The Decker's Adoption Journey

More pics . . .

2007-07-13T13:17:00.001-07:00

Becoming a cowboy

2007-07-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Not much new to report but I thought I would throw in a cute picture from July 4th.

The Summer = The River

2007-07-03T08:38:00.001-07:00

Well John is back and Emerson and I are both happy to have a couple extra hands around. We have mostly just been settling into our new life with the little one. Which translates into things like lots of laundry, researching ecologically friendly diaper options, learning how to put together an exersaucer, and perfecting the temperature of a bottle. So, you know, the average kind of stuff! This week should be pretty busy with all of the festivities for the 4th of July. We are also hoping to get his SSN later this week as well.

Emerson is 9 months tomorrow

2007-06-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

First off I must apologize that I am only posting pictures from Kazakhstan. John has the camera on the river, so this past week has unfortunately gone undocumented. He will be back soon and the pictures will start coming in. As for now you just get more pictures from our time out of country.

So life as a single mother has been pretty hectic this week. It will be nice to have John home for at least part of the day for the rest of the summer. Emerson is a trooper and loving the fact that he does not just have to eat on a schedule. The boy love food and has yet to turn his noes up at anything. I even finally figured out the rice cereal.

Yesterday he got lots of little people time in John Day at Beth's house as I had many errands to run in John Day and there was no way I could do them all with him in tow. I don't think he minded one bit, because when I can to pick him up all of Beth's grand kids were on the floor with him and excited to show me all the new tricks they had taught him. It was very cute.

I also heard from his pediatrician and there are a million blood test they want to run on him to get some basic health information. Also the International Adoption Specialist in Portland wants us to see her at least once to check him over and get a good base line. The only major issue we need to get checked are his eyes because we have very limited information about his O2 intake while he was in the pre-me ward. We shall see.

First Trip to the River

2007-06-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

Emerson took his first trip to the river. It was a bit chilly so he only put his feet in, but he seemed to like it. We went with Jim and Kerri and Asya the dog. I survived my fisrt night alone with the little guy. Granted he woke up at 3am with a dirty dipper and did not like the idea of going back to bed at all. I tried my hardest to let him cry it out, but at last he wone and I rocked him to sleep. I did dream that he might sleep in because of this, but no, he woke the regular time. Speeking of waking, he is up from his nap. Hope you like the pictures from Almaty.

Welcome to Dayville Emerson

2007-06-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

Last night a few friends hosted a community pot luck welcoming Emerson to town. It was great to see so many people come out and just to share our adventures in Kazakhstan with them. Emerson was a trooper and loved meeting all the new people. He has taken to "standing" with us holding him and he loves this new perspective on life. Our friends also did a money tree for us at the pot luck and much to our excitment there was enough there for us to order a nice three wheel stoller. Thank you everyone!

Yes, we are back home

2007-06-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

So I often wondered in disappointment why many blogs had a huge gap between arriving home and the next update. I no longer wonder this as it is very clear to me now. We did make it home on Monday night after a wonderful party in Seattle welcoming Emerson into the Decker family. He did a pretty good job on the long car ride home (8 hours) and only cried when wet or hungry. We must get him one of those play things that attaches to the car seat, because all toys ended up just out of his reach.

Once home we were greeted with not only the fact that we have an infant but also that we are two months behind on our chores. We were very fortunate in that the house sitters left our place looking great. That is until we entered with exploding suitcases...

On Tuesday we spent most of the day in John Day running errands dealing with overdue bills and showing off the boy. I think he is going to be the poster child for our bank. Emerson is loving all of the attention and usually puts on a good show for all that are willing to get a laugh out of him. We can not go very far in Dayville without someone stopping to say hello. Ah the joy of small town life. We definitely missed it. By yesterday afternoon exhaustion had kicked in. While at the district office getting Emerson on the health insurance plan, John rocked him to sleep, sat down and fell asleep sitting right there. Come to think of it he also fell asleep on the floor while Emerson was laying in the activity gym. Emerson was wide awake and would pinch John's nose each time he snored. Too bad the camera batteries were dead.

Well time is limited and I predict that he will wake from his nap at any moment. Currently I am on a mission to find a good stroller that is up for gravel and dirt roads. We go for his first Dr. appointment on Friday and Friday night Emerson is getting a welcome home Put luck in Dayville City park. Too bad this kid isn't loved (not.) Then on Sunday it looks like he gets a party in John Day. John also found out that he leaves for 8 days on Saturday for the river. I will miss him, but I think he will finally catch up on his sleep.

Also if anyone out there wants to baby sit for an hour on Monday let me know.

Jet Lag

2007-06-17T04:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you following along who have had the joy of experiencing jet lag before, you might have a small amount of appreciation for our recuperation time from a 14 hour schedule difference. Those of us who are able to do our research know that there are certain things one can do to shorten the process, and while the recovery time is less, it is really not that fun to endure. Unfortunately we have a very daring little boy who is really not so interested in making a speedy recovery from his trip half way across the world. How do I know this you might ask? Lets just say that he decided to start fathers day off at midnight, first demanding food. We tried to hold off thinking this will help the transition and we broke around 4am. Now he has been bright eyed ever since. Mind you the sun is now rising in Seattle and the three of us are all wide awake.
Wait wait, John has just informed me that now that it is time for us all to get up, he is Finlay down for the "night." Well that is right because it is almost 8 pm in Almaty Kazakhstan. Looks like we will be napping this fathers day morning in hopes that we will able be bright eyed again for Emerson's coming home party. I think we might just have to turn into night owls. OK off to the hot tub and then to bed. Have a great day or night...

Is it the end or the begining???

2007-06-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

OK, I am pretty sure that reality has sunk in. We have now been parents for almost two weeks. Our little guy has been to three continents, three countries, and traveled across 14 time zones and is doing great. There has been so much that has happened since we were last able to update. We spent about a week and a half in Almaty. This was an interesting time for us. We attempted to explore and learn about a very large city with a baby and very little instruction, we really missed our friends from Uralsk. Fortunately Emerson loves exploring and actually does so much better when he is out and about. Right now Almaty still seems like one big blur.

As far as traveling over half way around the world, I am very happy to say that Emerson handled it very well. We had a bassinet seat for both international flights and it was wonderful. It was probably a blessing in disguise that we had to fly all the way to LA, because they don't have them on domestic flights. We were also lucky because the service on Lufthansa was the best care we have ever received flying economy on any airline. Anything we needed they had. Every time I walked around with Emerson they would give him a toy, and me a chocolate bar and a drink. He has a blast flirting with all of the flight attendents. I don't think he is used to being smiled at by so many. The world was definitely his stage yesterday.

LA was crazy and we were super tired. When we got to customs we went into the citizen line (which is what we were told to do.) We waiting in line for 30-45 minutes (after an 11 hour flight) only to be told to go to another line, that we had to wait in for 45 min. Then we gave the man his "do not open" packet of immigration paperwork. He unceremoniously took it and told us to take a seat. At this point the cranky, wet, and hungry baby decided he had enough of the process. Well good old bureaucracy as usually was deaf to his VERY loud screams so we waited another hour until we were finally called up. He handed us back his passport with a piece of paper stating that he was now a US citizen. That's it? No hand shake, congratulations, just a stamp and NEXT... Needless to say it was a bit anti-climatically. Oh well. Then we got to go on a wild scavenger hunt to find our next flight. I sure am glad that we did not have to figure it our in Russian because I don' think it would have happened. We then found the United ticket counter and I was able to get my boarding pass for the last leg. We managed to find some Mexican food in the airport which was very good, or at least I think it was, but were were pretty numb by that point.
Finaly after the 4 hours of layover we were all set to go on our last flight. Unfortunately we got the "welcome" home with no priority seating for infants, but he did fall asleep while waiting in line to get on the plane. I sat next to a wonderfully friendly woman and Emerson slept all but the last thirty minutes. We fed him on the dessent and he never made a peep. As soon as we got off the plane, he decided to make us a present so we were off to the bathroom. When we started digging for his changing pad and diapers we realized that we had left it on the plane. John ran back to get it, only to find out that the flight attendant had given it to someone else:( So here we are about to introduce our new son to the Seattle family and we don't have any diapers with us. So we quickly rigged up something with a cloth diaper and a bandana and headed to baggage claim.
When we got there Grandmom and Grandpop were waiting with Uncle Jeff and Aunt Christie. He handled all of the love and kisses with stunned amazement and confusion. Overall not too bad. Once we got our luggage John grabbed a real diaper out of the luggage and we headed off for "home." We all played for a while and ate really good Thai food. He did great until it was time for bed. He had a bit of a melt down, but finally calmed down after thirty minutes. He did pretty well until he woke up from what he considered to be his nap. John played with him for a couple hours then he slept the rest of the night. The rest of today should be pretty mellow then tomorrow we have our first baby shower.

We made it!!!

2007-06-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

While there are many things I would like to share about the last two days, the most important thing I would like to tell everyone is that we have made it to Seattle. Emerson did great on all of the flights, and I must say that I need to take back anything bad I said about Luftansa. They we wonderful for the flight and we had exclent service and a bassinet which was a life saver. There are many more things I will share later, for now the exaustion of 38 hours of moving is setting in. I feel a bit like one feels after playing all day in the ocean. My body does not belive that we have stoped for a while.

The 38 hour day to be...

2007-06-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well we are heading out in a few hours for home. As much as we are ready to get back there are many things we will miss about living in Central Asia. We have been so fortunate to make new friends, learn a new language (and even some Kazak), see many wonderful places, survive with city life and how to bargan with taxi drivers. We are so thankful as well for all of our readers and those who have followed along with us. We will be sure to write from Seattle once we recoupe from the up and comming 33 hour adventure of traveling through 14 time zones. While it took us two days to get here it will only take one to get back because we are flying with the sun. Our friday will in fact last for 38 hours. It is going to be a day to remeber. Yes, Grant county folks we should be back on Monday as John needs to get to work ASAP. For the Seattle folks we have been getting Emerson geared up for some new family members. Please remember though that he might be a little nervouse at first as he is not used to so many people loving on him. He also could very well be one cranky baby after being cooped on a plane and in airports for 33 hours. Don't worry too much he should recover pretty quickly.

We look forward to seeing you all very soon.

We are OK to Go!!!

2007-06-13T03:54:00.000-07:00

We have jumped through the last flaming hoop of adoption processing while here in Kazakhstan. We just finished up at the US embassy and we now have all of his paperwork for Emerson to be a US citizen. Oh Heidi, by the way the Embassy official would love a job at the BLM:) We barely made it there as a result of not having an availible driver. As a result our translator called us and said we needed to figure out a way to get there asap. What a fun adventure that was, but we made it just in time. We have also delt with paying even more money to the airlines right now, which they are on my "I don't like you" list right now. They are having the audacity of charging us $800 for a lap ticket for Emerson and $500 to chage our tickets even though we bought tickets that were changable with out penalty. We know what Emerson's first word will be and it starts with an E........n. At least I have many hours to write a letter expressing my dissapointment on the plane.

On a good note we have finaly had a good day in Almaty. We found several helpful and even frienly people. By no means are we in Uralsk anymore but there are a few good apples here, but they are harder to find. As for the Seattle Family, we will see you on Friday night and we can't wait for the Prineville on Monday.

OK I must leave this smoky internet cafe now. We are almost there. And Jeff thanks for the serinity prayer, we chant this along with sharron disco song a lot;)

Home of Wild Apples

2007-06-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like Karon, John, and Emerson are hanging out in a place that is the home of wild apples. . .

Some of you may remember their earlier post about their friend Larry and his orchard, and the link with Kazakhstan's apples. Well, check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaty to learn more about Almaty and also to see pictures of those huge mountains.

My question is this: have they been to the wild apple forests?

Love,
Aunt Sharron

Step by step, one step closer to home

2007-06-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

Mornin, everyone,

Aunt Sharron here with news from Almaty. Karon, John, and Emerson are hanging out getting to know each other better in an apartment next door to Aunt Stephie's friend's daughter Kate and her family. They are learning the ins and outs of feeding, changing, and sleeping, all punctuated by various giggles from Emerson, who seems to delight in everything.

This weekend, they got to see mountains that are higher than anything we have in the US - 22,000 feet! Plus a river, over there on the other side of the world.

As you've already read, due to various delays, they are now hoping to be in Seattle by 7 pm Friday. Of course, everything is subject to change. Stay tuned for details on the revised date and time for the coming home party!

They are very grateful for everyone's words of encouragement as they make their way through this last frustrating, and expensive, part of their journey.

Until next time, be well,

Sharron

Doing Buisness Halfway Around the World

2007-06-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

First off thank you all so much for your words of encoragment. It definately helps us to keep things in perspective and realize that a few more days won't do us too much harm in the long run. At least we have a wonderful place to stay and we have made many good choices that have prevented us from running out of money a long time ago.

