Updated Megan photos

For all of you die hard blog fans here are a couple of pictures of Megan taken this morning. She is really adjusting to being home and is really a good little girl. We are enjoying our time together as Steve has returned to work. We hope to take another walk this afternoon as it is supposed to be in the 40's.

Home is wonderful!

We are still trying to get over jet lag but are absolutely thrilled to be at home and in the USA. I went to the grocery store on Saturday and was totally overwelmed at the choices that we have here. We really have it good here. I hope everyone appreciates what we have here because there really are a lot of countries and people that just don't have the opportunities and resources that we do here in the USA. We are all still trying to get ourselves adjusted to Eastern Standard Time. Steve and I are in bed by 9:00 pm each night - last night was a good night as Megan went to bed at 5:30 pm and slept to 3:30 am. Slowly we are moving to getting her on EST. Hopefully by this weekend we will be totally adjusted. As soon as we get a new part for our camera we will upload some photos for you all. Thanks for following along our journey!



Our first walk as a family (40 degrees in Buffalo in January - unheard of - quite a temperature difference than what we experienced in Kokshetau!)

We Made It Home!!!

Since we have a lot of folks checking in on us from out or town or that we haven't called yet. We are home! You won't believe who good it felt to sleep in our own bed last night. Especially after 28 hours of travel with an 8 month old. Everything started out just fine, we got to the airport and got checked onto our flight to Frankfurt no problem. The 7 hour flight went pretty well, there were several children on that flight and I think Megan was the best of the group. We were in the middle section of the plane with 4 seats across and we had all 4 seats. The flight attendants gave us a bed for her that we put across the 2 empty seats, Megan slept for 3 or 4 hours on that flight. We had only a short layover in Frankfurt which was nice. The 9 hour flight to Chicago was pretty much a nightmare, Megan didn't sleep for more than a half hour at a time, she typically slept 15 or 20 minutes after she screamed for about 10 minutes, it was a VERY LONG flight. Between Amy and I we must have walked about 10 miles around that plane. They have these tv screens in the seat rests and you can watch the plane's postition on a map of the world, it seemed like that plane NEVER moved across the map. Our flight path took us just south of Iceland and it seemed like we were over the North Atlantic just off the coast of Iceland for about 18 hours! We got to Chicago finally. We made it through immigration with no trouble, Megan is now offically a US citizen!!! Then another interesting thing happened. We had bought a bag of apples in Almaty and didn't eat any of them so we put them in our carry-on to snack on. Well we never ate them so I threw the bag of apples away on the plane. We had one that we had taken out of the bag we couldn't remember which carry-on we put it in and decided not to worry about it. Well we had to pick up our luggage and while we were waiting for the luggage I turned around and there is a dog sniffing at our carry-ons. Really bad thoughts went through my head, turns out it was a Department of Agriculture dog that found the bag with the apple in it. Amy had to search through the bag and get the apple, the officer then made a note on our customs form which required us to have our luggage X-rayed for about the hundredth time, they thought they saw something in one of the them and had to take it and search through it. We finally got through customs and realized when we got to security that we didn't have boarding passes for the flight to Buffalo. The lack of sleep was definitely starting to take it's toll. We had to turn around, get back on the train to another terminal and wait in line at the United counter. Then we had to get back on the train to the terminal our flight was leaving from and to the security check point. The line was now about a mile long. We finally got through the line and got the full search procedure which about put Amy over the top. By the time we got to the gate we again had very little extra time. Put it this way I don't think we'll be invited to Sunday dinner by anyone on our flight from Chicago to Buffalo. Megan screamed for about 15 minutes then fell asleep, then she pooped her diaper and woke up screaming again, Amy took her into the world's smallest airplane bathroom and changed her on the toilet seat cover. Then she screamed for another 20 minutes before going back to sleep. So on an hour and 15 minute flight she screamed for about half of it. We figure she got a grand total of maybe 6 or 7 hours of sleep in that 28 hour period. I got maybe 3 or 4 hours, Amy doesn't think she slept much at all, needless to say we were all pretty wiped out when we got home. We all slept pretty good last night, like I said, that bed felt really good. Now we'll see how the transition to Eastern Standard Time goes.

It was a very long trying day but we are so very happy to be home. Based on popular requests, we will attempt to continue updating this blog as time goes on.

We are outta here!!!!

