Hurry up and wait

Today was extremely boring and a very long day! We left our house at 8 a.m. and met our sit-in facilitator (someone who our facilitator paid to help us get Marina's passport application submitted), picked up Marina and the school lawyer, only to figure out there is not enough room in the car for all of us! They weren't expecting the school to insist on the lawyer coming along, but because we don't have FULL custody until after the 10 days are up, we could not take her without him . . . even though they let us this past weekend without problem - go figure!! I think the director was just being a bit of a jerk, for the heck of it. So, we ended up having to hire a taxi to follow us all day so that we could all go. Then the rest of the day was spent driving to this place and that and waiting here and there. It was cold and even snow flurries were falling. Tonight it is supposed to get below freezing! We will have to buy winter coats for sure!! When we got home, we were informed that the main water line to the house broke and they are hoping to have water restored by morning. Good thing we got a shower before we left today :) Poor Constantine has been digging all day to get to the water line break and just now called for a professional to come finish the job (it's almost 8p.m here). We did manage to buy a blood pressure cuff today while in Kharkov, which is good since we will need one to monitor Marina after we leave Novaya. We also looked to see if we could by Olga and Constantine a faster modem for their computer, but since NO ONE uses dial-up anymore, you can't find them in the stores here. So, that blows our great gift idea. Oh well. Tomorrow, we will see Marina in the afternoon and she wants to go get ice cream and buy blank cd's for her friends so that they can copy music off the computer at school. So that's it. Nothing else too new and exciting to tell you.