As far as what is happening, here is what I found out. The judge in Uralsk stamped the official adoption papers without enough ink to please the officials in Astan (the capitol.) As a result this information had to be resent to the capitol causing the delay. We also know that the soonest we can have a garenteed fligh (for a hefty fair difference) is on Friday moring (2:40 am). We are going to do our best this morning to get to the Luftansa office to see if we can get on the wait list for the THursday flight but I don't know yet what we will find out. One of the crazy things about doing buisness here and in the US is that you can not talk to both sides of the world during working hours so the communication tag team usualy has a 12-14 hour delay in responce. Not the greatest way to accopmplish things quickly, but hey as we are learning, there is nothing quick about this process. I will do my best to check up on the computer again tonight, but no garentees. My Aunt Stephie's friends have been very kind to let me use their computer when ever they are home.

The Journey that never ends

2007-06-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

I remeber when I learned to swim that my father and sister would have their arms out for me as they moved further and further back. Eventualy the frustration lead to me take the risk and swim the extra distance. I would like to belive that this applies to our current situation as our confidence as new parents grows. Unfortunately the finish line mover does not have a loving face or even a name except buracracy. We were informed tonight that Emerson's passport has been held up in Astana and will not arive in Almaty until tomorrow night. Unfortunately we needed it by 3pm for the Embassy visit. What we are faced with is hoping that we are able to get seats for Thursday morning and that all will go well at the US Embassy on Wednesday Afternoon. TO say that we are ready to be home is an understatment, yet as with most things in this process we don't have a whole lot of control. I will do my best to keep you udated of the progress.

Only a few more days until he is home

2007-06-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,
Well we have finished the medical exam and he was very good, even when they drew blood. They cheked him out and he is doing pretty well. He does have one hernia that will need to be looked at right away and he needs to grow a lot, but hey he has come a long way from the 800g he weighed at birth! Melissa, thanks for letting me know about Mrs. Garry's baby. I love the name Ava. I have a new neice named this.

Emerson is handling the traveling like a true champ, and Jean his is a lot like Zack. He loves to be outside. So once we have failed to stop his crying, we take him for a walk outside and he calmes right down. He also loves mirrors and laughes when every he sees him self.

As for adaoption business, we have found out that somehow the Department of Homeland security did not send over our paperwork to the us Embassy so we are trying to contact them to get our paperwork faxed here. We have our Embassy appointment on Tuesday at 3pm, then we just wait for our red eye flight that leaves a 2:30am.

We also have found a great place to stay in Almaty. My Aunt Stephies friends that live here aranged a house for us to stay in next to them. It is very nice, and much more comfortable than the apartment we were in. The best part is it is free and we should be able to make some international calls from there. OK I think I hear the little man stiring.

We made it to Almaty

2007-06-07T00:23:00.001-07:00

We are here in Almaty and Emerson did great on the plane. He slept the whole way! I am going to have to keep this very short as I am almost out of time. To all of those of you who are trying to reach us here, we unfortunately do not have a working phone. We are doing our best to get this taken care of ASAP through e-mail but we will just have to wait and see how it works out. In the mean time we have a mellow day today of playing with our beautiful baby boy, and resting up. Tomorrow we will get his medical exam, then on the weekend we are hoping to go to the open market and the Mountains! Monday and Tuesday we will be doing all of the nessesary paperwork at the Embassy to get his US citizenship documents. Keep those comments coming as they are the highlight of our day.

To all of my students, Have a Great Summer!!!!

We are heading to Almaty!!!

2007-06-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

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Thank you all for your comments and congratulations. Yesterday was our first full day with him and it was a busy day. We have always said that we expected him to have a hard time adjusting and well yesterday was a bit much for him. He woke up amazed to see us and it a great mood and he even went down for his first nap without a problem. Then came the 10:00 feeding of semolina that was not so effective. Mind you that the directions for mixing are in Russian and well I got it wrong and I think this made him a wee bit mad. Needless to say he slept 30 min for the next 2 hour nap, then the last one he proceeded to cry for two hours instead of sleep. Ah the learning curve is steep but hey he is still as adorable as ever. Hopefully we figured out a few of the kinks and we will do better today. Jean, John was pretty close to calling you yesterday for words of advice. I think you will be hearing from him much more often once I go back to work.

Well today is a big day for the Decker family. We are going to leave Uralsk today and head to Almaty. The best part (not) is that we get to take the red eye flight with a baby. This should be interesting. With that said, I will do my best to find a computer while in Almaty but there are no guarantees. If I can not I will update my sister by phone so that she can share our news with all of you. Also we will be on our way home this time next week.

To answer some questions from you comments: One, to all of my students and fellow teachers, I hope that you have a good last couple days of call. I miss you and I look forward to seeing you next year. To all of the substitute Grandmas we will have to get together once the jet lag wears off. Linda G. Yes we did leave the caregivers with a picture of Emerson and his new parents. We must send pictures every year until he is 18, so they will get to see how he is doing.

Ok, it will soon be time for the little boy to wake up so I am going to go and work a little harder at translating the directions for his second breakfast. If anyone has a baby instruction manual, our baby’s has been lost and we could sure use one.

What a good day

2007-06-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

We were told that he would sleep through the night, and it was true. He is doing well concidering the changes that he has gone through in the last day. Thank you all so much for the well wishes. It is always nice to know that people are still following along. For the Grant County folks we should be home on the 16th or 17th if all goes well in Almaty and Seattle.

I thought I would post more pictures since I know this has been what you have all wanted for a long time.

It is Official

2007-06-04T03:02:00.000-07:00

We would like to introduce you to the newest member of our family: Johnathan Emerson Decker! As of Today, Monday June 4th, 2007 we are the proud parents of Emerson and we could not be happier.

I only have a little time to post but I am sure that many of you are planning on waking up this morning and finding out how today went. John and I were very nervous this morning and John has been practicing his lines all day. Our Coordinator, Translator and “the paperwork lady” all came to pick us up at 1:35 from the Pushkin (yes we are back here in room 307.) We all went to the court house where we met up with the social worker, the baby house director, the registrar, and the prosecutor. Did I mention we were very nervous. Our translator kept telling us that there was no reason to be, but hey the stakes were very high.

The judge asked many questions, yet they were all expected. The only mistake made was that John said we had been visiting him since last year. While it feels like this, the mistake was overlooked. After we stated our part, the baby house director spoke about Emerson and us. Then the social worker reviewed our home study as well as our bond with him. The registrar showed the judge all of his paperwork. The prosecutor then said that he agreed with ALL of our request including the immediate execution of the adoption. The judge then granted all of our request. We were so excited it was hard to maintain composure.

So now tonight we will be going to the baby house for the last time to give our gifts to Emerson’s caregivers and to take our boy with us.

Thank you all so much for your love and support. This has been a long and hard journey and with out many of you this would not have become a reality. Not only does it take a village to raise a child, but this little boy who’s life started alone has had a whole village and then some share their love and support with him to give him a loving family and community.

The Final Kick

2007-06-01T05:12:00.000-07:00

We are getting very close and it is starting to feel like this is finaly going to happen. I appoligize for not updating yesterday, but we decided to pretty much have a mellow day. We figured that the days of lounging around are pretty much over for the next 10 years so we took the chance when we had it.

Today as most of our days here has been busy. We got up early today because we needed to be at the baby house earlier than expected. Today was Children’s Day so the older children at the baby house were putting on a program for many of the supporters of the baby house. There were many goverment officials there as well as oil executives and other childrens services professionals in attendance. We were very honored to have been invited as we were the only adoptive family there. The kids did a very cute performance, and we were even able to see Ann, Matt and Betsy’s daughter. Out son was not in the program as he is too little and it was his nap time. Our translator was there with us most of the time so she explained who many of the people were. A few minutes before it ended our translator had to leave so when it was over we were just standing around wondering what to do. Then the Director of the Baby House came over and ivited us to have chi with her in her office. This was a very nice invitation as it seemed only tbe big wigs were going in there. So at 10 in the morning we had not only hot tea (it is 95 out) and Caviar, but also toasting with wine. The adventures of this place never cease to amaze me.

Today we had two great visits with our son despite all of the destractions from the activites of the day. We also picked up formula, a bigger bottle, and some baby food for our up and comming parental responcibilities. The reality is starting to sink in. We still have not been prepared for court, but Yulia assures us that she will and that it will all be fine. Today we also had a great BBQ lunch at a place called I-Luna wich means Moom (Kazakh), Moon (Russian.) We highly recommend you ask about it if you are comming here. It is very close to Baby House 2.

After our visits we went to the Pushkin to drop off some things for Betsy and visitied with her. She is doing well concidering the Jet lag. We will visit with her more tomorrow. Well I must go now. As usualy I will probably not be able to get to a computer over the weekend. The next time I write will probably be after court on Monday from the Pushkin. We could really use all of your prayers right now for court to go smothly. Also we are moving back to the Pushkin on Sunday.

Today's News

2007-05-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Just spoke to Karon and John for a while. They are well, and having a rare quiet evening to recuperate from all their socializing. They are glad to be in a position of having social invitations to turn down so they can have some down time before their big day on Monday.

Tomorrow, their friend Betsy, who many of you may remember from earlier on, will be returning to Uralsk to get her new daughter. They are looking forward to seeing her again.

Also, the computers are fairly finicky. So, after a number of tries today, Karon said she just gave up.

But they're so glad you're all there and reading along. Your support means the world to them!

Love,
Aunt Sharron

A word on comments

2007-05-30T04:51:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone, Sharron here ~

You can still leave comments. They are just set to be private for the next few days. Here is how you do it: at the bottom of the entry, you will see a tiny little box that looks like an envelope. Click on that envelope. That will take you to a place where you can leave comments as before. The only difference is that they will go directly to Karon and John via e-mail, rather than being posted on the blog. Don't worry, all will be back to normal very soon!

Love,
Sharron

5 more days until court

2007-05-30T04:08:00.000-07:00

There is not a huge amout new to report today. We did however finaly get to go swimming in the river. It was everything I dreamed it could be. It was so nice to be cool and not hot and sticky for a change. We rented a boat with two of our Kazakh friends and swam off of it. After that we went over to the Pushkin and had dinner with the Delarosa Family. I will say that the mosquitoes are out in full force here and they are vicious at the bus stops. Currently our translator has asked us to not be out after dark. While we are usualy good about this, the whole deal wtih Mosquitos at dusk is definately a motivator for us to head home earlier.

Our little baby turned 8 months today. He is still very small, but he is growing everyday. He is getting closer and closer to siting on his own and now he will scoot to something if we let him push with his feet off of our hands.

We also found out today that we will all three be able to fly back together. Currently we are on a wait list for a flight on the 13th of June. I am still waiting to find out what this means and times. Everyday he bonds more and more with us and we can not wait for Monday to come.

A note about comments: My sister has been editing the blog and will be fixing the problem with the comments soon so that you can leave them and we can read them again. I love hearing from you and it feels a little sad to not be able to read them today. I would fix the problem myself but unfortunately all of the directions are in Russian.

6 Days to Court

2007-05-29T03:49:00.000-07:00

I can not thank you all enough for your kind words of encoragement. It means a lot to us that you are are still hanigning in there with us on this epic journey. You are all correct in that we are so close to the finish line and at least now we know where it is. Today our big adventure was getting to leave the Baby house to go and get his passport photos. To put it in perspective the only other time he was ever in a car was to be moved from the maternity hospital to the baby house. He did wonderful and was very interested in this new adventure. He was relaxed and curious and I am so glad as it gives me confidence that he will do pretty good on our long journey home. The other big thing is that he is getting really good at cuddling. He is liking to be held more and more. As far as return dates, John is still up in the air as he really does not want to leave us early. Heidi if you are reading this please feel free to share your thoughts with us by e-mai. It looks like Baby bug and I will be leaving on June 12th or 13th depending on the time of the flights. I will definately post this information as soon as I hear back from the travel agent.

So on a different note I thought that I would write a bit of advice for future travelers to Kazakhstan.

1. Learn as much Russian as you can, it will greatly increase your experience here. I used Pimsler language program and we have the lonely planet phrase book.

2. Make friends with locals.

3. Bring shoes that are easy to slip on and off because you must take your shoes off almost everywhere.

4. If you are comming in mid to late May plan on it being stifeling hot.

5. We were told the people here don’t wear jeans or shorts, this just is not true. However people here do dress nicely, so the jeans are clean and designer not ratty. Sun dresses are in as well as pretty skimpy 80’s style clothes. So if you have really been dying to wear that min-skirt and leg warmers with high heals again, this is your big chance!

6. Plan to be here a very long time, if you are here less great, but don’t expect it.

7. Despite what your agency might tell you, if you are on a tight budget and can hold your own there are inexpensive apartments you can rent by the week. It helps if you can read Russian to prevent being taken advantage of. Translating the classifieds is how we learned to read.

