What a fun afternoon we had with our girl! We got to spend almost five hours with her outside of the orphanage! The time went by too quickly though. We can hardly wait for the days when we will have 24 hours / 7 days a week with her and no call from the orphanage telling us she must come back right away.

We picked her up and took her with us to do paperwork. It is a long, winding drive on narrow roads with lots of pot holes to the inspector's office and everyone here drives fast. I get motion sickness so I was worried about her feeling those same effects since she is not used to car travel. Thankfully she did fine, except she probably got tired of me asking if she was feeling okay. After taking care of paperwork at the inspector's office we went to buy her a warmer, long coat which she loves. The smile on her face when she saw herself in her new, beautiful coat with a furry hood was priceless. Then we went to the lawyer's office where we all had to sign papers. Even our girl had to sign many papers. After paperwork was done we stopped at a small market to buy her some snacks. It was helpful to have the translator because at this market you have to tell the clerk what you want and she will get it for you. Not sure how we are going to go shopping at this market (the only one nearby) after today because our translator left to go back to Kiev on the fast train this evening. I need to work even harder at learning to read Russian and speak it. Unfortunately I am a slow learner. I think my brain is too full with too many other things to learn another language well:( Now that we are living without a translator hopefully we will start speaking and understanding Russian better since we will have full immersion!

After we finished all errands we brought our daughter-to-be to our hotel which is really more like a bed and breakfast. There are no restaurants in this area so we eat all our meals at this hotel. The owner of the hotel has his wife or daughter cook for us and everything has been delicious. Our girl got to tell the wife what she wanted for a meal and she fixed it for her. She asked for salad and pelmeni (small round pasta with meat inside) and warm juice. Once her tummy was full we showed her our room and let her play two games on the IPad. She liked Toca Salon where she could style our hair from a picture she took of me and of Jason. She says she wants to be a hair stylist when she grows up so that game is perfect for her! Once we thought our kids back home were awake we called home on FaceTime and everyone got to say hello to each other. We only had a short time for the children to get acquainted because we got a knock on the door from our driver, also the hotel manager, saying that the orphanage called and needed her back. We thought we had 30 more minutes before she had to return but we learned that can change at a moment's notice. The kids said good bye in Russian and off we went back to the orphanage.

When we returned to the orphanage she said she had a fun day! We will look forward to spending time with her again tomorrow. Our translator will call the orphanage to request that we take her out again so we can have Thanksgiving with her. Our cook is going to make turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. She said that she does not think the pie will be the same as in America but she will try! Please pray that we will indeed get to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner with our girl. Orphanage staff has to approve our request or we will only be able to stay with her at the orphanage. This will be our first Thanksgiving together with her! We only wish we could spend it with all of our children. We pray we can do FaceTime again tomorrow for the children to talk more with their sister-to-be.

All of the paperwork completed here will be submitted on Friday to the Ministry. Then we are praying we will be told early next week when we will have court. I took time this morning to figure out our finances if this process will still take 6 weeks which is what our coordinator/translator told us yesterday and again today to expect. With all the expenses so far and daily hotel, meals, and taxi costs our cash will run out before then. We also would not be home until the new year. Since we want to get home to celebrate Christmas as a complete family we need to have court in less than two weeks. God knows the desire of our hearts and we won't stop telling Him! Thank you for going to our Heavenly Father with our request as well. We know He will provide in His perfect timing and take care of all the details! Just look at all He has already done to get us this far!

To God be the glory!