Winding down

I always have a hard time sleeping before a flight. I've flown a lot of miles in my time, but flying always makes me a little nervous still. I'm not usully real big on looking out the window and when I do I sort of psych myself out the whole time...like I'm not really 30,000 feet in the air. Not really. I go into a mode where I just try to think of it as being in a very uncomfortable living room on the ground. Knitting helps. I used to do cross stitch on planes before I learned to knit. there was a lot of stitching going on at 30,000 feet between The Netherlands and Dallas back in the day. Both knitting and cross stitching are meditative activities. Good for calming the soul.

I'm trying to wind down for sleep. We are packed except for toiletries. I'll do those in the morning. The most important things going with us are our 2 inch thick binder of paperwork, our court clothes, and our chest x-rays, although I suppose they can just x-ray us again if something happens to those. I managed to get most of our stuff in the two rolling carry-ons, and probably could have just done with those and the backpacks, but the gifts we are taking, and the toys for when we see N, take up most of the third suitcase that we will check. I just hope we can manage in the cars the agency workers will use to pick us up from the airports because last time we didn't have the bigger third suitcase and we were usually putting a carry-on in the back seat between us. They don't have big cars.

I've packed way too much knitting, as usual. I was getting better, but we are talking about a lot of flying and waiting on this trip. Not that I knit with lightening speed, but I am taking three projects that just need finishing, one that needs a button added, yarn for a short little cardi for N, and the requisiste ball of self-striping sock yarn and toothpick needles for those times when I just need something brainless to pick up and put down or in case someone gets buggy and confiscates the metal circular needles I am using for the other projects. I have never had needles confiscated, but you never know what is going to happen. If they only understood how much safer we all are when they let the knitter's knit, I wouldn't have any worries.

We are leaving the house at 8am tomorrow to go to Chicago and wait for our evening flight to Moscow. We land at 12:30pm Moscow time Sunday, so I may check in Sunday evening if I can.

If you are wondering, our schedule is
Sunday - arrive in Moscow
Monday - Eight Doctor Medical for C and I in Moscow
Tuesday - fly to our region and visit with N in the afternoon
Wednesday - court. If the judge declares us a family, we go back to the baby home to visit N again, then we fly to Moscow Wed. night (without N)
Thursday - fly home

There is a ten day waiting period between court and us being able to take N from the baby home. At this point, the plan is for me to go back on Oct. 6th, get her and go do the paperwork hting in Moscow, and then come home with her on the 10th. C will need to go to Spain for a week on the 28th, and he will be back in time, but probably won't go with me on trip 3 because of work. I can do Trip 3 alone as long as I take my power of attorney.

In the meantime, here is a photo of some of the gifts we are taking with us. We were told to have 12 gifts for N's caregivers, the orphange director, the director of the Ministry of Education, the judge, our translators, and our coordinator. I've got a lot of stuff and plan to use the Dallas Cowboy bags as gift bags. Everyone will be getting at least two things, maybe three or four if the items are smaller and maybe just a few if the items were more expensive. For the baby home donation we will either give cash to help them with improvements or get Oksana to take us shopping for things the baby home needs. It just isn't possible to take stuff over there. On the Moscow to region flight, Aeroflot only allows us 44 lbs per person, which seems like a lot until you try to do it.


Items we are taking include Dallas Cowboy shirts, pens, and pencils, nice pen sets, Texas-themed magnets, Texas bluebonnet postcards, cosmetics (I've heard the caregivers like to receive cosmetics), scarves and shawls, and I have hand-knit some items for one of the translators (that I need to finish on the plane). I made five pink/purple Calorimetries for caregivers, but I cannot find the freaking buttons tonight to put on them, so it doesn't look like those are going with us. :-( I was going to get pralines for the bags yesterday, but forgot. :-(

And this is what my bed looked like a few hours ago.

I was practicing uploading video and taped a little bit of the packing for N.

P.S. You know what, screw the buttons. Calorimetries don't really need them. I make mine pretty snug anyway, so I'll just take them with me and sew the ends together.