More new photos and so long to Babushka:)

Tomorrow is court day at 2:00 and that will put us one giant leap closer to our Marina. They call her Manya here and it seems so endearing when I hear them talk with her. My mom left yesterday afternoon, catching a train to Kiev at 5, getting into the airport at midnight and then a flight at 6:45 am to get home to Greenville Spartanburg airport around 6 44 this evening. She gains 7 hours and my head does not do time-math very well, so hopefully she will just sleep on the plane and not notice what her watch may be doing. We are all so grateful that she came on this trip with us, and Evan had someone to play with while we worked out some obstacles in our own journey. Anyhow it was sad to see her go yesterday but in the name of my poor father's heart, we bid her adieu and will see them all sooner than we can imagine! Time flies here for sure. You hardly get back from one visit before we get off to another. Then Evan starts in on going to the game room or off to a happy meal...and we are still fitting in school in between all our running around! We will start the Ukrainian language class I downloaded when they send me the windows version (somehow I got the Mac). Then we will be working hard! At least I will, I hate not being able to talk with Marina, even though we always get our point across. I just want to know what she is saying. I can't assess her language skills because I do not have any comparative sentences to use. Tully asked Evan what he thought of Marina yesterday, and after contemplating he came up with "She's cute". For a brother, that is commendable! The silly faces he is making in this post is where we told him Marina is older than he is (by 3 whole months). He went with his official coo koo face. We did tell him he would still always be her big brother and would look out for her. I have also seen her in action over a sack of toys and another kid, it may not be all that necessary. Today is a rainy day out side so we will take the dvd player and see how she likes curious george. We have been incredibly fortunate to have the kind of weather that we can play outside every day, and that has been a lot of fun. The kids decided to "rain leaves" right before they went in last night and man, were we all dirty! The leaves came from the sand box and in the hands of maybe 8 kids, and no one had the foresight to realize that handfuls of sand would accommodate the leaves. Right as we were getting ready to separate from Marina, the kids all walked over to the big gates that leave the orphanage...and Marina decided she was simply LEAVING the compound. when she realized she had to stay after much wrestling and discussing with the teacher, she laid her head down on the railing in defeat and it broke my heart for her. She was pretty bent about not being able to leave and would not tell us good bye last night. More and more I long for the day she clears that gate for home. We are simply crazy for her.