5 years ago....and now...

Anyone who was with us on this day 5 years ago at our wedding will remember what a joyous day it was…today we have experienced a different kind of joyous day - - our last full day in Russia before returning home (after being gone for 27 days)!!

Today began the same as the last couple of days….up early and taking the munchkin downstairs for breakfast. While we were eating, we saw Ann (the single woman with our agency who had court right before us) and her son Gionni. They ate their breakfast and then came over to talk. We shared our experiences since we saw each other the day of court. She went home for the waiting period (she has another son at home that she adopted from Moscow 5 years ago) and had trouble getting back – she was stuck in Amsterdam for a day because of the volcanic ash cloud. It turns out that her hotel room is across the hall from us so as we walked up from breakfast, we decided to go out and take a walk together.

We were nervous about trying another walk with the stroller based on our experience on Wednesday. Baby O and Gionni (who also doesn’t think much of the stroller) did great! No crying! Maybe because they had each other to look at and they each knew they weren’t the only one in a stroller helped. We showed Ann how to get to Red Square from our hotel but unfortunately there was even more of the area closed off for the weekend festivities. We decided to explore a little and walked to a different area of the city. After about an hour and ½, we returned to the hotel for nap time. Ann had her embassy visit this afternoon but mentioned maybe going for another walk later this evening and we said sure!

After nap time we spent the afternoon playing in our hotel room. The weather today was beautiful (sunny and about 75-80 degrees) so we decided to take a little walk on our way to our anniversary dinner. We found a restaurant named “Gusto” and it was great! The hostess led us upstairs where we were in our own little section. The menu was fantastic and there was even American music playing – everything from techno to JLo to Usher – we forgot for a couple hours that we were in Russia :) After our delicious dinner (that all 3 of us very much enjoyed), we walked back to the hotel to regroup and see if Ann was around. She and Gionni stopped by and asked if we wanted to go for another walk in about 30 minutes.

We are pretty much all packed and ready to go in the morning – we actually never really got unpacked since it’s only been a few days here. Victor is picking us up at 9:00 which is perfect timing for us to get showers and breakfast. The airport is about an hour & ½ from the hotel and our flight is at 12:30. We are praying that the 11 straight hours in the air will go well. We have lots of food to take with us so that won’t be a problem, just hoping that somebody sleeps a little :)

For everybody who won’t/can’t be at the airport to welcome us home tomorrow (we arrive at 6:05pm), we will post an entry when we get to our house with a picture and name!!!

Only 1 more night and we will be sleeping in our own beds!