8. Don’t go out after dark and don’t go into places that don’t have a lot of people around.

9. Be open to trying new things, especialy foods.

10. When you order a pastry look forward to the adventure of finding out what is inside. It will never be quite what you expected.

11. If you are on a budget don’t eat at resturants at the Atrium. It is good but the prices are the same as at home. We save eating there for very special occasions.

12. Never leave home with out some sort of pocket dictionary or translator, a small note book and a pen. This makes communication possible and helps you see why pictionary is an important game to prepare one for traveling.

13. If you plan to adopt an infant, bring a baby bajorn, it is worth its weight in gold.

14. Bring a blanket for your child as the baby houses will not let them lay on the carpet and the blanket will be a familiar item by the end of your adventures.

15. If you are adopting a child that is speaking age learn the phrases from "Russian for Adoptive parents" Do this before you come. It is too hard to learn on the spot.

15. Bring more money that you think you will need. If you are wondering why refer back to #6.

I hope this helps some one somewhere who will be here in the future.

We have a court date…

2007-05-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

Well the powers that be have decided that while we have been granted a wonderful baby boy, a great ethical agency and wonderful friends, that time is just expected to go very slowley for us while we are here. We can not guess the reasons and we are trying very hard to trust the process yet we were told today that court will not be until Next Monday!!! This means another week of waiting. So once again we have asked to stay in our apartment longer, until Sunday, so that we can keep our heads financialy above water.

We did at least find out that tomorrow we can take our baby boy to get his passport pictures so that this process can get started. I can’t wait to see how he handles the car. It should be an interesting trip. So here is our new schedual: We will have court on Monday, then fly to Almaty on Wednesday the 6th. John will fly home ASAP so he can get back for work, and I will fly on the 12th or 13th. It will be a long trip but we are ready for it. I could really go for some Mexican or Thi food about now and just the comforts of home, but pretty much the Judge here does not care about what I could go for. I am very sorry to the Seattle crowd about the “comming home part.” I hope it is not too much of a pain to postpone it. I e-mailed Josylyn the details.

As soon as I am done at the internet cafe we are going with friends to the park and the river to go swimming. I am very excited as I have been wanting to do this for a while. After thre river we are goning to a party for one of the peace corps volunteers who is leaving soon. It should be a lot of fun and will hopefuly make the days until our son is officialy ours go a little quicker.

Thanks also for the news from home. I it seems so far away and it is even a little bit hard to imagine. Is anyone from Dayville still following along? Rachel, I am sorry I missed the concert to. I will just have to make up for it next year when you are even that much better! Didgett, I am intruged to find out what you mean, but hey I am sure you would be a great mentor for me in a new area:) Also, Hiedi if you are reading along, as much as John hated to miss Memorial Weekend he did make it a point to rent a boat and float on the Ural River on Saturday. Not quite the same as home, but soon enough he will be back for work.

Bush Legs

2007-05-25T04:18:00.001-07:00

One of the fun things we spend a lot of time doing with our Kazakh friends is explaining the many slang words that have found their way into our vocabulary. Last night we learned our first Russian slang. We were with our friends at a resturant and they were helping us translate the menu and stated that the item was “Bush Legs.” We asked, “What does this mean?” They then explaind that Senior President Bush negotiated the importation of chicken legs into USSR and since then they have called them Bush legs not chicken legs...

I am sure that you decided to read our blog this morning to learn this interesting fact. But I will spend some time telling you about our never ending story of our time in Kazakhstan. While we have been rolling with the punches of delay after delay, my patience for this process is almost gone. We have decided to stay in our apartment a few more days to save more money. We had agreed to go back to the Pushkin today but since pre-court is not until Monday we will now go back on Tuesday. We are really really hoping the court will be on Wednesday so that we can bring him home with us and then leave for Almaty on the next Monday. This is what we are really hoping for so that we can be back on the 7th of June. We will know more on Monday.

The other really great thing is that our boy is starting to feel better and has been full of giggles. It is amazing how happy it makes us when he smiles and giggles. We can not wait to share him with all of you. Today we had two great visits with him. Now that he is feeling better we are continuing to excersize him and he is starting to push more with his legs. He is also ok with us putting him on his belly again and will roll around while making gurrling noises. It is pretty darn cute!

Last night we had another wonderful evning with our friends. Yezbo came over and had dinner with us then Nayda and Anure came. We all went to the Pushkin and visited with the Deloros’s. Our friends seem to be enjoying meeting our American friends. Tomorrow we will only get to visit our Boy once so I think that we will get to go swimming on Saturday or maybe we will go to the second hand stores looking for more cool clothes.

Still here and waiting

2007-05-24T03:59:00.001-07:00

Above you can see us with some of the baby house staff plating apple trees.

As always we have been very busy, but I have found a few minutes to hit the internet cafe for an update. Yesterday while I was at the cafe, John cam by with a couple of our friends. We all decided to go to the Victory cafe next to the WW II monument. It was very cool as it is all outdoor seating and they have a big open pit fire for BBQ. We all ate shish cabobs and we learned lots of Russian and Kazak and our friends got a lot of practice with their English. Unfortuantely though the waitress tried to over charge us. We did show her how much it should have cost and then she still had 120 tengay too much but would not bend on it. Unfortunately we did not have enough, so our evening became even more interesting. We ended up going by the Pushkin to exchange money there but they were not supper helpful. So Nayda, Aunre and I went up and visited with an American family staying there while John and Yezbo went back to the appartment to get more money. Eventualy it was all solved and in the mean time friends were made and we hade cookies that were very good.

Today we have had two wonderful visits with our son. He was in such a good mood this morning. John would pretend sneeze and he would just start laughing outloud. It was so funny to see over and over again. He tired of it much sooner than we did. For lunch today we went and had pizza at McJohn’s in the artrium and then came home for all of five minutes.

This afternoon he was a little fussier at first but after a little more coughing he felt better and mellowed out. We are mailnly having a lot of down time with him right now until he feels better. If we get him too excited he starts to cough more. It is also a million degrees in the room we see him in. They will not let us have the window open and they insist that he is covered head to toe. I am looking very forward to breaking him out. Hopefuly this time next week he will be ours forever.

We have a pre-court date . . .

2007-05-23T04:21:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
This is the third or fourth attempt at updating the blog so hopefully it will be a successes this time. As today is day 14 of visiting we were able to turn in our paperwork to court. We were hoping to go to pre-court on Thursday or Friday but as with all things here it will be later than we hoped. We will have pre-court on Monday at 10 am and after that we will find out about real court which we really pray will be on Wednesday so that we can bring him home with us. Also this will be the day we can post pictures and divulge the name. So hang in there. Our patience for this process is wearing pretty thin, and it is very frustrating to have it made clear over and over again that there is not a darn thing we can do to speed it up. This must be what women who have their baby’s late feel like.

Baby Bug is still coughing up a storm and does not seem to feel very well, but at least he is not getting worse. The baby house doctor finally agreed to give him some medicine and it seems to be helping. He also seems to be getting some bottom teeth and he loves to chew on things. He will get along with Asya (the neighbors puppy) quite well. He fell asleep in John’s arms the other day and John was such a proud papa when this happened. He said Jean was the last baby that felt comfortable enough around him to do this.

As far as our social life, it is busier than ever now that our time should be coming near the end. We have calls every night to go do things with many of the English students. This is always one of our favorite things to do here. Also, unlike Grant County it is very hot here now. We are talking in the 90’s with 75% humidity. As a result John and I had to break down and buy some summer clothes. I will post pictures this weekend once I can get to a reliable computer. We also have gone to a Russian Sauna (in case we were not sweaty enough). All I really want to do right now is go for a swim in the river. This is definitely on my Sunday plans and I doubt much could stop me.

There is now another American Family here adopting so it is nice to have their company, which will increase when we move back to the hotel. They were also able to deliver some much needed items (thank you Ed and Carol.) We are still not sure when we will get to come home but it should be on the 6th or 7th. If John needs to leave early for work I am trying to arrange our schedule with another woman who will need to fly alone with her new daughter. We will keep you posted as we find out this information.

I know that I am forgetting many details, but I am so overtired and sweaty right now that my brain is finished. I will write again tomorrow. As always thanks for the news from home. We are starting to miss it as we are allowing ourselves to think about Dayville more and more. Also Jeni- I m so glad to hear that Kerri is on his way home. Hopefully he will beat us there so he can meet his new nephew. Kelly John and I are in good health and we can not wait to have you out to Dayville when we return. Cindy_ I will think about Math.

Update from Aunt Sharron

2007-05-22T05:24:00.001-07:00

Someimes when you're in a different part of the world, things work differently.

Like when you try to go to the internet cafe and write something, and four times it doesn't work.

Or when you watch TV and discover that all the American TV programs are from the 80s, dubbed by two people into Russian. In the programs, like Alf (anyone old enough to remember Alf?) people wear leg warmers and have big hair.

Then you walk down the street and gasp when you see people dressed like folks in the 80s TV shows.

Or when your hosts serve you horse meat (which, I was actually shocked to discover they eat in France, too, the day I passed a horse meat butcher in the South of France).

So, this is Sharron here writing to let y'all know that in spite of their best attempts to get to the internet cafe to write to all their fans today, Karon and John were not able to make contact.

But, they are alive and well and having fun with the little one.

For Mrs. Decker's students ~ she is *thrilled* that y'all have found the blog and are reading along. She is thinking of y'all a lot, too, and will have tons of stories to tell you when they get back home. She loved the things y'all wrote.

On the diaper question, I hear they won't feel qualified to make a decision until they've had a chance to see the evidence. . .changing hasn't been a part of their allowed responsibilities yet.

Let's see, what else?

I think that's it for now. Just thanks everyone so much for reading, for your prayers and support.

Love,
Sharron : )

Almost there!

2007-05-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. It is so nice to hear from everyone and know that people are still reading along about our epic journey. Also thanks to my students who wrote. I miss you very much and I hope that you are hanging in there for these last few weeks of school.

We have had a very busy weekend as usual with many of our new found friends. After I wrote on Saturday we got to go to another visit with Baby Bug. We learned a very important thing about him yesterday. He has one powerful set of lungs. While we were waiting for our translator to bring him in we could hear a baby just wailing. We thought to each other, I wonder which kid that it is. We could see our translator walking down the hall with him in her arms and the bottle held away from him. He was screaming and crying and reaching with all of his might for that bottle and he could not understand why she would not give it to him. The look of suprise on his face when he saw us was priceless! He laughed stoped crying, then reached for the bottle again. Nedless to say we fed him right away. He also sounds like he is getting a cold. Much to our dismay the baby house director is blaming this on us because we took him outside on a 90 degree day (too cold for babies!). I am sure it was not that our translator was sick and handeling our baby boy last week! We both bit our toungs, because they feel very strongly here that sickness comes from being cold not from sharing germs.

After our visit we met with our friends from American Corner and had a picnic in the park. It was so much fun, and I even got to ride on my first ever ferris wheel. I would be lying if I said I was not a little scared. I am glad I did it though because we had a great view of the whole city. We also did a lot of walking around the park. I think the next time John and I go we will bring our swim suits so that we can swim in the river. It is VERY hot here now. After the picknick we hung out with Naydia and Andi close to our apartment just enjoying the evening outside.

Sunday was also a busy day even though we did not get to see our son. We instead met up with our friends Azahmat and Arman who had offered to take us on our tour of the new mousk in town. It was very beautiful and it was also nice to learn about their religion and see the very human side of Muslims rather than the propaganda from the news. Afterwards we had pitzza with them and then met with Anaglul and her friend to go shopping. Seeing as we only prepared for could weather I was on a mission to get some cooler clothes. They helped me find some sandals and a nice dress so I will not be so miserable.

Well I must sighn off for now. Jen, I am so excited to hear that Kerri might be back when we get home. This is wonderful news! We get to see our son two times today and we are also going to take our translator and driver out for lunch. Also we are buying apple trees today to donate to the baby house. We are very excited to have the chance to help them start an orchard.

When in Rome . . .

2007-05-19T00:55:00.000-07:00

Well here we are again, with another week down. I am not sure how many weeks we have been in Uralsk but we have made it our home which makes the time go quickly. There are so many things that have happened since I wrote last but I will do my best to share as much as possible.

First and most importantly on Friday we were finally granted the privelage of seeing our son two times a day. Yeah!! This was great as he was so suprised to see us in the morning that he laughed out loud when they brought him to us. The other big thing is that because it is so warm here we are now allowed to take him outside. This is very exciting as he has never been outside before because he has only been here in the winter. He enjoyed his first trip very much and this is now something we get to do for 15 minutes of each visit. Ma and Don he now has the first flower and first bird on his life-time list. A sparrow and a lillac.

In our spare time (which is dwindling) we have been spending it with the many Kazakh friends we have here. On Thurday we managed to run into two girls from class that took us around the open markets and helped us to get a Kazakh- english dictionary. Too bad we are still very slow to learn the crylic alphabet. It is coming, but very slowly. Yesterday we did treat ourselves to a hot shower as we have been sponge bathing due to no hot water in our apartment for the last 5 days. It is very polluted here and muggy right now, so this was a necessity.

