Pavel at nine and a half months...

Pavel loves balls, chilling with his mom, and drinking! No cup is too big....

Jenny's night out with the ladies- the Banya (russian bath house)

Svetlana (our attorney), Tatiana, Trina and I joined Svetlana and her friends at a russian bath house- it was a blast! Women only- and a little more raucus then 10,000 waves. We had food, beer, steam baths, dry saunas, body treatments, cold plunge, thrashing of ourselves with hot birch limbs and leaves, turkish bath rest areas, and most importantly, Karaoke! Thank you to Svetlana for a wonderful evening...it was divine and I felt fabulous (or "kife") afterwards. My karaoke debut was "Take it Easy" by the Eagles (greg- I can hear you groaning) while the bigger hit was "Bahama Mama" sung by everyone.....the big wooden crate is an individual steamer that you get in naked and sweat like crazy. One of the russian women joked that the reason it felt so good was because there was a really nice man inside there! Hey- I didn't say it- she did!

WE HAVE A COURT DATE

We have a court date! At long last, we will go to court to adopt baby Pavel on Tuesday, April 17th. If the judge approves us, we have a 15-day waiting period until we can take Pavel from the baby house. Then, we have about one week of additional paper work, meetings, tests to get both in Pavlodar and Almaty before we head home. Our best estimate right now is that we will be home by May 12th (mother's day) and hopefully a few days earlier. We had so much fun visiting Pavel today. He is reminding us more and more of Lily.....very happy and very busy! Some photos from today's visit!

Happy Easter and happy spring from Pavlodar!

Pictures at sunset on easter sunday on the Irtysh River (and a few pictures of Pavel!) We are still waiting for a court date- cross your fingers we get it this week! We'll keep you posted....

More pictures of the little guy

Until a few days ago, Pavel had never been outside. The weather has finally turned warmer and so they will let us take him outside for a few minutes every day. The top picture is the first day he went outside- he wasn't too sure about it, but gets more comfortable each day.....until now, his whole world has consisted of 2 rooms only. Boy, has he got some surprises in for him! Poor little guy....

Even more pictures of the kid!!!

Here is Pavel in some of his favorite positions! He loves to be upside down- it makes him laugh, which makes us laugh....which makes him laugh (have we mentioned how cute he is?)

Big night out on the town

We went out one night with Trina and Kevin, another couple here adopting a sibling set, and our translator and other friends. That is the biggest pool table you have ever seen in your life- and the holes to get the balls through are really small- so there wasn't much competition by anybody. It basically took us 3 hours and a lot of cheating to complete one game. Cisco- where are you when we need you? The other entertainment was the hookah- no it wasn't opium or marijuana- it was fruit flavored tobacco- and it was actually quite good!