What more can be said? Mary Walsh watched Valerie last week, and they visited a playground. This GREAT picture resulted:

Olga and Valerie are in Russia now. I’ll attend a conference in the US this weekend and then head off to Russia.

Our apologies go to all who we didn’t get a chance to see on this trip. We had a lot going on and will report on that a bit later. It’s been a busy time.

The summer will be quite busy. We’ll host teams in May, June and July; I’ll be in Montenegro twice and in Estonia often; Sunbeam is moving ahead at a quick pace, and it will be nice to be there and participate in all that’s happening there; and of course there is a lot going on in Russia: I’ll visit Murmansk in March and work at Elama quite a bit as well.

Yesterday, Olga attended the preliminary court hearing for the removal of Valerie’s birth mother’s parental rights. The hearing went well. The final hearing will be on Monday afternoon. Once Oksana’s parental rights are removed, then we have a six month waiting period before we can apply for adoption. So, hopefully the adoption will be completed by the end of this year.

Onward!