Tomorrow's Gotcha Day, Times Two

Yum! Nothing tastes better than a contraband cookie!

Tomorrow is Alex’s “Gotcha Day.” We will visit him as usual (but a little bit later, and more briefly) in the morning, and then he will go to have one last lunch with his groupa while we sign more paperwork and distribute small thank-you gifts to the nannies who took care of him for us. We’re also bringing treats for his groupa—candy bars, cookies, juice, bananas. All of these are pretty rare, and help the kids to celebrate along with Alex.

After his lunch, we will hit the road for Kiev, the capital…a four-hour drive. We’ll set up in an apartment there, and complete documents for the U.S. Embassy over the next two days. Then, if there is no snag getting Alex’s visa, we will wake up at 3 a.m. Thursday morning to fly out of Kiev, with stops in Munich and Chicago, where we will go through customs and immigration. We’ll arrive in Minneapolis at 7:35 (assuming all goes smoothly!) and crash at my brother’s house, having been awake for 24 hours. Then he will drive us down to Winona the next morning.

It is going to be quite an exciting week.

It will be doubly exciting because tomorrow morning, at around 8 a.m., my sister will have a c-section to give birth to Dominic. Little Dominic has severe birth defects—basically a face that is split in two, with likely brain damage—and whether he will survive is apparently a bit of an open question. If he does survive, he and his family will be facing some real struggles. They’re confident that there will be joy woven into those struggles, and so are we. We’re excited to meet little Dominic later this summer.

So in a way, we can call tomorrow Gotcha Day Times Two!

Just a note that we may not be posting anything new until the end of this week; with Alex in tow, it will be a lot more difficult to find time for being online. We'll post as we can, though!