Can you believe it? 8 hours from now, we are to be picked up by our driver to head to the airport!!!! 24 hours from now we'll be somewhere over Europe or the Atlantic on the way to Chicago. We can't wait to be home, we miss everyone so much and we miss America. It will be good to get back to a place where everyone speaks English. We miss Mighty Taco, American Chinese food, I miss Tim Horton's coffee. I plan to get several cups Saturday morning. I can't wait to go out and get a steak. I know most everyone doesn't give a hoot about seeing us, but I know Megan will have lots of visitors over the next week or two.

We can't say goodbye to wonderful country of Kazakhstan without saying thank you to all those who helped us while we were here. Thanks to Kiril and Dima our drivers here in Almaty who put up with our lack of Russian and struggled to communicate with us in English. Both speak English better than they let on. Thanks to the sisters at the adoption agency office here in Almaty, they were very helpful and everything went more smoothly than we could have imagined. A very special thanks to Inna and Oleg in Kokshetau, they were more than our interpreter and driver for 4+ weeks in Kokshetau, they were tour guides, couriers, chefs, they worried about us like they were our parents, and most of all they became our friends. It was like having family with us. We will never forget them.

Thanks also to the other families we've gone through this journey with, Kelly, Lee and Grace although we never met Lee. Kelly was incredibly helpful in helping us to prepare for the trip. Patty, Teresa and Michael who became our friends as well.

We also have to thank our agency coordinator back home, Lisa, she was very helpful in preparing us for this incredible journey. Thanks also to Jim and Cindy Harding at World Partners Adoption. We also have to thank my Mom and Dad for dog sitting for 6 weeks and for all the phone calls and emails. Thanks to Andy and Linda for keeping an eye on the house and keeping Amy's plants alive, if they still are! Lastly a huge thank you to everyone who has emailed and posted comments or called us. It really helped us get through missing Christmas and helped us pass the time. Lastly, thanks to everyone who loaned us DVDs although I'm not so sure about Ahmad. You've gotten us hooked on The Sopranos, we're going to have to go home and get HBO now.

Lastly, we have to thank Megan's birthmother who made the difficult decision to give Megan up for adoption. We are forever grateful to her and hope she knows that Megan will be loved and well taken care of for the rest of her life. We already can't imagine life without Megan. She has completed our family.

Well that's about it, today was relatively quiet, we have been packing, we went out and did a little shopping. Megan is taking a nice long nap, hopefully she will sleep this well on the planes. When she gets up we are going to run to the grocery store and then up to a pizza place around the corner and get a pizza. We had one the other day and although it isn't the same as our pizza it was quite good. It will be a good final meal in Kazakhstan.

This will be our last post until we get home, I don't know how much we will update this blog from this point forward. I hope everyone has enjoyed following along.

Here are a couple of pictures of Almaty.






Check out this architecture.

A day and a half to go

Well, here we are, 36 hours from now we will be in the air somewhere between Almaty and Frankfurt. It's hard to believe that we're almost finished with this journey. It seems like just yesterday we were arriving here and heading for Kokshetau, then again, it seems like we haven't been home for a very long time. I'm wondering if I've remembered how to drive. We are very excited to get back home to, maybe not a normal life, at least not normal in the sense of what our life used to be, but more normal than it has been over the past 6 weeks.

Today we had our embassy appointment, it pretty much consisted of signing a couple of forms and receiving all the paperwork on Megan, along with her Kazakhstan passport and Visa for entering the US. Once we get past customs in the Chicago airport, Megan will automatically become a US citizen. We were able to get our flights changed and will be on an earlier flight from Chicago to Buffalo, we will be home Friday afternoon now. After our embassy appointment, we met Patty and Alec and Patty's brother Andrew for dinner. Andrew arrived early yesterday morning to help Patty on the flights home. We went to the Guiness Pub, yes they served Guiness there but no we didn't have one, sorry Ann and Dave, I know you are disappointed. We had cheeseburgers and french fries, good old American food!!!!

Well that's about it, once again I can't get any pictures from the camera to the laptop so we don't have any pictures to share. Sorry about the technical difficulties.

