Let's try again...nooooo pink lines

Well, we are going to write first today and post then try pictures and see if that works better. It is pretty cold here and we woke up to a dusting of snow and very small little flakes falling. As if the ground wasn't treacherous enough....now the snow covers the ice rinks just enough so you don't know when you are about to hit them. We skated here to the internet with no falls today, just slips. Although, not the case yesterday. It was my (karen's) day yesterday.

We were going for an ice dancing gold this time. We hold hands all of the time , not just to show affection, but for survival. In our qualifying first skate, I pulled the very difficult praying on your knees maneuver while still moving forward. I also tried to tell everyone that I just felt the spirit and had to drop to my knees to pray for some friends back home.......nothin to see here, just keep it moving. In our finale skate home, we pulled out all of the punches and did our award winning, spin/twist the wife on the ground while still holding her hand and the laundry. This one got a 10 from the judges. Of course, we started laughing so hard it was hard to get up and stay up.....and I had to pee so bad so ....just try doing an ice spin while crossing your legs and laughing.....maybe this deserves and Oscar instead of a gold medal. Who knows....we just know that we are maintaining our Dork status quite well.

We had a pretty good day with Nurik on Tuesday and will see him again this afternoon. Just 3 more visits in the dreaded green room and he will be at the apartment with us!! We are having a little trouble with disciplining without laughing. We have become a bit slap-happy and everything cracks us up.....I guess some might call it a slow dive into insanity but for us it is becoming parents. Ha! He is so blatantly testing us that it is hard to not smile and have the stern parent face. He got up on the chair and wanted to write on the wall and held the crayon up to the wall and just turned and looked at us with this big priceless grin. Boy, are we glad we chose the magnetic paint at home verses the chalkboard paint. It would be too hard to explain to a non-english speaking boy that you can draw on this wall and not that one. eek!
He finally went to potty on his little "bowl" for us. I imagine it is a bit difficult for him to pee so out in the open for us. Although, we have been told that their potty time is quite social as they all sit on the potties at the same time and play. We could tell this as he sat on it forever just playing with his blocks and playing peek-a-boo behind the desk with Masha.

We are so thankful for our time to prepare for parenting while we are here. We have read and are reading books on being parents, having long discussions about what we will do, and such. We see this time as an extra gift of preparation that most parents don't get since they maintain their busy lives up until the time of delivery in most cases. We have had to stop (literally) and focus on the task and joy ahead that God has destined for us. Kind of cool......although, we can't wait to get home.....

We can't believe it has been over a month since we left home and still probably have 3 more weeks. We sure miss everyone and hope that our blogs don't get too silly as we move into dealing with being gone with humor versus depression. Thank you for all of your prayers and we will try and send some pics after we post this first blog. Love to all, K-Pat