MOSCOW!!

We made it...Jonathan's first plane ride was ROUGH, but we are here. We were up by 3 AM this morning & out the door at 4:30 AM to head for the airport. Jonathan was quite cheerful for that early in the morning & slept the whole way there. I have to admit I got a little emotional in the car. It hit me that we were leaving his birth place, his heritage, his language...everything he has ever known. I felt a little sad for him, even though he is going to have a great life in California. Krasnoyarsk, Russia will always be a part of him & us. I hope his birthmom knows she made the right choice to give him life even though she couldn't keep him. I hope & pray she knows that he is with a family who loves him so much we came came all the way to the other side of the world to get him. There were a lot of emotions going on.

We fed him while we were waiting to board & thought that he would be okay since he had over an hour for his breakfast to settle. Well.....about 45 minutes after take off he threw up all over me...again!!! That makes 8 times I think since he was sick on Sunday. Andrew wasn't feeling well either, so I got both of us cleaned up & changed. Thank goodness I had planned ahead & packed extra clothes for all of us in the carry on bag :) The rest of the almost 5 hour flight was pretty miserable! Jonathan threw a big temper tantrum, flopped all over his seat trying to sleep, Andrew didn't feel well, the man behind us kept hacking up a lung, & we were right by the bathroom so we had the constant line of people (some with major B.O.) standing right next to me. AHHHH, the joys of international travel :) We were very happy when we landed & got off the plane!! All 3 of our bags were first on the baggage claim belt which kind of made up for the lost luggage disaster of first trip. We were out of there quicly & our driver V was ready & waiting for us :) After fighting through Moscow traffic & crazy driving for an hour & a half, we made it to our hotel!! We are staying at the Sheraton about 2 miles up the road from Red Square. It's really comfortable & the customer service has been GREAT!! We got settled & then headed to the ATM machine to get some more rubles....PROBLEM!! Our cards wouldn't authorize even though we notified the bank of the dates we would be here. URGH! While we are greatful for their fraud security, it is frustrating because we notified them about our trip. We had used ATM cards from a different account in Krasnoyarsk & had no problems. I sent an online message to our bank & hopefully this will be fixed tomorrow!!!

We got some lunch at a burger place down the street & it was good, but more than we would pay at home. Moscow is known to be one of the most expensive cities in the world...good thing we're only here for a week! Jonathan ran around the room & played for awhile when we got back to the hotel. It's good to see him in his normal state. Right now both of the boys are taking a nap & we will meet with our facilitator P in about an hour and a half. He'll give us the schedule for the week & we'll get our U.S. Embassy paperwork squared away for our appointment tomorrow. Keep praying...right now especially for the ATM card issues & for our appointment at the embassy tomorrow. We are looking forward to getting some sight seeing in of Red Square in the next few days & should have some good pictures to post. Only 7 days & we'll be home!!!!