Yesterday was also the day that our landlady cleans the apartment. One thing about our apartment is that we found it through a friend of a friend sort of arrangement. We are well aware that we are paying above kazakh prices yet we are still getting an excellent deal compared to the hotel or agency apartments. So yesterday morning she comes over and we come back a few hours later to find her still there. Well she not only cleaned but she also stuffed our refigerator full of food including soups, meats and the most amazing pastries I have ever tasted. She has a heart of gold. John and I could not stop laughing at how well all of y’alls prayers are working for us.

Last night we were once again treated to the famous Kazak hospitality. When we had dinner at friends last week we were invited by the air traffic contoller to come to a birthday party at his house the next week. As with many things here, bits of details don’t always get translated so much of our outtings are surprises to us. We took a taxi to their house to find it to be absolutly amazing. The table must have been 12 feet long and set to feed 25 people. It was piled high with food and traditional dishes including Russian caviar, traditional breads and five fingers (yes we ate horse meat again.) We kept up the motto of “when in Rome...” and had a blast. The evening included, many toasts (too many toasts!), singing of folk songs, dancing and Kareoke of all things. They owner of the home also loved Elvis so he was at the party too. What a wonderful family!

What amazes us about our time here is having the opportunity to know people for who they are as individuals. Not as a religous group, former solviets, or Kazaks, but as real people with familes, homes, dreams, and worries ... We have been very honored and blessed to have had so many wonderful memories created through the friendships we have made here.

For all the loyal readers

2007-05-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Mornin, everyone,

Karon and I spoke for a long time yesterday. It was fun ~ I was on Google Earth (a very cool program that allows you to "fly over" anywhere in the world & look at satellite pictures, sometimes in great detail) while we were on the phone. I was clicking on pictures of various sights light the glass-domed mosque, the gold church, and the library. She would say "oh, that's near where our friend Yezbo lives," "that's where we go to the American corner to get books," or "that's where we saw a play that we didn't understand."

Very very cool.

Anyway, she said that they are going to a friend's place for their first hot showers in, oh, about 5 days. Now those of you who know Karon and John will know that there have been many times in the great outdoors where they have been without hot showers for such a long time. But there in the city, they are missing the conveniences of hot water.

So, because of that, because of the fact that this is the first day of 2 visits a day, and because their time in Uralsk may be drawing to a close, they are super-busy today. Luckily, they have made so many friends during their time there that now they are having to make sure that they see everyone before they go.

This post is to let y'all know that they probably won't make it to the internet cafe today, so let this serve as an update.

Enjoy!

Love,
Aunt Sharron

Day 8, 6 to go!

2007-05-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

So the second half of our weeks are always busier than the first half. Yesterday we decided to go to McJohn’s for pizza even though it is a bit out of our price range. While there we rn into two friends from class and we told them that we were planing on going to the open market to find a few things. They decided that this would be a fun place to practice their English and learn new words so we all took off for the open market. The main market is like a Target or Walmar but there are hundreds of vendors. You can get some local crafts but most things are made in China (suprise suprise.) John has been wanting to find me a nice outfit here so the two girls had a blast showing us all the differnt clothing areas of the market. We walked so fast that I did not see much. We did find some Kazakh hats and a Kazakh – English dictonary We also went to the Moskow open market and what they called the Japanese market. It went on forever and we eventualy ran out of time.

When we got back to the apartment we left for our favorite part of the day. Spending time with the boy!!! They brought him to us right away today with a half filled bottel. Apparently he heard us come in and refused to eat. The caregiver haned him over and told me to finishe the job. No problemo. It is feeling much more natural to hang out with him. Natailia our Lawyer came by today and John had to write more letters, this time it was to petition the court for adoption. JED is working very hard on sitting up and is fasinated by the reach and grab game.

Today we should find out about our second visit tomorrow. We have lots planed for the next few days including a birthday party, a picnic, shoping with girls from class and getting ready for court. Right now we will spend time with Yezbo to help him practice for his job interview. It should be fun.

Half way through 7-7

2007-05-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Not much new to report today except that we are half way through the official visitation. It has been raining a lot here recently so this keeps us inside more than we really like. We should have a busy weekend coming up and we have also been told that on Friday we should start seeing him two times a day. YEAH! Yesterday we did the paperwork for his Visa and Passport. Our agency will mail this off to Astana so that our paperwork will be in order for court as soon as we are done with our official visits. We could really use some prayers that the judge will be able to have court with us shortly after our visits end and that we will be able to take him “home” with us that day. Beth and Linda, thank you so much for gathering things for us. We can not wait to get home and let him meet his fan club.

Day 6, 8 to go!

2007-05-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

This picture is from the Victory Day celebration.

So here are the pictures of our spacious apartment as prommised.

After the excitement of the weekend we ended up haveing a fairly mellow Monday. It involved going to the internet cafe, having a very quick lunch, spending a wonderful hour with our son, going ot the notary, paying our weekly rent and reading.

Our visit yesterday was great. He was in such a good mood. We got him a rattle on Sunday and boy did he think it was a cool thing to wave around. We have also started on getting court paperwork together with our translator. She had us both sign papers yesterday to request his new birth certificate. John also had to write a letter petitioning the court for adoption in his own handwriting. The best part about this was that I got to play with our son for the first chunk of our visit. The baby house director also came in while we were visiing and told our translator that he is starting to miss us between visits. He wants to be held all of the time and apparently he is waking up early from his afternoon nap and waiting for us to arrive. They said he threw a fit yesterday afternoon when we did not show up. I offered to do some extra baby sitting if he was being a problem, but they did not say yes yet. We still have not been told when we will get to have two visits, but hey I will continue to be persistant.

I would also like to share with you the little games that we play to pass the spare moments here:

1. What is that sound? This is a game we play in the apartment a lot, as there are many mysterious noises.
2. What is that smell? This is an easy game to play thought the city. The answers range from cooked cabbage (a favorite here), to sewage, to leaking gas pipes. Although yesterday the lilacs began to bloom and it was wonderful!
3. What color will the water be today? Most of the time it is rust brown, but occasionaly we also get chunks of dirt in it.
4. What does this store sell? Not being able to read much Russian, and the fact that they do not have things in the window we just have to peak in stores to find out. It is a common game but can sometimes be embarrasing as not all doors lead to shops.

There are more, but they escape me for the moment. John is also working on a speech in Russian to explain the value of gravel. This idea does not translate well, but they have a serious need for the stuff. This has become his mission here and keeps him busy in our spare moments.

5 days dow, 9 to go

2007-05-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

As we have traveled to many places throughout the world we have learned that every place has something that makes its people unique. We have had the opportunity while here to learn that the Kazakhs’ are famous for their hospitality. What a weekend we have had with all of our new friends that we have made here. On Saturday we did not only get to see our beauitiful son, we also spent time with our friend Yezbol at the Natural History Meuseum of Uralsk and we went to his apartment for lunch. It was such a treat to go to their Ecology museum. It is interesting for us because we are almost at the same latitude and ecological region as at home, so many of the plants, insects and widlife are similar to home. For my paleontolgy friends at home we also were able to see a small collection of fossils from the region. It was pretty interesting to talk about rocks in terms of their periodic elements. This translates better than common words.

After the museum and lunch we visited JED and I was treated to feeding him for the first time, but I have already writen about this so I will move on to our adventures of Satuday night.

On Saturday night we were invited to have dinner with the people who are renting us our apartment. This was a night that I think we will always hold dear in our expereinces in Kazakhstan. The man of the family came to pick us up in his Machina (car) with our friend Nadya (who speaks english very well.) Then we ended up driving to the outskirts of town to an area we call the cottages. It is as close to they get to suburbia here. The road to their house was dirt and very rutted from all of the recent rain. When we arived we were greeted by the woman of the house and then we met their two neighbors. One of them spoke english as he lived in London going to school to become an air trafic contoller.

Once there we all visited in a room like a parlor until dinner was ready. Imagine seven people in a room with the two host who know Russian, Kazah and a little German. John and I who know very little Kazak some Russian and John with his limitted German. Then there are two people besides us that can speak some English. Four of us are armed with Russian English dictionaries so that we can figure out unknown words, yet our biggest lesson learned here is that words have very little to do with communicating. Once seated the hostess brought in a huge platter of Bishmanpan (Five Fingers.) It is a traditional dish with noodles, potaotes, onions and horse meat. Fortunately for us the hostess was able to communicate that they are only able to get horse meat in the winter and that this meat was beef. You might wonder how this information was shared. With little plastic farm animals of course. I almost peed my pants when she started placing farm animal figurines by the food to show us what it came from. We might try this at the next resturant we go to. To start off the meal the filled our glasses with Vodka and beer and then the host took a helping with his hands (a tradition) and tasted it to make sure it was good enough for his guest. After this he toasted and we drank to good health and friendship across nationalities. Then our plates were filled. A note is that your plate will always be full, so every bite we took involved more food being put on our plate. This went on for quite some time with many more toasts made. Then the host asked us to put on our shoes and coats so we thanked them and assumed that the meal was over. Oh contrare, we were just going to look at their garden and their apple trees. Then we were back in for basicaly a second meal. This time there was a fish on the table the size of a tuna. I mean a whole fish and it was divided up with the head for the host and other big chunks for the rest of us. So we ate again and had more toasts. This eating lasted until almost 2 in the morning. The best was after we were all throughly stuffed we were treated to them singing beautiful Kazakh folk songs for us. We felt so honored to be their special guests. Eventually a taxi was called for us and we were wisked back to our apartment and off to bed laughing at our twist of events here and how delays sometime lead to wonderful opportunities.

On Sunday (mothers day.) I was denied the opportunity to see our son, but we did get to go to the park with a peace corps volunteer. It was wonderful to sit and talk with him and enjoy the beautiful day. We then had dinner with Matt and Betsy and bid them farewell for now. Now we only have a few more hours until we see our boy. We should find out today when we can start seeing him two times a day.

4 days down 10 to go

2007-05-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

I only have a few minutes but I wanted everyone to know that we are doing great and staying very busy here. Yesterday was one of our most fun days in Kazakhstan as we were able to spend it with great friends. On Friday we e3nded up not having enough time to go the Ecology Museum so we went to the Library and got a new book for me and a learn to read Russian book for John. Baby Bug also is getting to where he realy wants to sit up and is grabing for objects and enjoying flailing them around. His slight lazy eye is also correcting it self with all of the extra attention he is getting. I really want to wright about our Saturday adventures but it must wait until I have more time. Our friends Matt and Betsy are leaving tomorrow so we are going to have lunch with them now and then at 3:00 we are meeting with a Peace Corps volunteer who lives in a nearby village. Tomorrow morning I should have more time to fill you in on our adventures.

Beth, we will only be in Seattle a few days before comming home. I do not currently have any infant stuff at home because we were not expecting there to be any children that were so small.

da zaftera (until tomorrow.)

Day 2, 12 to Go

2007-05-10T22:27:00.000-07:00

Throughout this process I have fought all of my count down urges very hard and I must say I am impressed that I have made it this long. As always in the adoption process I am counting to an unknown time. While we finish our official visitation on the 23rd we still have to go to pre-court, then court which will most likely be on Memorial day. After court we should be able to bring him "home" then take the next flight to Almaty (they only fly on Mon, Wed, and Fri.) Once in Almaty we have meetings with the embassy and we will wait for his passport and visa. Yet this is still forever away.

After lunch we had a wonderful visit with JED (his initials, but not what we are calling him.) He was felling better today but still would be a little fussy and then wa la he would spit up all over me. For some reason John has still avoided this experience. I do belive it is only a matter of time:) He is very funny about his tummy time. When we lay him on his belly he grunts a lot (just like his papa) and tries to push up, then flops down. He is really working his new parents over. Beth I have heard those are good bottles too. We can not wait to get him home with some of the cool baby convineces that will help him a lot. The good news is that he is now very good at holdng his head up and is even pulling away trying to sit up.

After writing we met with a friend and had lunch. He is writing a presentation for a job interview and we are really pushing him to start practicing it with us as soon as possible.

After lunch we had a little down time at our apartment then we attempted to go to the Thursday class at the Eurrasian institute. Unfortunately it had been canceled so we met with some students in frount of the building then went out for pizza. It was nice to stay out late, and sadly I finished my book last night. I am going to have to see if I can borrow one from the American corner of the library to keep me entertained for the next few weeks. We also ran out of battery power on the dvd player last night and ended up watching poorly dubed over ER. That was some pretty interesting entertainment. OK, We are now heading to the Ecology musueum. This should be fun.

