Hiccups

After three trips to Russia under our belts without any hiccups, yesterday we had to postpone our trip to meet our daughter! Yeap, I was so happy when I saw the FedEx guy coming at 10 am in the morning on Friday and after few minutes my hands were shaking when I opened the enveloped and saw that our application package was returned and our passports had no visas. Everything was returned and in our transmittal letter it was highlighted that I sent a money order for $250 for my application and they wrote next to it "$120!!". After thinking for few seconds I realized what had happened. I was born in Madrid, Spain, but my citizenship is Ecuadorian and my passport is from Ecuador. Well, the "smart" person we got at the consulate decided that because I was born in a country in the European Union I only had to pay $100 plus $20 is for the shipping fees, regardless of my citizenship!

So, I called Carol, gave her the bad news and then she suggested trying to get the visa from the consulate in Houston. We checked their website, called an agency they recommend there and at the end we decided to call Peace Travel, who had issued the voucher or visa invitation. They suggested Go to Russia and after few more phone calls we figured out what to do to get our visas processed by them and ready to travel next Saturday, January 23. We called Carol again and told her what we were planning to do... She hoped we could arrive in Kaluga sooner, but understood the limitations, so then she confirmed that it was a safe assumption that our meeting at the MOE would be moved to January 25th.

Yesterday was just a crazy day. We had to cancel flights, appartments, Dr. Togoyev, fill online stuff for our new visas applications, get new passport pics, and then get everything reserved and rescheduled again! We were exhausted at night and still not believing that after working so hard getting so much stuff done we were not traveling this weekend.... Oh well...

In the positive side, we have now one week to get over our colds/coughs so we can fight the below zero temperatures in Russia, we can get Diego healthy again (he is on antibiotics too), we can take all the Christmas stuff down and just relax before the trip. On the negative side, even though the MOE knows that CSS has a family interested in the referral, this is the third time a date has been set to meet the MOE for this baby girl, January 11 was for the first family that accepted this referral (they declined before traveling), then January 18, and hopefully January 25 we will finally be there...

In the meantime I already started going through her clothes and thinking about the clothes we will bring for her trip home!! I know, I know, I am going way ahead of things, but knowing her weight and height now I have a better idea of what will fit her... We also had a very relaxing day with Diego, who poor thing, had few nights getting very antsy and clingy... This time we won't tell him until we are ABSOLUTELY sure we are getting our visas... Please, pray that this time nothing else will go wrong!

And now, some pictures of the fun we had in December: Family pictures on Christmas Eve, Diego's surprise when he saw his scooter, opening more presents, at the aquarium with his cousins and playing with his cousins toys in Houston.