Sunday, June 3, 2007

Today, our plan is to go to the Extreme Park, eat lunch, and take the girls to a movie. We are going to spend time by ourselves today instead of hanging out with Masha and her family. We want to make sure that the girls realize that life will not always revolve around hanging out with their friends and that we use this time to really bond as a family. When we talked about it with Kseniya, we decided that our driver would take us to the orphanage at 10, that we would pick up the girls, and head to the Extreme Park. We got to the Extreme Park at 10:20 and were very disappointed to see that it didn’t open til 11. I think those may have been the longest 40 minutes of my life. The girls were EXTREMELY disappointed! We walked around the outside of the Extreme Park for a while, but after 20 minutes of walking, we still had 20 minutes of waiting. We really hoped that the girls would be a little happier once the extreme park opened. We had planned this day hoping it would create really fun memories, not really disappointing memories. When the park finally opened, we rushed inside and began deciding which ride to go on first. We told the girls to decide together which ride they wanted to go on first. We gave Amina the money, and she picked the ride she wanted to go on first. I thought Khrystyna was going to punch her. We explained that Khrystyna could pick the next ride and that they should take turns. The rest of our time at the park was wonderful! The girls did a great job of taking turns and we went on some very fun rides. Our whole family rode the rollercoaster together and we all went on the bumper cars. After our first time on the bumper cars, the girls wanted to go again. I just wanted to go to the chiropractor. I have no idea why people think bumper cars are so much fun! We bought tickets for the girls and headed for a shaded bench to watch them from. (Sidenote: Ludmilla has said that when the girls are out in the sun they need to have on hats or headcoverings. Khrystyna’s hair is in pigtails today her baseball cap is perched precariously on top of her pigtails.) The girls got in their cars, buckled up, and prepared to drive. Amina is more like me in the sense that she likes to drive the bumper cars, but she spends her time trying to avoid collisions. Khrystyna is all about hitting as many people as she can! During one of Khrystyna’s major collisions, her hat popped off her head and onto the ground. Khrystyna started to reach out of the car, but Fred and I both yelled “Khrystyna, No!” We were both afraid she’d get out of the car and end up with broken arms, legs, or worse. She heard us, shrugged her shoulders, and went back to driving. In the meantime, her hat was laying in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t long before people started hitting it with their cars and dragging it along the floor. It got pushed around by various people for the rest of the time. When the ride was over, Amina spotted the hat and ran over to get it. It looked as if it had been run over by 50 semis. It was covered in grease! Khrystyna laughed about it and then put it back on her head. I’m sure we’re going to get asked about it. I wasn’t sure if it would be better to take her hat and try to wash it, but I was afraid she’d get in trouble for not having a hat! After we finished riding all the rides they wanted to ride, our driver picked us up and we headed to lunch. We went to Vivattime for lunch. They were handing out balloons for the kids. The balloons were not helium…they were just blown up balloons on a long straw-like stick. Khrystyna got a yellow one and Amina got a green one. Fred and I were really hoping they’d forget them as we left the restaurant. We were heading to the movies next and didn’t feel like being responsible for balloons. We had about 45 minutes til the movie started, so we decided to walk through the park first. The girls wanted to jump on one of the large bouncy things in the park. We’ve let them jump on the larger of the 2 multiples times, but today for the sake of time and money we decided on the smaller one. The girls had a wonderful time and we got a great unstaged picture of Khrystyna punching this large punching bag thing in the face! When we finished at the park, we headed to the movie theater. We went to buy tickets for the 2:00 showing of the children’s movie, but it wasn’t being shown for some reason. The girls were translating for us and I heard Khrystyna say or Shrek 3. We told them that if they wanted to go to Shrek 3 again that was fine with us. The weather was very stormy and looked like there was going to be a downpour at any minute. We bought the tickets for Shrek 3 and on our way out the door, Amina said “Mom, 3”. I wasn’t sure what she meant at first, but I quickly realized that she meant that the movie started at 3 pm. That meant we have over an hour to kill. Fred wanted to take some of the stuff up to our apartment so I asked him to pick up a few flashcards and dry-erase books for the girls. The girls are still not allowed to go to our apartment, so we headed to the pet store while Fred went to our apartment. Unfortunately, the pet store was closed, so we walked to our apartment and sat down on one of the benches near the apartment to wait for Fred. While we were sitting there, it started raining. We headed for the shelter of the building’s overhang. Then Amina told me she had to go to the bathroom. I asked if she could wait until the cinema and she said no. She looked like it was an emergency, so we headed up to the apartment. After the girls had used the restroom, we headed back to the cinema. We now only had 50 minutes to kill! They have a lobby like area where you can wait for the movie you are going to see. It is a large concrete room with a few couches, a few video games, and a concession stand. We headed for one of the couches. I sat down and Khrystyna threw all of her stuff on the couch next to me before heading over to look at the video games. When Fred came over to sit down, I said “Fred, watch the balloon.” It didn’t seem that he heard me as he continued sitting down. I got out another “Fred, watch the” before there was a noise that sounded like a gunshot. One waiting mother covered her child’s head like she thought someone was shooting and the people who work there came running out of the office. Needless to say, it was quite an incident. Khrystyna was rolling her eyes like crazy and Amina acted like she didn’t know us! I’m sure everyone went home talking about the stupid Americans. After the balloon incident, we decided to try working on some English. We spent 15 minutes going over flashcards and writing our letters and then we let the girls play a few video games. We were so happy when it was finally time for the movie to start. When the movie was over, it was pouring out! We waited a few minutes for our driver and then headed back to the orphanage. We were all quite exhausted when we dropped the girls off. We headed back to our apartment and I had just enough energy to warm up some leftovers for dinner. Our apartment is cooler than it has been in previous days. It’s actually under 80 degrees. Court is tomorrow so we need to head to bed early so we are well rested for the big day.