Day one 13 to go

2007-05-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

We were lucky enough to catch a taxi back to our apartment so that we could grab a quick bite to eat before our visit with our boy. I really don’t think that he is 11 lbs yet. More like 9. He is however growing out of the 0-3 month clothes. I should be able to find out a lot more today because all of the paperwork problems have finally been cleared up. If we do not encounter any more problems we should be able to fly home by the 6th of June. John might need to come home early, but this will depend on flight scheduals and when our final court day will be. Baby bug was very uncofortable yesterday. They feed them very quickly and the bottles let a lot of air in, so he is very gassy when we see him. It is frustrating to only be able to comfort him and not be allowed to prevent the disscomfort. Only 14 more days until we can petition the court.

Thank you all of your comments on John’s Birthday. We love reading them and we wish that we had time to respond to everyone. Tom we are very glad to hear that this Sister’s house sold. (Nicky if you could share this with him since I know he won’t be reading it off the computer.) We thought about Tom a lot yesterday as we watched all of the celebrations for Victory day here. Talk about a way to show respect for their WWII veterans. It is too easy for us in the US to forget how many soldiers the Solviet’s lost fighting Germany (23 million.) It was also hard to see how few of those soldiers who lived thorough the war are still here. We will post some pictures tomorrow as we do not have our camera with us right now. Our friends Naydia and Olga called us up and invited us to the days activites. After the memorial service at the WWII monument we walked to the big park by the river. We did not have enough time to stay for long, but we have decided we will spend one of our Sundays there. We can also rent a boat so mabye this will be a late birhtday present for John.

I will take pictures of the apartment today so I can post them later. The internet cafe is pretty slow, but like the computers at school I am learning that some are faster than others. Thank you Didgett and Cindy for checking in. I am glad that Kerri was able to show you the little one.

Ok, I must go as we are tutoring one of our Kazakh friends over lunch time. He has a job interview in three weeks so he needs a lot of practice.

Sometimes things just take a long time

2007-05-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

Well we were really hoping to be almost done with this process by now but it was not ment to be.

We are still here and will be for quite some time. Good thing we are getting use out of those really expensive plane tickets.

We asked our translator if for John’s birthday we could visit the boy all day. She laughed and ignored the questions. It was worth a try…

We were promised that all of the paperwork problems would be cleared up by tomorrow, but as all good things with this process we have been told it will not be until Thursday now. Tomorrow is their veterans day so no paperwork will move. Oh well. If I felt that complaining would get me some where I would give it try. Something tells me it would be futile, so we will continue to be patient and wait. When you meet our son you will see why all of this has been worth it. Soon enough he will be officially ours.

Also for all of you who have asked he is now 11 lbs. Yes he is very small, but remeber he was born almost 3 months early and has been living in an institutional setting so he is more like 4 month old, not a 7 month old. Thank you all for your comments.

Happy Birthday to John!

2007-05-07T22:47:00.000-07:00

We have now moved into our new (old) apartment. It is ok and when ever we feel like complaining we add up how much money we are saving and just laugh at all of the quirks. Like last night we had the pleasure of listening to really loud Russian television and of hearing our young neighbors play their instruments and sing in the courtyard.

We are still not sure what we will do for John's special day. Maybe we will just have to celebrate once we are home.

It is nice to see that you found the site Doug and Cindy thanks for sharing information with the kids at school. I think of them often and I hope that they are doing well.

2007-05-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is Baby House Two, where Baby Bug has been since December.

This man actualy has ridden his brike from Paris France and he is on his way to India. He had too many amazing stories to share in this blog, but facinating none the less. The other girl is a friend from class.

href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmJ2_wNStkE/Rj3rTSWn7DI/AAAAAAAAACo/vCiz6uB6e4A/s1600-h/DSCN3130.JPG">

These are our friends that took us to the Museum and our friends from Arizona. We are eating traditional Kazakh food and we are helping them with their English and they have been teaching us Kazakh.

We are still out here.

2007-05-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Once again we have found ourselves very busy and without a working computer and I have neglected my loyal readers. We are doing very well and trying very hard to be patient with this seemingly never ending process.

The good news is that Baby bug is growing more and more attached to us. He laughs when he sees us which makes us beam with pride. We have gotten him a few outfits and like a true champ he spits up on them right after we get him dressed. It is a pretty neat trick. I know that he has my heart now as I got my first projectile spit up on me and it didn’t phase me a bit. It is very funny, because everyday they bring him in, they ask us not to shake him because he was just fed. You know they are pretty smart.

So, you are probably wondering what we do with the rest of our days here. Well we have actually made several really god friends. Most of them are from an English club which is for students who are learning English. One of them even found us a very affordable apartment for the next two weeks.

We love staying at the Pushkin Hotel, yet with our extended stay it is much too expensive for us to stay here the whole time. We will return to the Pushkin once we get custody of our little guy.

Oh, Beth he is a hat wearer:)

Today we also had a fabulous day after getting to only spend 40 minutes with our child. We went to the Kazakh history museum with our friends Matt and Betsy (from AZ) and Johnda and Yerzbo from Kazakhstan. They taught us all about the history of this amazing country. There is nothing like going to a museum in the Central Asia to make the USA seem really really young. Their artifacts are so old and so beautiful. Kerri you would have loved the may saddles they had on display. They showed how they were first wood to the nicer endurance saddles of the nomads. Jim they had amazing knives and bows and arrows that are like nothing we have at home. We have also heard rumors that the Kazakh orchestra will be playing here May 15th and we are really hoping to go, would you like to join us Lia? On Saturday’s class we were also treated by one of the students who played the dombra for us. I almost cried with the beauty of such and instrument and at her kind gester of playing just because we asked her to the previous week. We are also slowly learning Kazakh words and we are constantly learning new Russian words. For families traveling in the future I can not stress how helpful it has been to have a basic knowledge of the language.

I have said it before, and I will say it again; this country is amazing and the youth are resilient. I am very curious to see what these new leaders will make of their mother land.

News from Aunt Sharron

2007-05-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

Good morning!

Since we know everyone is anxiously awaiting news, I thought I'd post today with a quick update from Birmingham.

First, Karon and John are well. They love working with the university students. Tomorrow, Monday, they are planning to move to an apartment that one of their students helped them find. This should give them a nice new home base for their extended stay.

Second, Baby Bug is getting stronger each day. With each visit, they exercise him, and they can tell that it is making a difference. Apparently yesterday he was so excited to see them when they came to visit, he laughed out loud!

Finally, thank you for your patience with the pictures as they walk through the legal steps of the adoption process. Kazakhstani law prohibits publishing pictures until the adoption is official.

Okay, y'all, that's all the news for the moment.

Enjoy your day,
Aunt Sharron

Rules of the Road

2007-05-03T03:35:00.000-07:00

This is a bit of an oxymoron for here as I have not quite figured out if there are really any rules of the road. We have figured out that if you are in a cross walk drivers will stop. They will not stop far from you and they might just dodge you, but they will not hit you. Lanes, who needs lanes when you can just weave your way through as if you were a pedestrian. This we are getting more used to, but I just look away a lot. We are fortunnate to have a great driver who has a 10 month old baby at home, so he drives very carefully.

Today is also our day to meet with the university students. This interaction is one of the things that keeps us sane here. We are still staying in the hotel as the only apartment we saw had no furniture. We can and do cook most of our meals there.

Today is a beautiful and sunny day and Baby Bug was great today. He seems to be cutting a tooth so he was very drooly today. Mom you were right because he loves that little teathing ring. We also introduced him to the Baby Bjorn. He loved it and we are so glad that we brought it. We will try to have him in it for a little while everyday so that he is used to it before the very long plane ride home. Not that it will be any time soon.

We are ready for everything to be finalized but time seems to be going very slowly right now.

Onions, Mushrooms and Potatoes Oh My!

2007-05-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

Yes these three things we eat every morning. And while the first week this was fun, now it is our on going joke. Root vegetables are in abundance and anything else to eat here is a special treat.

Yesterday we did get to see the Kazakh people celebrate May Day despite miserable weather. It was absolutely pouring down rain and quite cold but we braved it with the crowds and without an unbrella The big parade turned into more of a lot of people marching through the streets with ballons and unbrellas. We did however get to see several music groups preform in the square. Finaly we have seen the dombra played. Our Kazak friends that participate in the English classes have promised to play for us this Saturday as well. Turth be told, all of this rain is causing some cabin fever.

OK enough about our sight seeing. I know you only read on to hear news of our baby boy. Today he had lots of treats for his parents. He was in a great mood and laughed a lot today. He had the hickups and we would pretend like we had them too and he would laugh out loud. It was absolutely adorable. Everyday we do excersizes with him to get him stonger. The other big adoption news is that we were asked for John’s letter stating his need to get back to work soon. I hope that this will help this process move a little quicker. We keep reminding ourselves how worth it all is for this little guy.

We look forward to hearing from you each day, and we can’t wait to share our precious jewel with the rest of you.

Happy New Month

2007-04-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

So while we did not see these things in person this is what you get to see on Kazakh TV:) Very entertaining. Oh and we also get the Halmark Chanel.

So to all of my loyal readers, I apologize for not updating yesterday. We have actually been very busy here.

Yesterday morning we many second hand stores to find clothes for the little one. The new ones at the market are expensive, and well we are here 2.5v weeks longer than we planed.

Yesterday was also his 7 month birthday. We made a mistake earlier when we said his birthday was the 8th of September, it is actually the 30th (sorry Stephanie.) The other big thing about our visit was we got to change him. We were worried because we had only seen his hands and face but now we have been granted almost complete viewing rights. We did however have to change him quickly because they worry a lot about babies being cold. He was very patient with his new parents as we played dress up with him. Every day we spend with him gets better and better.

In the afternoon, we ended up visiting with our friends Jack and Janet and their new son. He is adorable. Then we made dinner with Matt and Betsy. We keep joking around that this place is a lot like living in a college dorm. The kitchens are also very small so if we want a meal with two burners we need to make friends.

Today is May Day and we are going to go to the celebrations and parade this morning until our visit. Sadly it is cool and poring down rain. Oh well it will still be fun.

Another fun day halfway around the world

2007-04-29T08:16:00.000-07:00

After our adventurouse day yesterday John and I were looking forward to having a bit more of a relaxing day.

We did sleep in for a little while and John went downstairs to get breakfast and we ate in the room. Our neighbors Bettsy and Matt came over and wanted to see if we would like to walk to the Atrium to buy dipers. Ah the thrill of new parenthood! We had a nice walk but it was very windy.

After that we kicked our feet up for about five minuets before our other neighbor Jack came over. He visitied for a while then our Kazkah frined we met yesterday stoped by and said that he would like us to come to the theater to see a play. We ended up having a great talk with him and helped him with his English grammar. He is getting better with each conversation.

We also got to go on the bus today for the first time tonight to get to the theater. The play we watched was "The 13th Floor." It was all in Kazakh and we could not understand a word, but their acting was so good that we were able to follow the plot. It was very funny and they did an excellent job. We were so thankful that we had this opportunity. I hear in June they wll be preforming Romeo and Juliet. I guess the clasics are such no mater where you are in the world.

All in all we are having a great time. I am so thankful for our new Kazakh Friends. I have high hopes for this country if these youngsters are tomorrows leaders.

The very sad thing about Sunday here is that we do not get to visit the little one. It is our interpretors day off. I just hope that she was able to explain that to our little guy.

Market & Students

2007-04-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

You can still get bread for a nickel

2007-04-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

So, Dad, I thought that you would be very excited to know that you can get a loaf of bread here for a little over a nickel (10 Tenge), but you have to shop around.

Today was our most adventurous day yet.

We started off the morning by going to the outdoor market withour friends Matt and Betsy. It was nice to go out with them, but the market was a little disappointing. We were really hoping to find some souvenirs to help our new child remeber Kazkahstan, but most things at the market were things we could get at home. It was cool, however, that it is all outdoors with small vendors so that everyone has a job.

After that, we found the big food market. It is run the same way, with small vendors all throughout the room. Several people will sell root vegtables, several will have apricots and nuts, several will sell spices, and so on.

We also found the big meat market. Just in case you were wondering about how we would figure out what each kind of meat was, they have the heads on display next to it. No questions need be asked.

After the markets, we went to visit JED, or, as you are all calling him, Baby Bug (thanks Aunt Sharron). He was full of smilles today and loves looking at me with his very big dark eyes. He is still pretty bald, but he looks like he will have dark hair. He is getting stronger and stronger. Today he even could push himself up when we laid him on his belly.

Later, our translator dropped us off at the library where we met with the group af students again. They were having a circle discussion (all in English for practice) about "Does Money Make the World go Around?" It was so nice to be around young idealists. The best part was hanging out with all of them afterwards. We had pizza with a few of them, and many of them walked with us for a long way. We learned more Kazakh words and they practiced a lot of the their English.

Karon

Teaching on the Other Side of the World

2007-04-27T00:02:00.000-07:00

While I wait for the internet to reach a crawling speed I will type this message in a word document. Just in case any of you were wondering Microsoft is still the operating system half way around the world. Yesterday we had a very packed day.