We're Back Online

Ok, as of this afternoon, we are back online and able to post from our apartment. I'll try to get you all caught up on the past couple of days. We got out of Kokshetau Sunday morning with no problems. As I mentioned in the short post yesterday, the flight was fairly uneventful. We got to Almaty at about 2:00PM, our driver picked us up, took us to the grocery store and then on to our apartment. We've got a few pictures of the place that are posted here. It's a nice place, quite a bit bigger than the Kokshetau apt. We are on the 4th floor again so we are still getting a little exercise climbing the stairs. Yesterday we went to the agency office here and took care of some more paperwork. Then we did a little more grocery shopping. Last night we met Patty and Alec and Teresa at Mad Murphy's Irish Pub. We had a nice dinner, the menu was in English and our waitress spoke English. Today Megan had her medical evaluation, the Dr was South African and very nice. He said he didn't see anything that was a cause for any concern although Megan should have a full examination when we get home, we've already got an appointment scheduled. Megan was pretty good, she doesn't like being poked and prodded. She cried some, it looks like our first pediatrician appointment will be quite the treat, I think she'll be doing a lot of crying. Anyway, tomorrow we go the the US Embassy to get her Visa and citizenship papers. After that we are free to come home, the only problem is there are no Lufthansa flights to Frankfurt on Thursday, so we will be out of here early Friday morning. Very early in fact, I think we'll be getting picked up at about 1:30am to catch our 4:00am flight.

Today after the medical appointment, our driver took us up to the mountains just outside of the city. There is a ski resort there and we actually took a chair lift ride partway up the mountain, took a couple of pictures and came back down, it was cold but fun. I can't wait to get out on the slopes when we get home.

Anyway, that's about it for now, quite a few pictures here since we haven't uploaded any in a couple days. None of Megan, sorry, but I think our digital camera may have finally bit the dust. I may try playing with it a bit more later but we may have uploaded our last picture from Kazakhstan.


Here is the living room of the new apt.


Another of the living room.


The bathroom.


The kitchen


Here are Megan and I walking into Mad Murphy's


Megan and me on the mountain at the ski resort.

These are some views looking down from the lift:









This is a huge skating center part way up the mountain, our driver told us it is the highest in the world. They do speed skating competition here. It was open for public skating when we came by, you can see all the people skating.

We're in Almaty

Hi all, just a quick note. We are safely in Almaty, we are having trouble getting hooked to the internet from our apartment though. Not sure when we'll get connected. I'm in an internet cafe right now. Life here is pretty good, we went shopping at a real grocery store today and were able to find spagetti sauce!!! We had pasta with sauce for lunch. We are going to dinner with Patty and maybe Teresa tonight to Mad Murphy's Irish Pub. Supposedly it has good American style food. The trip on the Yak was pretty good. We sat near the middle of the plane and it was warm but not unbearable. Megan took a couple naps on the plane and was very good, no fussing at all. She slept through the landing, opened her eyes when the wheels hit the runway and immediately went back to sleep.

Well, that's about it for now. I just wanted to touch base, hopefully we'll get our internet connection issues worked out.


The Yak Airplane


The Kokshetau Airport - picture taken from inside the Yak Airplane

Last day in Kokshetau!

Today we were up early and off to the registrars office to sign the official papers for Megan's birth certifcate and adoption decree. We are official now! After this event we took a drive around Kokshetau and visited the Ice Garden again and a eternal flame memorial statue for one of the wars. Rest of the day was spent trying to pack in between Megan's naps. We are ready to go. We are off in a minute to meet the whole gang for our final farewell dinner. We get picked up tomorrow morning around 9:30 am for our flight to Almaty. Our flight leaves at 11:00 am and arrives in Almaty around 2:00 pm. We will see how Megan does on the Yak. We might not be on-line for a little while till we get situated in Almaty. So check back periodically. Paka-Paka (Bye!)

Here are the photos of the day:

Trying out the Baby Bjorn, we're not sure if we are going to use it. Most people we've talked to swear by these things for getting through airports. We'll see.


Megan acting like her normal happy self playing on the floor.




Amy and I with Megan's birth certificate and adoption decree, she is ours now, there's no turning back!!!


A Kazakh War Memorial, it's an eternal flame.


A log cabin that they built at the ice sculpture park, it looks like a bar, too bad it was closed when we were there this morning, I was ready for a piva(beer).


This is a Mickey Mouse sculpture I think.


An ice sculpture of the Sphinx in Egypt, around the other side of this one is a big slide, see the picture below.


Amy is heading down the slide, it is solid ice.


A movie theatre we walked by, if you can't guess by the Russian title, Harry Potter's latest movie is showing.

