Trip to Kiev, First full day together

It is hard to blog for two days that were so full, especially on my smartphone, but I'll give the highlights at least before we crash.

We are all 5 in Kiev after our first appointment at the embassy, Val is on the train with girls' passports in hand, and the embassy expects to give us visas tomorrow at our 2 pm appointment. Tomorrow the only other thing needed is medical exam; we need to be on the street at 7:30 am to meet Val and go to the hospital. Rebooking for Saturday would have cost $8000 so we have reserved airplane tickets for Sunday, which has the benefit of giving us a day to rest after a 3-day flurry. We are back in civilized Kiev, which allowed us to have excellent Italian-style pizza for our first family meal (not counting bread, cheese and snacks on the train). This is the first time we have overlapped in Kiev with our friends the Benzels, and it is the time their assistance is most appreciated. It is no surprise that watching Julia is a fulltime job; she has arms an inch longer than you think and a mystical fascination with buttons (she locked herself in the bathroom, rang the neighbor's doorbell, and came a quarter inch from wiping out some embassy info I walked 30 minutes to get). She is also one of the happiest and most affectionate kids you can imagine, and says thank you (in Dutch) for every little thing you do for her; she also has surprised me by doing a better job than her sisters at the "Point to the ___" game we play to teach them English words without their having to say them. Other than that, things gave gone very smoothly, although some of our plans in the last couple of days are being made on the spur of the moment by Val, which has caused unnecessary stress and easily avoidable problems.

The biggest adventure today is that we had no money to pay for visas since we had given it to Val earlier, and our credit card bank had mysteriously blocked our account (both our banks did that last summer even though we had specifically authorized them before our trip); I spent 90 min trying to get that taken care of with some very unusual challenges. Just as I was finally able and ready to get the money, Julie and the kids met me in the street; the office had decided they could accept it tomorrow.