Today I mail'd packages to the girls. The last letters before they get their hosting letters are the airport. It contains personal letters, pictures, some cheap fashion accessories, and M&Ms for S. Each also includes a translated calendar of our major plans for July. The post office had what looked like big red bubble envelopes left over from Valentines... I thought that would be neat for the girls so even though they were a bit over-sized I used them.
S heads to the Crimea on Monday so there is zero expectation she will ever get this package. It is worse odds (yes than zero) when you realize that her orphanage director still hasn't given her the package we sent with the family over two weeks ago. When she gets here we will have to have her read all the letters we've sent to see which ones she received. Wondering if she's allowed to have her cell phone while there or if we'll lose communication.
I don't know if A has received a single one of her packages... at some point we will find out when she gets here. We have her translated letter for the airport. Melissa wrote it based on the assumption that she hasn't received anything from us... while trying not to be totally mundane if she has.
This evening I planted trees and bushes.. they are intended to give a little privacy on that side of the house though it'll be a few years before that actually happens. The chicken coop will go there... it is only 3.5ft tall, doesn't look like a chicken coop, and in my biased opinion it looks nice. It is movable, an "ark", so you don't foul the ground in one place.
The kids helped a little but mostly played in the yard. At one point I sprayed Dennis with a little water and he decided that was fun... so all 4 kids were drenched... don't think mom was as pleased.
After dinner I got out our laptop with RosettaStone on it. Got through the first lesson and the core section of the second lesson. There are a couple of words I'm going to need to put in google translate or ask a native speaker what they are since I couldn't figure it out specifically from the patterns of pictures. But I figured out how they setup a keyboard with phonetic mapping which makes it pretty easy for me to type... and was able to read/deduce the meaning of some basic multi-sentence items. I like that about RosettaStone... I can't book learn with anything... but this actually presents progressively harder challenges and by doing the same things in different combinations you "magically" just start getting it.
Dennis was pretty glues to the laptop with me. He thought it was funny I was speaking Russian and he understood it. I checked my pronunciation with him a few times... and he laughed at me as I confused swimming with drinking. For a second there I got a shock thinking he was actually reading the Russian on the screen... we have no believe he even knows his alphabet or can recognize his own name in Russian. That belief was short lived as I realized he could hear the computer voice coming from the headset cause it was up too loud.
Lastly, a prayer request... a couple actually...
1. Our renter's for our Vegas home actually paid so they shouldn't be getting evicted. Pray that their financial situation stabilizes so we don't have that concern hanging over us... and for that matter they don't either.
2. For Melissa's work situation... since she got back from adopting Dennis in Feb and had to use all her vacation time first for that, she's accrued little time off. Her work has been quite flexible in general over the years and last year even gave her 1 week of unpaid leave during hosting that we were immensely grateful for... but they don't want to give her a few days of unpaid leave this July or allow her to do some work from home if she's taking time off. That leaves Melissa having to work 10hr days in the office (figured 12hrs total) or not participating in several of the outings. I have plenty of vacation time accrued so I will be around but it is important Melissa spend a lot of time with the girls too.
To make things harder... due to some odd circumstances, Melissa's working is a nice plus for short term cash flow but in a 9mo outlook we actually have more money in the bank if she doesn't work... so to a large extent she's working for "free" at best. But she loves her job and the people she is working with so we had decided to ignore the funny money issue... just makes it really hard for July where she feels like she's choosing to stress out and work long days while losing precious time with the girls.
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