A day and a half left

Yes everyone, we are practically to the point that we are counting the hours until we leave for Almaty. Tomorrow is a pretty big day, the adoption becomes official tomorrow and we go to get Megan's birth certificate. We are getting picked up at 9:15 or so tomorrow morning to do this task. Inna says it might take a while, we have to wait while they process all the paperwork, I'm not sure if that is a half hour or 3 hours, Amy seems to think it should be a half hour or so. I guess we will find out tomorrow. We also got some incredible news today, first we got a call from Inna and she said we can plan to leave Almaty to come home next Saturday the 21st, AWESOME. Amy got right on the horn to the airline office in Almaty to switch our plane tickets, we were going to have a longer layover in Chicago on the way home but we don't care at this point. Then a little while later Inna called back again and said our Embassy appointment is on Wednesday and we could leave to come home Thursday the 19th! Unbelievable, could it be that the ball is finally bouncing our way? Amy gets back on the phone to Lufthansa and finds out they have no flights from Almaty to Frankfurt on Thursday, ok, so the ball is bouncing towards us, just not directly to us, it is Friday the 13th after all, everything can't run out perfect. So we are booked to come home Friday the 20th, that is still 5 days earlier than we expected. Very exciting, we can't wait, I can almost feel that refreshingly warm wind chill coming off Lake Erie.

Anyway, other than the excitement of planning our trip home, nothing else really happened today. Here we thought Megan was so good when she feel asleep so easily last night, well, she had payback in mind for us not letting her nap when it was time. She had a VERY restless night. I think she was awake screaming about every hour and a half. This was a lesson learned, no more missed naps!!!!! She has napped good for us today though and still seems a little tired.

Well here are today's pictures, I went out to run a couple errands and took a few pictures of the street scene around our apt.






A view up one of the main streets near our apt, notice the jalopy sitting next to the curb. But that SUV coming up behind the red car is like a brand new Toyota 4 Runner or something similar.


This is a shot of the main intersection by us, hey Hendo, if you can see it, that car on the far left of the picture, the little white one with a blue stripe, that's a police car. Click on the picture and you can blow it up a bit. Do you want a transfer? I could talk to some people here and see if they have any openings.


This is a bus stop, this one is actually a pretty modern bus, many of them look like they were built in the 50s. The guy walking in front of me is wearing a typical fur hat that almost everyone here wears.

Burrito Night...

let's see how the digestive system adjust to burritos at this point. Anyway, we had a burrito dinner over at the cottage tonight. That's why we are posting a bit late tonight, sorry for all of you who typically check first thing in the morning. Anyway, we got to meet the two new couples who just got into town last night. They seem like nice folks. Too bad we won't be here to spend more time with them. We got some nice pictures of Megan, Alec (Patty's little boy) and Camille (Teresa's daughter). We had a good time, Inna made us burritos which were very good, we even got to bring a couple home with us. We kept Megan up way past her last nap time so she was getting to be a handful by the time we got home, it was the easiest bedtime so far, she was so tired I just laid her down and she was out like a light.

Anyway, that's about it, the countdown continues, only 2 more days!!!!!


Not sure if you can read what Megan's shirt says, "I was worth the wait", she definitely was, thanks Cindy and Brent for the t-shirt!


Alec with his harem, that's Megan on the left, Alec in the middle and Camille on the right.


The three amigos again...




Megan going head to head with Alec, she's not afraid of those boys even if they are bigger than she is.


A part of the gang at the cottage tonight.

4 Days left in Kokshetau

Well, 4 days from now we will be in Almaty on our last leg of this journey. Not that we are counting down or anything. The time has gone pretty fast, yet it seems like a very long time ago that we first met Megan. We are very excited about heading out. Amy and I met Patty for lunch this afternoon. We had Inna call our order in for us so we didn't have to worry too much about communicating to the waitress. It was nice, Patty is just as excited as we are to be moving on. Nothing too exciting to report, just another day, we are having a bit of a heat wave, it's all the way up -8 today. Amy picked up a touch of a cold, she is napping right now. It doesn't seem bad, she's just sleepy today. Megan slept very well last night and she has napped better today. She is acting a little tired again right now, so it may be time for another nap for her too.

Anyway, all is well here. Again, thanks to everyone for the emails and comments, they keep us busy and amused. By the way, sorry about the Pats comment Viv, I have a lot of respect for the Pats, but it's time for someone else to win it and for the Pats to have a few forgettable seasons like the Bills have had the past few years.

Here are a few pics from today: