What We're Working On This Week

I'm hoping that the visa's show up on Thursday.  That would be the best-case scenario and correspond to the dates given on the consulate's website.  We know that nothing is happening tomorrow as its "Victory Day" in Russia.  The celebration is for the victory over Germany during WWII, and a celebration of veterans and a memorial of those who died, equivalent to our Veteran's Day on Nov. 11.  So everything is shut down, including the consulates in the US, to honor the day.

Our project for this weekend was to get our "tech" organized.  We're taking an ACER Netbook with us instead of a laptop.  We loaded it with anything we won't ever need; but possibly may use and wished we had a copy of: like the info pages of passport, our dossier and homestudy and all the websites that we may find helpful...McMaster's Universtiy FAS visual demonstration, the CDC toddler growth charts, the orphan doctor's website for evaluating referral's, etc.  etc.  Stuff we could find on the internet, but since we'll be under stress,  I decided it would be nice to be able to find them at a click of the mouse.  Probably over-planning, but we've got the time.

We do need to re-do our fingerprints for the FBI search and have new criminal background checks done.  Those expired months ago and we need them to be done within 3 months of court.  If we're super-planners, we'll go get those done in the next week so that they can be processed the week we're gone.  That way they'll be in our mailbox when we get back from our first trip.  I can get them notarized, county certified and state apostilled the week we return and get them sent to Russia.  That's it for this week--one sidenote.  If you look at the sidebar...the "Church of the Week" in Guernsey, Channel Islands  was built by one monk with remnant pieces of Wedgewood china and is the smallest consecrated church in the world.  A very interesting church.