i'll try

Your comments and e-mails were so kind and encouraging. Some of the most powerful ones come from the people who e-mail telling us that we've made a difference to them--people who have adopted, who are adopting, who are thinking about adopting an older child...

I'll work on it.

And, there are always car stories, right?

We haven't had our car since we got back. It's registration expired. My kartooshka expired. When they went to renew my kartooshka, which had to be done before they renewed my registration, they discovered that when they last renewed my visa (only until 1 April--but we don't know why. I suspect it was a handwriting problem and was supposed to be 1 August. ) they didn't register me. So I had to be registered, my kartooshka had to be renewed and my car needed to be re-registered. And the battery died while this was happening, stranding it at the consulate. Add in the fact that the ever-helpful consulate motor pool staff is now not supposed to provide support for foreign-hires at the school (I don't know why), and it has been a long process.

Big surprise.

Today was our school's welcome picnic. We were eating scrambled egg sandwiches (yum) under the awning as it insistently drizzled when Lexi said, "Mama, there's our car." Without looking up I said, "It probably looks like our..." and looked at it.

Of course, I still don't know our new license number, since we've barely had the car since it got re-plated, so that didn't help. And it was cleaner than our car usually is...but we washed ours on one of our last days here..

"It IS our car! Good eye, Lex!"

Yes, we have a car again. Lexi scrambled into her carseat and sighed, "Oh, it's so nice to have our car again." And it started. And we drove it home.

Lexi is sitting in the window right now telling me, almost incredulously, "Mama, that's our car parked right outside!"

Simple joys.

I plan to have it vacuumed tomorrow on the way to pre-church shopping and to find out how to disconnect the battery (it's hidden). I'll just do that every time we park it.