One very exciting part of yesteray was leading a discussion for a class at the Eurasian Institute. They have an English club, with many students who are learning English and are also interested in Business. We basically stood up told them about our life in Eastern Oregon and then we answered their questions for the rest of the hour. They had great questions ranging from how our political, health and school systems work, to how many disco clubs we have in our town. The best part was afterwards talking with students about study abroad programs and Camp America jobs. We also meet the other peace corps volunteers and a man who works for the UN. Not too bad for an afternoon class. Our next one is this Saturday.

In the afternoon we went for our daily visit with our boy. He is so adorable and he was much more awake today. We are also starting to notice that he is getting stronger. When we met him a week ago he could barely hold his head up. He now has that down, yet he still thinks it is fun to crash into us with his head. Thank goodness we are quick movers so that we do not get craked lips by our little squirmer.

We get to go to the market today to get him clothes. As far as sending any Beth it would take to long to get here, so we will be fine waiting until we are home. Also we do have a car seat, but not an infant one..

We are still having lots of fun with the other American couples at the Pushkin. They are nice to have around to support us through this life changing event.

Sleepy Boy Yesterday

2007-04-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

We are having so many firsts with our little one. Yesterday we got there a little later than usual and he was so very tired. He was trying his hardest to stay awake, but by the time he had to go back he could not fight sleep any longer. When our translator took him from John (who hogs him by they way:) he reached his tiny little hand towards him as they left the room. It was very adorable.

Today we started some of our court paperwork. There is nothing like being in a room with 7 women speaking Russian very quickly to make you feel absoultly clueless. We also found out they might have an apartment for us. We will look this afternoon and see if it is really an option.

Today we are also going to get to go to the outdoor market to get some clothes for the little guy. They don't have much that will fit him there because he is so small. Right now he is only fed formula and probably will be for a while until we can beef him up a bit.

Here are more measurments but remember that we will not be home until June (unless we get a mirical) so he should grow some.
Chest 6.25 in.
Head 14.96
inseam: 16.5
waist 17

Tonight we will get to go to the English discussion group. I am not sure what to expect, but it will be fun to step out of our comfort zone a bit.

Until tomorrow . . .

We have found the internet cafe:)

2007-04-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

In an effort to save on cost for our extended journey we have found an internet cafe where we can use the computer for 1/5 the cost of the hotel computer. The other advantage is 6k of walking:) We should be in really great shape by the time we get home.

We have not been able to visit the little one yet today. The cafe is very crowded once school lets out for the day, so we will write before our 2pm visits.

As far as measurements go you can do an internet search for a metric conversion calculator. I will see about getting it in inches. His head is 38cm and I will get the rest today. He only weighs about 8.8 lbs right now. Basically we are being told not to treat him as a 7 month old because he was so premature. He should be considered aa a 3 month old. The doctors are telling us that this delay in size and development will even out by the time he is two or three years old. (no teeth yet either.) With that being said we really don't have anything for such a small infant except for a crib. I think he is too much of a squirmer for a swaddle but maybe that is what they are for. I will certainly need a lot of training in all of the tools required to operate a safe and healthy baby. For right now they just let us do the good stuff which is play with him. Over time I am sure that we will get more and more responsibilities.

Another note for future adopting families, we have had the opportunity to relearn the importance of currency strength(exchange). When we did our budget for coming here the dollar was much stronger than it is now. Oops, make sure you ask your agency cost of things in both US$ and Tenge.

Another great day

2007-04-24T04:32:00.000-07:00

We got to see the boy again today. John was even complimented on his fathering skills today. Our translator said very few new fathers know how to hold a baby as well as he does. Many of you are asking about the name, yet we are still waiting to get more information about his current name. We gave the caregivers a journal we are starting for him, with many questions for them to answer.

He was very active and always wants to look around. We tried to lay him on his belly, but he did not seem to know what to do. When we picked him back up he looked at us like "hey what was that all about?" He was working his little muscles pretty hard today. He was even sweating as they had him in three layers. One day we might even get to see the rest of his body.

For those of you wanting measurements will you please tell me what you need. He is 53 cm tall from head to toe.

It also looks like we will be able to start helping some university students with their English soon. Maybe even starting tomorrow.

John in front of the World War II Memorial

2007-04-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

Karon in front of the market they call "the blue store"

2007-04-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

Take two on posting

2007-04-23T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well I had just finished writing you all about our adventures and it just dissapeared into cyber space:( So I will start agian.

First off I want to appologize for any spelling errors as this computer is formated for Russian so t thinks everything is spelled wrong when I do spell check.

We had a great Sunday or wondering around town and also we went to see the Russuan Orthodox church not too far from our hotel. We also got the chance to practice our Russian with a little old woman who was selling potatoes in front of the church. She also took the time to teach us the names of many other vegtables.

The big news though for today was seeing our little guy. We only could see him for 30 minuets for various reasons. But there were the best 30 minuets we have had here. He is still just as cute, and we prommise that we will post pictures as soon as we are allowed. Aunt Sharron he loves the toy you got him and thinks that he is very hot stuff in the mirror. He loves looking around and he opens his mouth very wide and laughs when he sees something of interest. Be prepared to have your hearts stolen. Also, we will take measurments tomorrow for all of you who ask.

After our trip to the baby house 2 we picked up a map for John and we also picked up dipers (let the reality of parenting stat to sink in).

Other exciting news is that we have neighbors and new friends at the hotel. THey are really friendly and we even decided to be brave and go out to dinner. We were armed with my little knowledge of the Russian language and their tranlator book. It took three hours but the food and company were great. When we were leaving we had a guy ask us in Russian if we were Americans. We said yes and learned that he is the corrdinator for the Peace Corups volunteers in the region. Just who we had been looking for. How everything falls into place is a miracle.

I must go for now but I will check in again tomorrow from the internet cafe. It is cheeper than the hote.

Must stop napping

2007-04-21T07:24:00.001-07:00

Hello loyal fans and readers,

Today was our first full day in Uralsk and we are commng out of the gates rather slowly. We woke up very early this morning and headed down to breakfast at the hotel. It was very good and we have decided that we will be eating some big meals in the morning while we are here. After breakfast we went up to the room and became fixated on the puzzle we brought and talked a lot about our little one. We are both very sad that we cannot visit him this weekend but soon enough it will be Monday..

We did make ourselves go out and explore for a few hours this morning. It was very interesting to walk around and I do wish that I had learned how to read Russian. The shops here don't have things in the windows and many times they don't have any windows so we just had to be brave and curious and peek in. We found lots of cool things and neat little shops. The people were very friendly and patient as I spoke the best Russian that I could muster up. At one point John just started drawing pictures to try and communicate.

It is very wonderful to be in a place without much tourism as it forces us to step out of our comfort zone. We are going to also try to find the Peace Corps Volunteers so that we can do some volunteer work when we are here.

We are still struggling with the jet lag, yet the idea of givving up our mid day naps are hard. I am sure by the time we leave we will be fully adjusting. Thank you all for your comments. We enjoy hearing from you all.

It is a malenke malchick!!!

2007-04-20T05:55:00.000-07:00

We are proud to announce that we are soon to be the proud new parents of a very tiny little boy. He was born Spetmeber 8th 2006 and he is absolutly adorable. He was the second child they brought in and we both knew the second we saw him. We both held him and he laughed and hopped around and just kept looking at us. We played with him until they took him away. They brought in two more children that were each two years old. While they were adorable they just did not feel right.

After meeting him our hearts were so happy knowing that it was so easy to meet the right child and just know. Then we got to hop on the emotional roller coaster. As we were rejoycing the social worker made a few phone calls and then it was announced that this boy would not be availible until May 9th. Our hearts crashed as we did not understand what this meant. We were then told that while she filed the paperwork more than 6 months ago they did not file it right away in the capitol. So we made a very difficult choice which is to start unofficial visitation on Monday until May 9th. We will not be able to start our official visitation until May 9th and court will be a few weeks after this.

We have said from the beginning that we would do what we felt was right not what was easy. When John and I got married we vowed (for some very bizzare reason) to always keep our lives adventures. Right now we have many details to work out this weekend to figure out our extended stay.

We are sad that we can not visit him until Monday but the baby house does not have heat in the room we will use for visitations. This should be fixed by Monday. We love hearig from all of you.

Hello From Almaty Kazakhstan

2007-04-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

Well we have made it safely to Kazakhstan and all went well in our travels. The flights to Germany all went very well and were quite uneventfull. In Germany we had to get boarding passes for our flight on Luftansa. This took about 1.5 hours but hey what else did we have to do there but hang out in line. I did buy one thing there which was a $4 bottle of water. oh yea. After that everything seemed much less appealing. People in Germany were super friendly and it amazes me that many people we met spoke English well. I still find it a bit embarassing that Americans don't typically know another language.

The flight from Chigago to Germany was a bit rough we spent a lot of time generating static electricity and not so much time sleeping. We then had another night of flying into Kazakhstan on a brand new Luftansa plane. great service!

When we got off of the plane in Almaty I saw a family with these adorable children that appeared to be from Ireland. I thought about it a while and realized that this family looked a lot like my Aunt Stephies friend Kate. I went on a hunch and the bravery that 14 hours of jet lag can create and asked her husband (as she had taken off by this point) if his wife's name was Kate, and did her mom live in the San Fransico area. Sure enough we now have friends and contacts in Almaty:) We are planning on meeting up with them on our way back through.

We are staying in an apartment. Mom and Sharron I will e-mail you with the phone number. We have been searching for the grocery store for quite some time, but we stumbled upon the internet cafe so I have not managed to get a calling card yet. At the cafe I began to become very thankful that I sacrificed my NPR for the last year to learn Russian. We managed to buy breakfast, tea, get on the internet and hopefuly get good directions to the grocery store. All directions seem to say walk straight for three blocks. I would feel better about this if this was not the third time we were told to walk three blocks. Who knows we might end up back at our apartment without any grocerys and many calories burned.

Also to traveling families, make sure if you are arriving in the middle of the night that you get a bottle of water on the plane. We arrived in the middle of the night and the stores were closed. We have been boiling water for 10 minutes hoping that we will not regret this in a few days. Also the city does not have hot water so I had John to wash my hair like Robert Redford washed Meryl Streep's hair in Out of Africa. Ah all of my dreams are comming true.

Speaking of, we will head to Uralsk very early tomorrow and hopefully we will have met our child by tomorrow night.

Much love to our faithful fan club:)

Karon and John

If all goes according to plan. . .

2007-04-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

We reckon Karon and John should have arrived in Almaty around lunchtime, Central time, today. Of course, we just figured this out when I got home from work and Dad said "are they there yet?" After studying the itinerary and making the best time conversions we could, our conclusion was that they should hopefully be recuperating from all those hours of flying, before they have to board another plane in about a day in order to go to Uralsk.

Of course, once we have confirmation, we'll let you know for sure.

Meanwhile, let's hope they're getting a good night's sleep so they'll be well rested for the big days ahead. . .

With love from Sharron

On their way

2007-04-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Here in Alabama it's a gorgeous day, with bright blue skies, occasional warm breezes, and lots of birds singing. Over on the other side of the country, Karon and John boarded their first plane in Seattle this morning. Chicago is their first stop, followed by Frankfurt, Germany, then Almaty, Kazakstan.

So, if you haven't already done so, it's time to pull out that family atlas, or look on the internet, or the maps at the library, so you can follow their journey. For those who don't know, Almaty, their first stop in Kazakhstan, is right on the right-hand side near China.

After a bit of time to rest there, they will then head across the country in the other direction, back towards the border between Europe and Asia, to a town called Uralsk.

Little known fact of the day: did you know that apples cannot be grown from seed? Well, more specifically, say you are eating a Granny Smith apple, and decide you'd like to plant the seeds to get a Granny Smith apple tree. Unfortunately, there's no telling what sort of apple you'd get from that seed.

What you need first is good root stock. Then, once the first branch appears, you cut it off. Next you need a Granny Smith apple tree branch. You graft this on to the tree, and before too long, you'll get your Granny Smith apples.

This I learned in a late-night conversation with Karon last night. We were talking about her friend Larry's orchard, and how his root stock had come from Kazakhstan, a place with wild apple forests. (If you haven't yet read the post entitled "Why Kazakhstan?" I encourage you to do so. It's a great story.)

For now, enjoy your apples, and here's to a safe and wonderful journey for Karon and John.

With love from Karon's big sister Sharron

2007-04-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we also had the opportunity to enjoy a rare sunny spring day in Seattle at the botanical gardens.

One Day More

2007-04-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a wonderful going away party at John's little brother and our sister in law's house. Before dinner Josh said a prayer for us and our future children that brought warmth through my body and tears in my eyes. I stood there holding hands with our family and I felt so blessed that there are so many of you out there that are rooting for us and even more importantly children half way around the world. I wonder if our future child(ren) could feel the same wave of warmth and peace that I felt last night. I hope that they know how many people here in our circle of family and friends are waiting with open arms and hearts to welcome them and to love them.

