Our Appeal Period Ends Today

If no one appeals our adoption by the close of business today, our adoption will be final. 

Final.

Finally.

Finally a Forever Family.

Here is a picture of the door to the courtroom where we became parents!

This has been the end/beginning of a long, tedious and wonderful journey. The days here are treasured but long. 

Last night, we sat in the floor with the two big boys and showed off our stupid human tricks. They can both roll their tongues and they have very flexible fingers. #1 can put his foot behind his head.

Today, we are going to the doctor for our U.S. Visa medical exam. The boys are a little nervous about it. The doctor has to draw blood on all the kids above the age of 5. Luckily little girl doesn't have to get blood drawn. Unfortunately, #2 passes out when he sees needles. This morning he asked if he could take ketchup to put in the vials instead of drawing blood. After a good laugh, we explained that the doctors would think he is a tomato and the United States would not let us adopt tomatoes.

Speaking of food, we have encountered some interesting foods here. Pizza is almost always served with ketchup, even at the restaurants. They eat ketchup on french toast and thought we were crazy when we asked for syrup. They found some jam for us. Peanut butter is hard to find, but Nutella is everywhere. My kids would be happy eating Nutella for every meal. They also eat about 10-15 bananas a day. I hope kids can't get potassium poisoning from too many bananas. 12/4 is only 3 bananas per kid but I have a sneaky suspicion that #2 eats most of them. I buy bananas daily.

Our apartment is on the top/5th floor of a building. The building is on top of a store, so we only have to run down several flights of stairs to get easy things like juice, bread and bananas. If we need to do a big run, we drive to the Tesco. That is one of my biggest stresses of the week because 4 kids in a grocery store is stressful enough, but when you have to use google translate on every item, it adds to the stress. On top of all that, I have kids asking for random things or just putting things in the cart. All of this is normal for parents, but being in a foreign country is just hard. 

The cute thing is when they want something, the kids say, "Mommy, yes money-money?"

We like to swim, but at the local pool, you have to wear a swim cap. Also, Daddy got in trouble for wearing western style swim trunks. The kind of swim trunks every man/boy in America wears. The lifeguard said his trunks were unsafe and the next time we come, he will have to wear a speedo!

This old building is in the middle of Warsaw and houses several things... 2 museums, a theatre and elevators to the top. The boys wanted to go to the top, but it was very expensive. We may go do that on our last day in Warsaw.  I have a feeling they will not like it, but they really want to go.