Planning trip #2!

We received a court date of September 9th at 10:00 am. We will be leaving on Sept 5th and returning Sept 13th. We are excited to have a date to see Daniyar again. Collin is especially excited to see Kazakhstan and his new brother.
It has been a busy week and a half back. We were lucky to have family in town when we returned and got to see our Louisiana crew and Mom and Bill. I have been back at work and Ed has been busy getting updated documents together and doing travel planning.
Looking forward to posting more pics from our second trip! Jacqueline

Final Post for First Trip

We are packing up the apartment and will leave for Almaty this morning. I had a tearful night last night as we said goodbye for a while to Danny. I will miss that little guy so much. We will now be in the difficult situation of having 2 sons halfway around the world from each other. Today I woke up focused on getting home to Collin and our family and friends, knowing that we are one day closer to all being home together. We fly out of Almaty at 3 in the morning and after 28 hours will be back in Ohio. Here are a few more pics from the trip. I don't think we will have computer access until we are home so we'll sign off for now. Jacqueline

Last day in Taldy

We are trying to remain positive about preparing to leave Taldy. We got to take Danny out of the baby house this morning and visited a museum and the park. He once again rode the train twice. Looks like we will have two train fans on our hands. He and some of his group have a cold now but he still seems energetic. This afternoon we will go for ice cream and maybe back to the park since he didn't want to leave this morning. We are hoping the time between trips is quick and know that this is the way the adoption must be done even though we are very sad to leave him. We will try to focus that we are one step closer to getting him home and that we will see Collin and the rest of our family very soon. Here are some morning pics!

Busy Day!

This will be a short note because it is late and we had a busy day. We had to prepare some pictures for the adoption process detailing our visits to the baby house on all of the required days. We also wanted to get in some shopping at the bazaar over lunch. Mika and Gulnara treated us to a nice lunch of Kazakh hot dogs and spicy mustard. They were good, sausages in a pastry shell. We had to complete paperwork and meet with the local dept of education this afternoon. We did still get in some good visit time with Danny today. The group had a lot of fun playing with balls this morning. We played outside under the trees a lot this afternoon. Gulnara and Mika came over for a spaghetti dinner tonight. We are getting excited to be home soon but sad to have our last day with Danny tomorrow. More tomorrow, Jacqueline

Sunglasses and City Plus

It is hard to believe we are down to our last week of this trip. We spoke to Collin tonight. He sounded happy to have Aunt Jen, Uncle John, Grandpa, Zachary and the cousins, Evan and Aidan in town to play with. No crying today! It sounds like he is having fun playing putt-putt and going to the zoo. I just can't wait to hug him!

We had a fun day with Danny too. We stayed at the baby house this morning and took a walk with the group. Danny kept stealing my sunglasses and putting them on everything, the stuffed rabbit, the trees, his belly. Then he would hide them behind his back and say "where are the glasses?" in kazakh. He would crack up when I pretended to look for them everywhere until he pulled them out and waved them in the air. This afternoon it was very hot so we went back to the City Plus arcade area (air conditioning-never thought I would appreciate it so much). He got brave enough to ride the large carousel horses and even drove the bumper car himself (with some steering by Ed). He is really starting to understand some of our English and tries so hard to talk to us. It's late, will sign off with some pics. Jacqueline

Danny's first mountain picnic

We have had a very fun and adventurous weekend. Saturday night we went to a children's playland with an arcade, carousels, bumper cars and a climbing center. Ed lost (and found) his cell phone in the ball pit. Danny just couldn't decide what to do next. His favorite ride was the bumper cars. He had a grin a mile wide zipping around the track and bumping (or almost bumping) other cars. He had another serving of ice cream to top it all off. I think he ran it off between the rides.

Today we were treated to a picnic in the mountains with Karim, his wife Anna, their infant daughter Linara, and of course, Mika and Danny. After about an hour drive through a road that became bumpier, more narrow and finally gravel, we ended up in a beautiful clearing with a mountain stream and gorgeous wildflowers. We spread out blankets and the kids played while Karim cooked shashlik (shish ka bobs) and Anna chopped fruit and vegetables. Dessert was a watermelon cooled in the mountain stream. Just as we were finished, it started to rain and we rode home a little wet but happy. More tomorrow, Jacqueline