Happy New Year!

Matt and I wish you all a very Happy 2007.

I'm excited because I'm finally in the month we'll be coming home. Just 18 more days.

Thanks to everyone for all of the great comments and e-mails. Your support is really keeping us going. We just can't wait to get the girls OUT of the orphanages and HOME!!!!

We all went out to dinner last night, which was not an easy thing to do. As I mentioned, the New Year's festivities are HUGE here. It's kind of like 4th of July, Christmas, New Year and Halloween all wrapped into one. What happens is that almost all of the restaurants close at 6 pm, reopen at midnight and stay open until 6 am. We were lucky enough to find one still open after 6 and had a really delicious dinner. I fell asleep well before midnight, but then as soon as the clock struck twelve there were fireworks going off everywhere. They seemed like they were right in our backyard. It was actually very nice to watch from the apartment window. After that, I fell back to sleep and woke up just a little before 7 am our time- just in time to see the ball come down in Times Square on the BBC. I almost started to cry !!

Today, we visited with Natasha who was really into repeating words and phrases in English for us. She runs hot and cold with that. We were trying to teach her the concept of saying Please and Thank You. When Matt would feed her a piece of tangerine, she'd repeat after him, Thank You, Papa- but every so often she'd go beyond that and say, Thank You Papa, Mama and then she'd look at my Dad and call him Babushka (Grandma) which would set HIM off tickling her. She completely knew what she was up to.

Sounds like Papa isn't the only man wrapped around our Natasha's little finger.

Also, to the entire Sicilian Family- thank you so much for that wonderful e-mail that you sent during the party. We were so sad to be missing it- and missing all of you, we were both crying when Matt opened it up- xxxooo

So, that's about it. I'll post over the next few days, but it's really going to be pretty dull stuff until the 8th- that's when we'll be heading out of Yalta again. We'll be in Kerch a day or two to get Victoria and then will be returning to Yalta to spring Natasha. Please keep your fingers crossed that all continues to go well and that we don't run into too many problems getting the passports...

Love to you all,
Lisa and Matt