Welcome baby Max!

Today we welcomed baby Max into our family. We went to pick him up this afternoon and he was crying when they brought him into us. It was his naptime (they may have woke him up to bring him in) and he is teething. Steph did a great job of rocking him and getting him calmed down and to sleep on the way back to the motel. After that we had some good play time and Max had his first meal with us. He has just gone to sleep for the night so I guess we survived day 1! We will update with some pictures and more info tomorrow when we get back to Moscow.

tomorrow's the day!!

Our agency representative is picking us up tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM to go pick up Max! After we pick him up we have some stops to make to start the citizenship and registration process. We will update the blog tomorrow as soon as we get the chance. We are looking forward to it!

Gypsies and Record Snow!

Yesterday we rode to Yaroslavl from Moscow during a large snowstorm. We were kind of nervous riding as they really have no place to put the snow so the roads were not great. The snowstorm started when we got back to Moscow from Rome (on Friday) and it snowed pretty much straight through Monday. According to this report Moscow recieved almost 25 inches of snow over the few days and it is a new record snowfall. Sure glad we could be here for it!(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8529506.stm)

We made it safe and are all checked into our motel in Yaroslavl. We spend today (Tuesday) here then tomorrow we get to go visit Max. On Thursday we pick up Max and bring him back to the motel before heading back to Moscow on Friday. We are really looking forward to visiting him tomorrow but more looking forward to taking him with us on Thursday!

It also seems that we have new experiences almost everyday on this trip. Yesterday when we got into Yaroslavl our driver stopped at McDonald's so we could grab some lunch. We got our food to go only to be surrounded by a pack of Gypsies on the way back to the car!!! Our driver shouted at them (in Russian) and we kept walking. He told us to never talk to Gypsies!!

Everything is going very well - we can't wait to pick up and visit Max over the next couple days. We will try to update tomorrow sometime after visiting him.

Moscow tour

This morning we went on a tour of the Moscow city center. We went to the Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin and Kremlin Cathedrals and Lenin's Mausoleum. I'm not sure how to describe the Mausoleum...he is on display despite being dead for more than 80 years but curiosity got the best of us so we checked it out. We did cut the tour a bit shorter then we probably would have liked because it is very cold. We also got to experience the "Metro" which is the subway system here in Moscow. It got us very close to the city center and cut some time out of walking outside.

Back in Moscow

Hello everyone - We are back in Moscow and all moved back into the apartment. We spent a portion of the day traveling back from Rome and were greeted by a pretty big snowstorm and traffic mess when we got back to Moscow. Checking the forecast it looks like the city is expecting snow clear through to Sunday. Luckily for us we are staying put until we go to Yaroslavl on Monday.

We haven't updated the blog in a couple days so I will try to update. On Wednesday we went to the Vatican to hear the Pope speak. We were inside and I would guess there was about 25,00o people in attendance. They did some readings (in 6 languages) and the Pope spoke (also in 6 languages) and they recognized some of the larger groups that had traveled to be there, none farther than us as far as we could tell! We spent the rest of the day exploring Rome as it was very nice outside! Thursday was more of the same and we ate at a favorite restaurant from the week. Rome was awesome and we are so glad we got to go.

We are supposed to go tour the Red Square, Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral tomorrow. We will have to see how much snow and how cold it is. We will probably go regardless as we are running out of days in Moscow before we get Max and we don't want to drag him outside any more than we have to.

We stay here in Moscow until Monday then we go to Yaroslavl. We pick up Max on Thursday. Then on Friday we come back to Moscow before coming home the following Thursday - March 4. After we get Max we will be very busy taking care of his medicals and citizenship documents but until then we are not too busy.

Hope everyone is doing well - we will post some pictures if we make it to the Red Square tomorrow!

Rome part 2

Rome has been a lot of fun so far. The rain has made it a little challenging to be outside for long periods of time, but we have seen everything we set out to see atleast once. Yesterday we set out to go to the Vatican(a 40 minute walk) to get our tickets to see the pope but learned they weren't handing them out until today. We also went to see the Pantheon, Trevi fountain and the Spanish steps(I will inclued pictures). When we got back to the room we discovered a couple of problems. Greg went to put the key in the door and the key broke in two.(the keys in this hotel aren't like credit cards they are actual keys like we have to unlock our house). The front desk then had to somehow take the broken key out of the lock and find us a new key. We then went to take our cash and video camera out of the safe and realized it was no longer working. How do we our valueables out of the safe? The front desk had to jimmy the safe open some how. Not really secure!! The front desk is getting to know us on a first name basis. This all happened after Greg raised a fuss as they overbooked our room and made us stay in a completely diffrent hotel the first night.

Today we went back to the Vatican. We got smart and took the bus. We had to wait in line for security but once we got thru we went to St. Peter's Basilica and climbed the steps to the top of the domb. We went thru the grottoes and saw some of the tombs where past Popes lay to rest. Very interesting to know that their bodies lay an arm distance away. We then went to the Vatican Museum to see Michelangelo's artwork in the Sistine Chapel.

Tomorrow we are headed back to the Vatican, on the bus, to actually see the Pope speak. We have tickets to hear him speak at 10:30 am. Kind of cool that we are going on Ash Wednesday.

Rome

Rome has been amazing so far. We have only been here one full day but we have seen a lot and had a great time.

This morning we went to the Colosseum and did the ancient Rome tour that include such things as the Romun Forum, Arch of Constantine and a number of Temples. It was pretty amazing and hard to believe that many of these structures have been in place for more than 2000 years.

The weather is really nice. It is in the 50s and coming from Des Moines and Moscow that feels really good. Greg wasn't wearing a jacket or anything. They do have some rain in the forecast this week but hopefully it doesn't get in the way too much. We have a number of sites yet to see including the Vatican.

The food has been great. Tonight we had some lasagna (thanks for the pointer Ryan and Amy) and some gelato. With our lunch we each had a coke that was a tad on the spendy side...5 Euros each!!! (That is like $7.50) I guess that is one of the reasons everyone drinks wine here!?

I know some (most) people only want pictures of Max but here are a few of our day today.