Our Whirlwind Tour

This is our itinerary:

2 September- 3:50pm depart the D for Moscow
3 September- arrive Moscow
4 September- Court, leave for UK in the late PM
5 September- head to Bath, England to see my BIL, SIL and beautiful niece who is celebrating her 8th birthday this weekend!
7 September- head to Devon, England to see my Mother-in-Law, Shirley and our good friends the Nixons, and perhaps more family
10 September- hightail it back to London and fly to Moscow
Visit the kids until we get custody
15 September- Gotcha Day!
20 September- fly home to Detroit and start a new chapter in our family

Marriott Roulette Not Russian Roulette

I didn't post about our Marriott saga, but I will now. As I wrote earlier in the blog, we booked 9/10-9/13 at the Marriott Grande in Moscow. When we finally decided to book an apartment, we decided that we wanted to extend the stay until 9/14. Luckily, the 20k points (one night's stay) Pete was due from his first Marriott Rewards visa purchase had been added. I looked at his rewards account to see if I could add the night online, and that's when I noticed that the dim-witted Marriott reservations agent had booked us for September 3-6 at the Marriott Grande. I have no idea what he was thinking when he was making our reservation, as the dates were mentioned several times during my lengthy time on the phone with him. This was a Monday evening (last week), so I called Marriott the next day to straighten it out. Lo and behold, the 10th was no longer available as a rewards points night. After more lengthy phone calls, and attempts to argue with agents that this was not my screw-up, I just said put us in the Courtyard. I thought we were done. Nope, not so fast. I logged into Pete's email this morning to print off the hotel stay confirmation to take on our trip, and there was an email from Marriott with reservations for 9/10 - 9/14 at the Marriott Grande. I called Marriott and once again, made sure that our points were applied to the right reservation, confirmed we were really going to have 4 nights at the Marriott Grande and am now just hoping this is the last of it.

Oh yeah, and only 4 more hours of work then I'm off for 14 weeks!!

Mo' Getting Ready

Things are falling in place. My co-worker/friend Carolyn and her husband will now be driving our Mazda to the airport and meeting us on the 20th. Marina and her son will be our back-up for this. Our neighbor Kate has said she will take care of our furry kids so we don't have to hire someone to come in. Shannon is going to go grocery shopping for us the day before we come home. Now, I just have to pack and keep plugging away at getting the house tidied and liam/sophie/dominic proofed!

Hopefully in the next couple days I'll get time to post about my showers and show pics of a couple of the beautiful personalized gifts we/I were given!

Back to work.....

So, I changed beds. This is the bed I ended up ordering, but a twin in antique white.

We are confirmed!

Lorien called last night to say that our court date for the 4th is indeed confirmed. Another Yahoo! for Monday. We went bed shopping and found Liam's bedroom furniture at JCPenney. I love it. I've found Sophie's bed online and I'm going to order it today. So, the bedroom is Liam's, but in a dark brown "espresso" finish. The iron bed is what I think we're going to get for sophie, but in antique white. I have an antique table to use as a nightstand already, complete with glass knob. Loves it!

Great News From Munder!

I work for an investment management firm called Munder Capital Management. You may have heard of our family of funds-the Munder Funds. Anyhoo, I proposed adding adoption benefits to my HR department about 10 months ago. As most of you know, the markets and the economy have been very rocky, so nothing happened on this. I was told recently by my HR department that they would be proposing adoption benefits along with the rest of the review for 2009 benefits to our executive management in the near future. I just got a call from our head of HR telling me they are adding an adoption benefit of $5k! They are making it effective September 1st (normally new benefits become effective January 1) to make sure Pete and I can use the benefit!!! Woohooo!!!! Go Munder!!!!

Strange Happenings in CyberSpace and More

So, we have our flights to Moscow booked (Lufthansa) and our flight to and from London booked (Aeroflot). We also have September 3rd booked at the Courtyard Marriott Moscow (rack rate starting at $716, free to us thanks to our Marriott Rewards visa cards), as well as September 10-13 at the Marriott Grand in Moscow (starting at $826 a night, again two nights free and one night at $187.50, thanks to Marriott points). I got word our Russian visas on the way to us. Now, we just have to book our apartment for 9/13-9/20, which we plan to do tonight.

We have to get one of the booster seats in my car tonight, as my sister Rachel and her son Dominic will be arriving tomorrow night. My brother Ryan is driving up from Indianapolis Saturday morning, so it should be a fun weekend! We have the LightHouse picnic Saturday, and then we'll go over to Woodward and show our guests the craziness that is the Woodward Dream Cruise. Sunday we'll be doing lunch with friends at our favorite ex-neighborhood eatery, the Royal Oak Brewery (despite their change of menu...AGAIN).

Now, for the CyberSpace strange happenings. My favorite forum is on FRUA.org, where many Eastern European adoptive parents gather discuss issues uniquely related to us. On Tuesday, FRUA was down, much to the chagrin of many of us. Once again, this afternoon, it appears to be down. The admin, aka Marshall Dillon, doesn't know what happened the first time. Conspiracy theorists on the board think perhaps its related to the situation in Georgia right now. We shall see!

2 down 2 more to go

We have our flights to Moscow and back booked for us AND the children!! We're flying Lufthansa, so that will hopefully be good food. Bier, wienerschnitzel and sourkraut all around I think! Perhaps we'll watch Das Boot on the plane??? And I'll sing about Eine Kleine Nacht Muzik. That might not be appreciated though. I have been told by both a machine (PlayStation) and people that I CANNOT sing.

And, I just sent off our apps for our double entry visas for our trip. Let's see...there are 25 days until we leave. ughhh...

Now, we have to book our flights from Moscow to London, and book our accomodations. Pete and I have to do some discussin' this weekend and get the accomodations booked.

Tomorrow will be a packed day from noon onward. My shower is at 2pm, and then Findlay's first birthday party starts at 7:30pm. Yvie's day is going to be action packed too!

Tonight, its more "clearing" and "tidying"...this is very therapeutic, I must admit!

On a final note, the Russian "invasion" of South Ossetia has definitely been on my mind today. I hope this doesn't affect our second trip. Most in the adoption community (OK, let me say that most who post on FRUA....) don't think it will have an impact. I'm going to think positively until I feel there's a need to do otherwise. Hopefully the violence ends soon and the innocent civilians can return to their normal lives.

Have a lovely weekend. I will post pictures of the shower (hopefully) Sunday.

Random Thoughts

I have no idea how I'm going to get through the next several weeks of waiting. At least we have a target end date, I guess! I'm going to find something to add to the blog to count down the days.

If I could take the next week off work, I think that would help. Alas, I have very few vacation days left and they have to be saved for our trip! I've never been good at focusing, as I have ADHD. It wasn't called ADHD when I was diagnosed in third grade, I was "hyperactive" then. So, nature and emotions are both working against me focusing on work. I, can, however, focus on perezhilton's blog for a good 5 minutes or so. I'm so cheesy.

Pete has put the kabosh on buying more clothes for the kids until after the showers. I know it had to be done.

Well, that's about it for now....my short attention span has led me to other things to think about.

We got a court date (tentative)

September 4th!!!