Thank you also to all of our Alabama fan club for all of the calls and well wishes last night. Many of you that are following along are the reason that we have made it this far in our journey.

We are packed ready to go and getting our last details in order before starting the adventure of a life time. This next week will be full of suprises and the biggest decision we have had to make in our lives.

While we are away we will make every attempt possible to keep this site as up to date as possible. My sister Sharron will probably post for us when we get there just to say we are alive and well. It will probably take us a few days to figure out the Internet cafes and our living arrangements.

The Universe is Unfolding Perfectly

2007-04-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

So, as I have mentioned before, this process is teaching me to trust. We have been having a problem figguring out how we will get to the airport on Tuesday morning. Mainly because who ever decided to take us was going to get the pleasure of battling rush hour traffic in Seattle. (Which is worse than any place I have ever seen.) Last night we heard from Carol (my Mother in Law.) They are flying back to Seattle just after we fly out/ She called last night and asked if we would take their car to the airport. This works our perfect for everyone! These little things that work themselves out continue to teach me, that forcing a solution now, does not necessarily make it the best option for everyone involved. I am curious to see how the next few days of our lives unfold.

Seattle and waiting

2007-04-13T17:23:00.000-07:00

We had a very nice visit with our agency today and got many of our last minute questions answered. After searching all available flights there we no really good options that really got us started on the process any sooner. We could have left Monday but it put us doing three nights of red eye flights in a row. Our agency basically said, sure you can do that, but you have some pretty important business that you want to be alert for once you arrive.

Some of you have asked what our first few days there will be like and I will do my best to describe what should happen. When we arrive in Uralsk (which should be on Friday morning), we will have a few moments to clean up from days of traveling. After that we will have a very important meeting with the Ministry of Education. This will be where we state what type of child(ren) we are hoping to welcome into our family, and we will explain why we choose to adopt from Kazakhstan. After this meeting we should be granted permission to visit the baby houses.

Once at the baby house we will be introduced to children that meet our specifications one at a time. We should be given a little time with each child. After this process we get/have to make one of the biggest decisions of our lives. Most people have said that their heart makes this decision clear, and many times the child picks them. We really hope that this part is clear as we are very nervous about such an important decision.

Visas are in Seattle!

2007-04-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

We found out last night that our passports and visas are there. This makes me happy, yet I am bummed that I chickened out on the Friday tickets. I am going to call the travel agent the second they open to see if tomorrow is even an option. If it is I just need to get the Ok from our agency to make the change. Please send positive thoughts that we can get there sooner. John could really use those extra days on the end of the trip to be able to get back to work. I'll post tonight from Seattle to let people know what I found out.

Paperwork is in order

2007-04-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well John now has all of his paperwork ready for the BLM and we have all of our adoption paperwork finalized:) We are in Portland tonight and plan on meeting with our agency tomorrow. We did find out that our passports and visas were shiped last night. I am hopping to get the OK to move our flight up, but it all depends on flights to Uralsk.

We spent tonight walking around all the cute little kid stores in Knob Hill. It is probably a good thing that we don't know anything about our future child, because I was fully prepared to start spoiling them rotten. New parents must be the easiest group out there to market things to.

We are starting to get really excited and also realizing how close we are. Our happiness is bitter sweet right now, but I am sure things will get easier as time goes on.

Losing our best friend

2007-04-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

September 22nd 1996 I adopted my first “baby.” She was between two and five years old and in need of a good home and was already on home number three when we met. I can still remember her shy disposition as she sat there snapping at flies as they buzzed around her head. I had spend weeks looking for the dog that was to be mine. Ghunsa was mentioned on a flyer at the pound and somehow I knew she would be my dog. I called the number for two weeks as I looked at dog after dog. I found out later that her owners were out of town and when they called me back they had already given her away. I was devastated and went on a limb and asked them to call me if the person happened to change their mind. Well they did, Ghunsa did not like them and she let it be know. Because of this failed attempt at finding her a home Tina (her owner) wanted me to visit her for two weeks to get to know her. I knew from day one when we ran down to the river and went swimming together.
For 11 years she has been my constant companion and has grown to love John. She had to earn his trust and love, but did so after finding our camp for us in White Sands National Monument in the dark. She was the ring bearer in our wedding and has for all intensive purposes has been our first child.

Today was one of the hardest days of our lives as we said good buy to our loyal friend and companion forever. She will be missed and we hope that she will be watching over us on our trip as our ever present guard dog.

Visas on the Way!

2007-04-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

I just recived news from the agency that our visas are being processed and that they will be in Seattle tomrrow or Thursday. Looks like I wil be moving our plane tickets up. Oh well we knew there would be changes along the way. Now I just need to find some open flights.

Karon

2007-04-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

Why Kazakhstan?

2007-04-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

This is a question we hear frequently enough and we will still need to answer it many more times throughout our journey so I figured I should go ahead and share this with all of our loyal readers (we like to think of y’all as our fan club;)

As our friends and family all know John and I met at Hancock Field Station as outdoor science field instructors. John’s family was blown away that he finally met the girl of his dreams on the river of all places. While working there, HFS had is 50th anniversary and many people were invited from all over the country and especially Oregon. John was in charge of running the lapidary saws and while polishing a piece of goose rock, a man named Larry McGraw (whose uncle founded the field station) looked over his shoulder and asked John if he would make his grave marker out of that rock. This got John's attention and the next thing we knew we were sitting down learning about this man’s life and drinking some of his homemade apple cider.

Over time we became good friends with Larry and we began to visit him at his orchard on the weekends. His orchard was an enchanted garden with 450 varieties of apples, 70 types of pears, 40 species of plums, and some grapevines and apricots thrown in the mix. As our friendship with Larry developed he taught us more and more about apples, and herein lies the first time we ever heard of the country of Kazakhstan. During the cold war Larry had contacted orchardist from Kazakhstan to get root and grafting stock and many of his trees that we still look after, have a common roots with our future child(ren)’s heritage.

When we started to research countries to adopt from, Kazakhstan made our top four because of Larry and his desire to go there and meet the wonderful people who sent him roots and to see the wild apple forest. Then we learned how well they care for their children, we learned that they have baby houses, not orphanages. We learned that they live in small groups and that they have consistent loving care takers, and massage and physical therapy and most of all our hearts screamed to us that our child(ren) are there and we must go to them. While we had the opportunity to do this much easier, there are some things in life that are difficult and they are still the right thing to do.

It has been a long journey and our friend Larry has since passed away, yet his trees live on and flourish with their roots from Kazakhstan and nurturing from here. It is our desire that we can show and share with the people of Grant County and all of our other friends around the world, not only Kazakhstan apples, but the children we will be granted the honor of calling our own.

Only Days Left Now

2007-04-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

You would think that the harder we worked the smaller our list would get, yet I am finding this not to be true. Our house is nearing completion and there are only a few more things to be done for the kid’s room. We have the pets a home for the next few months, and we even have house sitters (Thank you Wendy and Tom.) We hope to leave Dayville in the middle of next week. We then must drive to Salem to apostil the rest of our court documents. Also, we plan on meeting with our agency in Portland one last time to square away the many details needed before arriving in Kazakhstan. Then at long last we will go to Seattle spend time with family and in the hot tub relaxing before embarking on the biggest adventure of our lives. The one last very important thing we are waiting on is our visa’s which if all goes well we be sent to us on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. For John the reality is sinking in, for me I still feel so overwhelmed with getting everything ready that I can’t quite see the finish line. It is hard to not knowing what our future family looks like. Oh well, in a matter of weeks this will be a worry that will seem quite trivial for the rest of our lives. Please keep all of the prayers and positive thoughts coming our way, we really appreciate all of the love and support we and our child(ren) are receiving.

Last day with students

2007-04-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

OK so one huge weight has been lifted off our shoulders. John’s boss has just asked him to be back as soon as possible and said that she really needs him for Memorial Day.

Today was my last day with the kids at school and there were several times I almost cried when telling the good buy. My 7th period class even surprised me by getting pizzas and throwing a going away party for me. Tomorrow I will finish all of their letters and grades and I will be done with school for a while. It will be nice to be able to dedicate this next week to finalizing as many details as possible.

The ever changing details

2007-04-04T21:20:00.001-07:00

My mantra during this whole process to learn patience has been simply “trust.” Well this evening I am finding that harder and harder. Every time there has been a delay I must remind myself that there is a reason for everything and maybe it is so we will be matched with our forever child. Unfortunately those little extra days here and there added up to weeks which now is going to drastically effect John’s work and mean that he must leave early to come home. Right now the big question is how early. Currently is boss says he must be back at work on May 14th. If this is the case he will miss court by 1 or 2 days. When I use “dad’s wisdom test” for if this will matter 10 years from now, I think it will. Court is the day that we, John and Karon become parents, and we want to share that as a whole family. Hopefully all this worrying will be for nothing. Right now we can not get a hold of her and tomorrow she is supposed to be in the field until 3pm. I just keep thinking of how much I want and need John for this day. I can handle the rest of the time by myself. It might not be easy, but I know I can handle it. I just wonder if husbands wives who are about to give birth must go through the same thing. I just wish there was some way to make people understand that adoptive parents have needs, wants and rights too. So until tomorrow….

Saying good buy to sleep

2007-04-03T20:50:00.001-07:00

Gary Paulsen in his book Winterdance writes about training for the Iditarod up in Alaska. He talks long and hard about the day that sleep died for him and I read this with a humorous ear. That is until now, where I now look back with an empathetic ear. Sleep for me is gone and maybe it will return after this “Last Great Race.” I hope I recognize it when we meet again. If I so much as dare near conciseness in the middle of the night I am awake for many more hours, making sure that I have thought through every possible scenario of life with our new family.

I know in my heart that the universe is unfolding perfectly, and I now know the meaning of the phrase “God has a plan for us.” This whole process is teaching me about trust and knowing that while I don’t know how it will work out, believing that it will work. For nearly three years now our struggle to become parents has been filled with let downs and heart ache and so it is hard to know that this is actually it. Who knows, maybe I would feel this way if I were pregnant, yet hopefully the science of it all would comfort me. Politics and bureaucracy have never been my strong suit.

When I start to worry about not knowing details like the age, gender or even the number of kids we will be adopting I think back to my fathers words of wisdom about stress. Number 1, can I do anything about the situation to change it, If so continue working on it. Two, will this matter 10 years from now. When I ask myself these questions I am reminded there is not a darn thing I can do about it, and in a month and a half from now it will seem like I never had such questions.

Tomorrow I should be able to confirm our plane reservations. This will be a nice step to take. Thanks again for all of the well wishes and prayers. This might sound silly, but I can feel the love and support from all of you out there and it means the world to us.

Working on the mega list

2007-04-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

As we begin the official countdown I have made a list now 5 pages long of all the many things we must do before leaving. Poor John, I think as he knocks one off, I add three news things. We have made huge progress on the nursury and I am going to attempt to post some pictures, yet our dial up internet service might have a thing or two to say about that.

Last night I think it finaly started to hit John that his very long wait to parenthood is near an end. We had a friend over and we were testing this very cool baby monitor. When I started talking on my end to John and Amy in the baby's room, it hit him. I am still waiting to trust this whole process. I know it will come soon.

For those of you that are lurking along, please let us know you are out there. We will really aprecaite your comments and support while we are away. If we seem a bit distant these next couple of weeks it is only because we are overwhlemed, feel free to call us and drag us away from the never ending list.

We have a due date!!!

2007-03-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

We have found out that our Letter of Invitation has been sent from Kazakhstan and that we can be there on April 15th. This is great news as apparently they are not issuing any more LOI’s for a while. We are so thrilled to finally know when this journey to parenthood will end and when our lives as new parents will begin. It looks like I will teach this coming up week and then we will do all of our last minuet preparations and leave for Seattle early the next week. We can not make our plane reservations quite yet. We have been reminded that the LOI must be in hand before we make those reservations, yet I don’t foresee too many more hurdles to clear before we get to meet our little one(s). It is surreal to us both that this is finaly happening. I don’t know when the reality of it all will hit me. Thank you all for the prayers and positive thoughts. They are definitely working.

Still in Oregon

2007-03-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry to those of you who got your hopes up. Sharron (my sister) was just doing a training session so that she can update the blog while we are away and before we figure out the kazak internet cafes. We have been on a river trip over spring break. I know many of you will find this not to suprising:) And as usual we heard nothing from our agency this past week. We were told to expcet something within the first 10 days of April and, well, it is not April quite yet. I did hear via the web grapvine that many kids are comming off of the registry in Uralsk April 15th so hopeful they will want us there on that date. Thank you all for your comments, well wishes and prayers.
Karon

While Karon and John are away. . .

2007-03-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

This is Sharron, Karon's big sister. While they are halfway across the world in a place I look at every morning on my world map shower curtain, I will be posting entries for them.

