We are back

Hi everybody! We got back Monday evening at 8:30-ish. We have been busy getting back into our work & home routine. We are still washing clothes, emptying sand out of luggage, and catching up on e-mails. We had a great time and we sailed to many ports of call in the US & British Virgin Islands aboard the 45' Catamaran, the "Hound Dog". We went to Jost Van Dyke, Tortola, Norman Island, St James Island, St John, and St Thomas. The highlights for me (Felix) were; sailing into Cane Garden Bay on Tortola, going to Foxy's on Jost, and snorkeling in Maho Bay-St John. Although we had lots of fun, I can't wait to sail with our future children, and, at times I was a bit melancholy. When Zina was here during the hosting trip, she saw our photo albums of our other Island trips and said she would love to go to places like that and swim at a beach. My fun and joy will be seeing those kinds of trips through our children's eyes, in the future.

More good news! Heidi and I received our Homestudy addendum. Remember, the one requesting a change in our age ranges from 2-9 yrs old to now read 4-14 yrs old. It was done and in the mail when we got back. As I write this, Heidi is driving to the CO State Dept to get the apostil done. We anticipate sending it to Valentina tonight or in the morning. She is already hard at work translating our dossier and knows this small piece is coming. Also, Heidi's sister Sally completed the marriage certificate "Jr." blunder. She wrote a statement saying that she witnessed the marriage and that Heidi did indeed marry me, Felix "Jr." and not my dad, the other Felix. She got it notarized and apostilled. It will be in the mail soon from Illinois, where Sal lives. As this is not a requirement for the dossier, we are told to hold this in reserve and present it if and only if any official in Ukraine questions why the "Jr" was omitted on the marriage certificate. Me thinks a quick weekend trip to Nassau, Bahamas (where we were married) should be taken to ask for the "Jr. to be added. Everyone else, however, feels that this will be enough to resolve the matter. By the way, aren't you tired of me writing "Jr."?

I will post a couple of pictures of our trip as soon as I can get our camera to come back from the dead. I suspect that the humidity did it in for good. Perhaps I can retrieve pictures from the stick.