Someone turned 8 months on Saturday! Aka - We go to court in TWO DAYS!

Hi everyone, it has been an eventful few days! Friday, Bayan and Aliya came over to prep us for court. We also discussed getting Michael to the airport and Sarah from the airport. Afterwards, we showed them the gifts that we got for the people at court, just to make sure they were appropriate (all okay) and then Michael jokingly asked Aliya, what the translator and coordinator would like. She came back with and apartment and a Mitsubishi car! Jila, you will probably find this interesting, Aliya told me a few days ago she has decided to come to somewhere in North America for a few months, get a job and practice her English! I don't know anything about what it takes to get a green card (is that what it even is?) but we told her she should come to Manitoba to visit all of us. We went shopping at the Eurasian mall again and on the way home our bus was VERY full! I just kept laughing as it became a clown car in reverse, people just kept getting on and no one was getting off! Once back on Republic we (I) tried to get money out for our rent. What a process. Michael's knee was sore from basketball so he waited while I went up Republic to the bank machine. Of course, knowing me and numbers, it isn't hard to believe that I mixed up the pin number so the machine wouldn't give me money. By this time is was after 5pm and the landlord was supposed to be coming at 5:30 to collect it. It ended all right, with me getting the right pin from Michael and getting the money. Of course, after all that, the landlord never showed up before we left for the baby house!
It was fairly cool Friday night, so we visited in the playroom again. Matthew was his usual happy self and this time not only managed to cover my shirt in spit up, but Michael's as well! This is even with spit up blankets! He is very talented that way! We had to go home to change before meeting everyone for supper. We were very disappointed when we only got 1 1/2 hrs of visit time though. We were excited that another person joined our ranks. Seriah (I'm not sure if I am spelling that right) had just met her son for the first time on Friday. She seemed like she would be a lot of fun.

Saturday we visited Matthew at 10. He turned 8 months today! Boy is he getting a belly! Even our coordiantor commented on the full cheeks he is developing! (M might have already said this, sorry if you are hearing it twice) The poor kid is going to look like his mother with those cheeks! He finally has another boy to play with since Seriah and her son joined our group. He has to share the two girls now, Claudia (whose parents are Peruvian but now Americans - we are just getting to know them now that they have the same time as us) and Kate. After another great visit (I really hope these next few weeks fly by, we can't wait to stop visiting) we went for lunch with Annette and Seriah. Lots of fun and laughs. I got chills at one point when Seriah told us she has two dogs, one named Bishop! I had to ask her to repeat that. For those of you who don't know, I had a little dog named Bishop before I was married and he was the best little dog in the world! I had never heard of another dog named Bishop before!!!! Michael also had memories in common with Seriah, something about riding in the trunk of a Volkswagen when they were little!
We had plans to meet everyone at the Byterik at 10 pm, but first had to finish our "speeches" for court and print off some pictures. Trying to print the speeches turned out to be the frustration of the day. For some reason (probably due to Windows Vista!) the internet cafe couldn't print from the CD. So I decided to go and get our computer from the apartment thinking they could just plug in their printer. Nyet. So I rented time on one of theirs and typed everything out again. Of course I got the worlds SLOWEST computer which took forever to even bring up Office (that was after I figured out the Russian). It took me 20 minutes to type up and save and 40 minutes to get printed out. First the computer wouldn't spit out my CD and the guy at the desk had fool around trying to open it, all the while stopping to help other people with their questions. (The girl sitting at the desk just kept texting on her phone and looking pretty) Finally he pried it open with a paper clip. Then we couldn't find the file when he opened it on his computer. Back to the stupid SLOW computer where girl was finally pried from her chair to help me. She was impatient and ended up opening office 8 times because she just kept clicking when it wouldn't come up right away. (Note to self - learn how to say "computer is slow" in Russian) Of course when I proved that I am not a complete moron and the file really was on the CD, the damned computer wouldn't split out the CD again. Finally I left, with my printed pages (the whole thing only cost me 95 tenge!) but too late to pick up our pictures. By the time I got back to the apartment at 8:40, I had to boogie to get ready to go to Byterik. But Saturday night is another entry with an entirely different title, right Maegan!

Here is a little tease and our first family photo to be shown!

This is a shot of the Byterik from Saturday night. The lights at the base change color and go from white to blue to green and purple. Very beautiful!