It's 3:24 in the afternoon on saturday in America. In Birobijan it is 6:24 sunday morning. We are waiting for the car service to pick us up after a morning and a night of sniping at each other. Do it this way no I want to do it this way type of stuff. All of it to do with the tension of preparing for the trip and anticipation of the trip.
Teri is down stairs talking with her sister and family, I'm upstairs. All is calm until she misses me and wants to know where I am. We are all packed and I think ready to go. There was a last minute crises when Teri discovered that our homestudy was a year and a day old so it might not be acceptable to the Russian courts and she made phone calls last night and when I got home I made some. About 10:00 we hear from our social worker that it might not matter but to be on the safe side fax over the updated information and she will talk to the bridge of Hope people. Crisis over, maybe.
While I have a minute, I was thinking about when the girls were here last summer and how everyone chipped in and asked no questions. I did expect someone to ask me if I had lost my mind becoming a father at 51 and for the first time. They all jumped in. I remember the first time I took the girls to go bike riding my brother has a long driveway and I felt it was the best place to go. I had one bike and Eric and Lynn lent me Dennis' bike with his permission. I was unsure I could handle the two of them by myself and it didn't matter because within a minute or two I had my mother, my brother Eric and his wife Lynn and their two sons and I think my sister Ruth and her two kids, Cory and Ryan and my other brother Karl all seemed to show up. It made it easy and fun. No stress at all. Another memory from that night was that the girls couldn't get the bikes up the slight incline of Eric's driveway. By the end of the month it was no sweat.
It's now time to go. Talk to you soon.
