More Obstacles

Our travel agency calls. The Russian Consulate himself is coming to open the door & hand over our passports to the travel agency's courier! Praise God! FedEx can not guarantee overnight delivery for packages coming out of NYC. Our flight leaves early Friday Morning & stops at JFK. Our new plan is to fly there, using our CO driver's license as ID, then meet my friend & then check onto our Moscow flight using our passports. We call Delta to double check that this will work. No. They will want to see our passports at Denver because technically we are checking in for an international flight. Also, we learn that we can not use the return flight from our original round-trip tickets. There is a big fee for canceling the tickets & rebooking the return portion. If we do not check in on the first flight, the tickets automatically cancel. It's just under 24 hours since we bought the one-way tickets to NY-Moscow. We can still cancel them for a refund. Unfortunately, we can not find another round-trip ticket which uses NY as a stop-over on Friday. We can't even find a seat for any flight into NY on Thursday. We need to stop in NY so we can meet my friend & get our passports! Our best bet is to buy another set of one-way tickets home from Russia. For a smaller fee, they will let us cancel the original round-trip tickets & use the same flights on another date in the next 12 months. They tell us to call TSA to check again about traveling out of Denver w/o a passport. Denver TSA says no problem. OK, time to get packing! Still praying everything will work...

The Storm of the Century

The main part of the storm is over. The city is still closed. The original plan was to open things back up on Wednesday, but many parts are flooded, including the Russian Consulate's office. They are unsure when they can reopen, if at all this week. We call our adoption agency to see if they can push back our court date in Kirov, Russia. No. If we miss it, we will have to go back to the end of line. A new date will take maybe 3-4 months & they will not be home for Christmas, probably more like Spring. Praying...

Prepare for the Hurricane!

Right after we wake, we call our travel agency to see if our passports w/ visas are picked up. Since Eastern time is 2 hours ahead of us, our hope is that they picked them up early & FedEx would get them outta there before the storm hits. No such luck! The entire city is shut down to prepare for the storm & all businesses will be closed today & tomorrow. The earliest our passports can be picked up will be on Wednesday. Obviously, they will not get to us in time. Plan B- buy a new one-way flight to Russia leaving later in the week & just use the original flight home. We call one of my best friends, who lives just outside NYC, & ask for a huge favor.  She is willing to get our passports & bring them to us at JFK airport on Friday. Next on the list, drop the kids off at the airport & not cry my eyes out. They are heading to Grandma's house, on a plane, ALONE, for 2 weeks while Corbin & I are in Russia. This is a huge step for Momma!

Warning!

As we are shopping at Costco, we receive a call from our travel agency, who are working on getting our Russian visas. They want us to know that they can not control the weather. OK? The visas are due to be picked up from the Consulate on Monday & FedExed to us, arriving on Tuesday Morning. Our tickets to leave the US are for Wednesday. Hurricane Sandy is expected to hit New York, where the Russian Consulate is, on Monday about 7pm. I assure my husband that everything will be fine...I hope.

Trip 2 on the horizon!

We have a court date! We got the call that court is set for November 7th. We are preparing to leave for trip 2 & praying that all goes well. We are told that L has been told of the pending adoption sometime after we saw her. Because she is 7 years old, she must consent to the adoption before court will proceed. We are excited to see her & O now as perspective parents, not just visitors. We hope they are excited, too.

 Yesterday, we received a call from the travel agency processing our visas. They wanted to assure us that the Russian Consulte will have our visas & passports ready on Monday. Great! They also wanted to inform us that although they will be FedExed that day, they have no control over the weather. In case you missed it, because I did the first time, New York City is preparing for a hurricane to hit Monday night. Of course it is! Who's not up for a little excitement! We need to leave here Wednesday at noon. Currently, our passports are due to arrive by 10:30 am on Tuesday...it's a 24 hour window, no problem. Unless, of course, the truck with our passports actually gets blown away during transport...but, really, what are the odds. :)