Looking forward to the journey!

Sharron

A little More Information

2007-03-24T14:00:00.001-07:00

After begging for some information I was finaly told that we "should" recive our LOI during the first 10 days of April. We then can depart shortly there after. As with all things in this jorney, I will belive it when I see it. I am still so worried that something will go wrong between now and when we leave.

Great News…Or so I think…

2007-03-19T17:29:00.001-07:00

Today was a big day in our bureaucratic pregnancy. I had planned all along to tell my students today about adopting but some news first thing this morning made it a little easier. Our paperwork has left the capitol and they expect it to be in Uralsk on Wednesday. They say that we should have our LOI in a few weeks and we will leave from there. I am trying really hard not to inundate the agency with questions, OK maybe only one a day will be good for now LOL.

As far as letting my students know, they were great. They asked lots of cute questions and also lots of well thought-out questions, like Why Kazakhstan. I seriously doubt that the Kazak courts will be more thorough than my 7th graders. As I have said before it will be hard to leave this bunch early.

I will update again as soon as I find out any more information.

Age and Patience

2007-03-14T16:36:00.001-07:00

So this feeling I am having now must be the wisdom of age patience that John is always talking about. While I heard nothing again today I was able to handle it. I know that this is going to happen and that our lives will be forever changed and that it will be soon enough. With that said I have also been supper busy between surprising my father for his 80th birthday and taking my students to the science fair, I have not had a tremendous amount of time to daydream about our future family. John is also a constant source of reassurance as he reminds me that we will do whatever it takes to make this happen whenever it happens.

Also, I am glad that I will get to spend a little more time with my students this year. I had several breakthrough moments with them today and had we been gone I would not have seen how I had touched their lives. Once again, I promise to keep you all informed as soon as I find out anything.

Back to the world of silence

2007-03-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

So if you are out there wondering about our journey and how our paperwork is moving along, you are in the same boat as us the expecting parents. We are still in a void of silence. A family working with our agency just left today and we are expecting to hear that our paperwork is at the Embassy any day now. Once it reaches the Embassy it should take a maximum of 2 weeks to receive our Letter of Invitation (LOI). Once we get that we will be able to get our visas and plane tickets. After that we should be able to leave and start the whole point of this journey which is to become parents. We have decided that we will not be taking our laptop on the trip as it is ancient by modern technology standards. We do however plan to keep updating the blog via internet cafes. To all of our loyal visitors I promise that as soon as we know anything we will post again.

28 days or so we think:)

2007-03-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

So we are in a phase of hurry up and wait. It keeps going back and forth weather we will be able to go at the end of March on in the begging of April. It all seems to depend on how quickly they finish our paperwork in Astan and get the necessary information to the Embassy. Our coordinator told us yesterday that it could happen anytime with in the next two weeks. Then we should expect our Letter of Invitation (LOI) two weeks latter. It will be a grand day when that happens. In the mean time I did manage to get most of my classes figured out for the rest of the year so I don’t have to stress about getting my sub ready at the last minuet.

We are still in limbo on whether we will be adopting one or two children on this trip. I know it will be much clearer when we meet the available children and see their little personalities shine. I guess this is the time of my life when I get to give up my planning instincts and just “go with the flow.”

The Silence Has Been Broken!

2007-03-01T17:11:00.000-08:00

Well I finally heard from our agency today and yes they are working hard for us and yes our paperwork is going through the normal phases of adoption gestation. The great news is that it looks like our paperwork should move to Uralsk next week and we should hopefully, if all goes well, meet our little one at the end of March or the beginning of April. This of course has sent me on a roller coaster of emotions and to do list again. I forced my self to stop stressing about all the details when I thought it would be later. Now the task of getting ready to leave work for the rest of the school year is overwhelming. I think I will tell my students right after the science fair and before spring break just in case we leave over break.

I also heard that one more family is leaving for Kazakhstan any day and that we are next on the list. This is very exciting news.

37 more days

2007-02-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

I continue to count and I am continuing to practice my Russian while time seems to be moving at a slower and slower pace. I am very ready for winter to be over and to feel the sunshine again. If you can’t tell it has been VERY rainy and snowing in Oregon this last few weeks, and it looks as though it will never let up. We have not heard anything from our agency lately but we were not expecting to either. This is the major wait time, and I guess there is just not that much news for the agency to share with us right now.

There are a few more people I would like to thank for their help in our preparations. Dad and Sharron thanks for you help in getting the Russian II tapes. Thank you Sharron, as well, for the great picture book for the little one (or two.) Also a big thanks to Cindy B. for all of the little kid and baby toys. I am sure they will come in very handy on the very long plain ride.

20 Days Down 40 to Go!

2007-02-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

Not much new to report. If anyone is wondering why I have posted a picture of a door below there is a good reason. This is the first part of the trim that John has completed!!! For those out there just reading along who don’t know us you might not realize the importance of this accomplishment. Let me just say it is huge.

So I am officially allowing myself to start counting down the days. I am still very confused on where we or our paperwork will be in 60 days, but hey it is something to mark the journey to becoming parents. I do know that our paperwork must go through three steps. The first is the Ministry of Education (MOE) and then or maybe at the same time the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) then it goes to Uralsk. It is my understanding that the Letter of Invitation (LOI) will be sent when the paperwork is finished at the MOE and MFA. That is what will give us the go ahead for tickets and the visas. I can hardly wait but fortunately we should be pretty busy until we go. I have a couple trips planned mid March and we will probably go on a river trip over spring break. If all goes well we will leave shortly there after. It might be nice to spend springtime in Kazakhstan. I hear they have amazing tulips.

The Waiting Game Gets Longer

2007-02-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

As each week goes by we are getting closer and closer, yet sometimes it feels like we are running a marathon without knowing exactly the distance and exactly how far we have come. We were warned by others that this step was a bit daunting and they were correct. We know that our paperwork is in the capitol. We were originally told it took 4-6 weeks to go through the capitol, but now it seems as though things are slower and taking 60 days. This was a huge blow to me today. At first I was filled with such sadness and I felt sick to my stomach at the news. I then stepped back and realized that 2-4 more weeks longer will not be the end of the world. This way we will have spring break for one last vacation with just the two of us. I don’t have to worry about missing the science fair and I will get to be with my students longer, thus I will not have to lose so much money while I am on leave. I must keep reminding myself that this is all for a reason. While we were trying to conceive I always believed that it didn’t happen because the right child for us was not ready and I still feel this way with adoption. The right child will be ready when the time comes and however small and helpless I feel right now, I must know that the universe is unfolding perfectly as it should.

Gifts

2007-02-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

These are the really cool hand made dolls that Marlene sent us from Alaska.

2 Weeks Down

2007-02-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

As we have read blog after blog about adoption
travel we have only seen compleated nuserys that
look all cute and wonderful. Here is a little bit of
the reality of putting it together:)

We have reached another milestone in our journey to parenthood. Our paperwork has been in the capitol for two weeks. It stays there for an average of 4-6 weeks so we are definitely getting closer and the reality is slowly seeping in that we will be parents soon. The room is coming along and John has actually hung some trim in the living room so this child will have a beautiful home to come into. Life in general is going well we are just VERY busy getting things ready. We are also looking after our neighbors horses which is nice because it forces us to go outside and go for a walk everyday. My Russian is coming along quite nicely as well as I have finished year I and I am anxiously awaiting year two to arrive in the mail. It is so exciting to be learning a new language knowing that I will be using it so soon. It also gives me something else to focus on besides impending mother hood. Work also is going well. My students are keeping me busy which helps the time pass quicker.

A word of thanks is definitely due to Jason, Lori, James, Hailey and Buddy for the help in bringing their newest cousins to be home. Also thank you Marlene for the beautiful dolls. I am sure they will be a cherished item.

Not too much new

2007-02-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

Not a huge amount to report while we are waiting. I am mainly just getting our to do list organized so that I can stop being a dear in head lights and get back to preparing for the biggest trip of our lives. We have lots to do still, but when I lay it all out on paper it is not to terribly overwhelming. This weekend we are going to Bend to pick up any essentials. I am really hoping that this will be our last trip until we go. We did decide to just go on Friday night so that sopping on Saturday will not be so hectic. For those following this journey who have never been out to our neck of the woods, when I say we are going shopping, I mean we are going to drive 2.5 hours to a decent size city, get our supplies for the next two months and then we are going to drive 2.5 hours home.

On top of preparing for our big trip I have been working hard on planning the science fair field trip to Portland for my 7th graders. While it is hectic to plan for this while also being busy with the adoption, it is probably best that I am busy at work right now so the time will pass quicker. I am really starting to get sad about leaving my students early this year. I am really enjoying them and I have worked so hard with them that it will be hard to turn over their lives to someone else. I guess I would have to do that soon enough.

Many of you have asked for nursery pictures and they will come soon enough. Hopefully with the Bend trip I can get a few more things to help it look more complete. We have almost finished stripping the dresser of drawers we want to put in the room. Unfortunately the paint stripper needs 55+ degrees and those are hard to come by these days.

Happy February

2007-02-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

So, it is crazy to think that this is probably the last month that we will be childless as we should be in Kazakhstan sometime in March. Our paperwork has been in Astan now for 4 days. It has been typically taking 35-45 days so at worst 41 days to go! I find that I am getting more and more anxious as we get closer. Fortunately we will both be home almost all weekend to get things ready for the little one.

An update about one or two:
We are still hearing the same thing, we can bring home two as long as we are willing to bring home one with a special need or if there are siblings. We have done a lot of soul searching over this and we still have not made any major decisions. I think that this is something that will work itself out while we are there. We still would prefer a sibling group but my heart is very set on a little one. This is the hardest thing about waiting for me. I just can’t form a picture in my head of what our family will look like.

We would like to thank Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen for their donation. One tip for other families out there: when you are doing your budget don’t forget the cost of the one way return ticket. For international flights a seatless child is 10% of the going fair and a seated child is ½ the adult fair.

Update

2007-01-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry we have been bad bloggers this past week. Our house has been in major transition as we have been moving the office upstairs and continuing to put the nursery together. While it might sound like a simple task it was pretty monumental to rearrange our whole house. I checked on a Dossier through FedEx tracking on Friday and it was on its way to Almaty, so I assume it will be on its way to Astan (the capital) any day now. Unfortunately during the office shuffle I misplaced the tracking number so I will have to wait until tomorrow to continue my stalking of our package.

Yesterday morning I think it finally hit me full force that we are getting really close. There are certain things I have been putting off saying that it was too soon to mess with this or that. Now I am realizing that we need to get our buts in gear. If you know me (Karon) you know that I like to have things done way in advance, so I would rather work my tail off now than be in utter panic the last two weeks. I am also starting to get concerned by the fact that this little one or two will not have a thing to wear as we have not bought any clothes because we don’t know the age. I know I need to trust the process, but I hate feeling clueless. Oh well I guess I better get used to it. I will post pictures as soon as we finish rearanging the house.

It is True!

2007-01-23T19:13:00.002-08:00

I just checked the FedEx page for the 100th time and it is true, the package has left the Consulate and is on its way. I will keep you (who ever is reading this) informed of our dossier's route to Kazakhstan.

Movement

2007-01-23T16:55:00.000-08:00

I got an e-mail from our agency today stating that our dossier has made it through New Your City and is on its way to Kazakhstan! This is very exciting news. If all goes like those before us it has been taking 6-8 weeks for our paperwork to make it through the Kazakh government. Then we will get our Letter of Invatation and leave shortly there after. This is going to be a long eight or so weeks but ones to cherish as well.
Karon

Mural

2007-01-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

Just thought you all might like to see the mural that we put up in the kid's room today. It is starting to feel like we are really going to be parents soon.
Karon

No Movement

2007-01-20T20:01:00.000-08:00

I never used the FedEx tracking page before this past week and now I am a pro at it. At least I think so, but unfortunately it keeps telling me the same thing: Nothing. It looks as though our paperwork is still in New York. Our agency mentioned that the person who needs to put their final stamp of approval on it has been ill. I every one can send some prayers and positive thoughts that this very crucial person feels better soon we sure would appreciate it. I just keep reminding myself that the universe is unfolding as it should so that we will meet and welcome the perfect child or children into our lives.

Just the other day we were reminded of this as we have been trying to pick up our new windows in Bend for the last 4 weeks. We have had a hard time with this because we would have to borrow a pickup truck and it would take a whole day to get there and back and the roads have been terrible. Also we were really worried because if something happened to them in transit than we were totally out of luck. Well on Friday, John was loading up the jeep with a borrowed trailer (thanks Fido) when the window company called saying that they had a new driver they wanted to train and they would have him bring the windows out to us (3 hours away) for free!!! Such a thing was a good reminder that rushing things does not always get the best results and that good things are worth the wait (but too much longer and I won’t have any fingernails left.)

The other big news is that we have started moving the office upstairs so we can really get the kids room together. We will post pictures once the mess clearsJ

Karon