End of Day 26.
Vitals; Today is Ruslan's court date. I considered this progress until Nadya mentioned that the Lutz's court is just after ours. The Lutzs arrived TWO WEEKS after us. Not only that, Nadya also said that we can't meet to sign the papers for Roman until Monday at 10 am. We need those papers to file/ask for a court date for him and that is usually a week later. So, it looks like the "ten day wait" for the boys will not overlap very much, if at all.
We realized after Nadya's call that we are here for at least another month. Bill took this kind of hard. He is really ready to go home. It didn't help that we were sort of stuck in the area today, waiting for Nadya's call. She had hoped to get Roman's papers today and we wanted to be nearby in case we could sign them, but that won't happen until Monday.
Not so Vital: We got the heaters all working, so all the things I might mention at this point are minor, yet also strangely annoying.
We have two leaks here. One in the bathroom. The water heater is mounted on the wall, just over the toilet. We thought (when we first saw it) that it might be a tankless water heater. It's not. It's just small. To compensate, they keep the water very HOT. Be careful!!
Anyway, there is a little ledge under it because the wall sticks out about six inches to hide the toilet tank, which is actually kind of cool. The ledge WAS a handy place for extra toilet paper, until the water heater started leaking. It was just an occasional drip when we came, but now it is a steady drip, drip. Bill put a cup under it a few days ago, but we had to empty it more and more often. Finally, it was filling up about once an hour. So, yesterday I took a piece of pink yarn from Reilly's knitting, tied it to the leaking knob and let it hang down into the toilet, which is right below the water heater. My idea was that the water would get absorbed into the string and drip into the toilet. I have to say, I feel pretty ingenious about this, because it worked. The ledge is dry. I have the string resting on the cord to the water heater (electric) so the water never hits the ledge. If it gets too wet, it drips into the toilet when it hits the cord, but usually it goes down the string. As you can imagine, it's very safe here. (Not. I don't think they have ever heard of GFCI outlets). I'll try to post a photo on FB so you can see it. The point is, the ledge is dry, and I thought of the string while Engineer Boy only thought of the cup, which makes me happy.
The other leak is in the sun room. We have what looks like a teeny-tiny air pump hooked to the wall. It came on when we turned on the heat and it is leaking for some reason. WOW. It is a lot of water. We have a bowl under this one. It doesn't matter too much, since the sun room has been too cold lately to play in. But, it's very wet for hide and seek.
My kids have been INGENIOUS by the way, thinking up things to play here. They think up a new game almost every day. Today they thought up a variation on hide and seek they call 'monster." Since there are limited numbers of hiding spots, the "it" can't actually LOOK, he has to just stomp around the apartment and wait until someone gives themselves away-wiggling a curtain, sneezing, making a noise, etc. They played this for a long time.
I have resisted getting the kids any toys, because I'm not sure we can take them home. But, we went today out of desperation and everything was at least $10. Even playdough. I went home and made some from scratch.
I also found two tubes in a trash pile by our elevator (yes) and took them into our place. Most of the apartments in this building are unfinished, so there are boxes and construction debris everywhere. Anyway, they are 2x4 inch square, clear, plastic tubes and about 8 feet long. First they were weapons (of course), but then they started using them for car track (hot wheels), launching them at different targets and shooting for distance. Then they made a few jumps, shooting the cars up and over a barrier and into the other track. I plan to cut them in half today (long ways) so they will have 16 feet to work with. Should be interesting.
Anyway, all that is to say that we are making it. At the moment, we have a slight hope that we will be home by Thanksgiving. Please pray with us that we make it!
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