowy for the last few days and we were unable to go out. When we got outside, Seymone and Lena were there with another driver. We played soccer for a while with a little ball Tanya had loaned to us. He was soo cute. Everything he said (in Russian of course) was very polite. He kept telling Seymone "I will do this just like you have taught me!" What a cutey pie! We love him so much.

We took Maksim back in to his room to take off the layers of outside clothes and tried to tell him it was time to go. He knows it and gets so upset. He cried and cried and cried REALLY loud. We think that it is good to get out some of those tears. He snuggled Momma and felt better. We let him take Lagooshka back into the room to share with the other children for the evening. We are thinking about leaving the Lagooshka here, then buying a new one once we get home. The caregivers and children love this toy. I wish they had one with the Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet.

We have not been able to set our court date yet. They promised it would be Thursday or Friday. Looks like neither of those will happen. Help us hope for Monday. After court, it will still be 15 days before we get custody. Sigh.