Smokey and the Bandit .... again

Okay we have offically run out of things to watch and listen to. I only brought about 4 or 5 movies on this trip and the 1st series of the TV show 24. We did enjoy that series, I will have to get caught up when we get home. I had never watched it before and we really enjoyed it. Except I hated the way the 1st year ended. Thanks, Alabama GeGe for recommending it.

We've been to the notary's office this morning and signed a bunch of papers, lots of Powers of Attorney for after we are gone, so Maria and Svetlana can get Almira's new passport, birth certificate and everything else she needs.

Yesterday was a pretty slow day. We walked to the grocery store on Constitution. Jon likes the chickens there. We had roasted chicken and rice (boil in a bag) for lunch. Maria called and said they would be late getting us because they were at the attorney’s office getting paper work done. She then called back about 3:00 and said to get ready, they would be there in 10 minutes and to bring all the gifts. She came and picked us up with a lady from the Dept. of Education. I asked Maria if she had called Almira to let her know we would be late and she said no. We arrived at the orphanage and Almira wasn’t there, she had gone to a concert or something in town with her school. We heard she hadn’t wanted to go, but someone had talked her into going and she went about lunch. That was okay. We missed seeing her, but were able to get most of the gifts done. I know it’s normally done after court, but I’m afraid we will be so rushed Monday that we won’t have time.

We had a quiet Friday night, just watching a movie. It was strange to think this would be our last Friday night in Petro. On Monday we will have been there 3 weeks. I have started packing things and trying to get everything ready to return home.

We are waiting for Almira and Boris to come this afternoon. We are going to look for some comfortable shoes for her to travel in and a couple of other things she's going to need.

I don’t know why but I’m just a bundle of nerves thinking about returning home and getting everything done that we need to do on Monday. Keep up the prayers and and we will be home before you know it. We hope to have Almira home by the end of May.

Thanks to everyone for your well wishes and prayers these last few weeks.

Kathy B.

We have a court date finally ....

We just got the call that we can have court on Monday. We had to promise over and over again that the document is on it's way. It should be here by the end of next week. We are very happy that we don't need to fly home and come back later. I also think it will be better for Almira that we are going to court before we leave. I was worried about the effect of us leaving would have on her. Now Sarah and I will come back for Almira and Jon can get back to work. It is about 10:15 a.m. here on Thursday morning and we will go see Almira this afternoon. We are very excited.

I just love this picture of Jon and Almira. They were studying English and Russian. She is teaching Jon Russian and he was working on her English. Jon said he is teaching her "good" English. Folks from the south can appreciate this. She is such a sweet child, we just can't wait to get her home.

We went to the orphanage and told Almira the good news. She was so excited and kept saying we’re going to court on Monday. We sat in a little room today and played UNO. She just loves that game. We had to say the numbers of the cards and colors of the cards in Russian and she had to say them in English. Needless to say she knows her English much better than we know our Russian. She just laughs at Jon when he speaks Russian. Maybe it's the southern dialect on those Russian words. He just can't seem to roll those R's.

We then left and went and bought our plane tickets on Air Astana for Monday afternoon, late. We hope we can get everything done by 4:00 on Monday, signing all the documents and everything. We are very excited about coming home next week. We are going to try and fly out of Almaty on Tuesday morning. I just hope everything comes together and we can make these flights. We are quite anxious to get back home. That means we should be able to get Almira home by end of May or early June.

When we woke up this morning it had been raining for a while. The weather has turned cold again. The mud is back in full force.

Thanks for everyone that has been praying for us so hard. Jody, thanks for the positive thinking. I'll check back in later.

Thanks, Kathy B.

Still nothing....

It is Wednesday night here, almost midnight. Jon and I have seats on the plane out of Almaty on Friday morning, I haven't changed them yet. We still have no answer on whether or not the judge will allow us to have court on Monday without this one document. This is one of the most frustrating things we have ever been through. The license was in effect when the homestudy was done and they have an apostilled copy of that. I brought another new copy with me, I just didn't have time to get it apostilled. Why can't we have court and deliver the document later in the week? No one can answer this question for us.

Next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are holidays here. I also found out today that DHL, which is the fastest, still takes one full week to make it to Petro. If we can't have court on Monday we are just going to come home for a week or so. There is another set of holidays on May 9th. Jon and I both feel like we will be just sitting here doing nothing for another week and a half to 2 weeks. We would rather be at home, at work, with our family than sitting in this apartment. I'll let you know what we decide, but if we don't have news on Thursday (tomorrow) by noon, we are headed home for a little while. We've already told Almira that we are probably going to go home for a week or two and then come back for court. She understands and knows we are coming back for her.

I'll post more later when I know something. So if you don't hear from us for a day or two, you'll knew we're travelling home.

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes we've been getting. Jon and I love e-mails from home. Just keep praying, if we can get court on Monday, we would much rather stay and do it and just fly out Tuesday.

Thanks!
Kathy

No news is not good news ...

Just needed a bit of cheer for today, so here is a picture of me with lovely ladies from Sunday. This is in the courtyard of the regional orphanage.

Today we did not get the good news we were hoping for. We waited and waited to hear from someone. About 1:30 our door bell rang and it was Maria. She said she had just gotten in from Polundino. She came in and sat down and I immediately asked about court and she said she didn’t know anything. Then she told me that the judge had reviewed all our papers and wanted an apostilled copy of the home study agency license. There was one in the dossier, but it had expired in September. I had just brought copies of the renewed one, because I just picked them up right before we left. I asked and asked over and over to Yakov which documents did I need. I even had an addendum done to our home study before we came, even though he told me I probably didn’t need it. I just didn’t get it all apostilled.

To say I am aggravated would be an understatement. Needless to say I sent an urgent e-mail to Mom in Monroe and she is getting all this done for me. I’m even getting the homestudy addendums that we “didn’t need” apostilled while she’s at it. Then it will be a scramble to get it over here early next week. Maria told me DHL was good at getting things here quickly. Wanita, thanks for helping Mom with this. So the race is on.

Maria could not give me an answer on whether or not this would affect our court date. She still thinks it will be Monday, but she doesn’t know. I asked her if Svetlana had talked to the judge today about trying for an earlier court date and she told me no, the other couple was there when she talked to the judge, so she didn’t mention it.

We went and saw Almira without a translator today, which went okay. We had our Russian phrases book and she helped us pronounce words and we told her the English words. I also took all her scrap book stuff and that’s all she wanted to do today was work on our scrapbook.

Tomorrow just has to get better. Please pray for us that this will not postpone court and that the judge will reconsider making us wait until Monday for court. I know this is a lot to ask, but our God is great and can make it happen. I’ll keep you posted.

Happy Birthday to Almira

Well, it is finally here. This is day 14 of bonding and also Almira's birthday. I dreamed about this day in the U.S. for weeks. We are up early here in Kaz, a little before 7AM. We just had our morning call with Mom and Sarah. Sarah sounded much better and was a little happier this evening. I know this is hard on her. We should find out about our court date this evening.

Yesterday (Sunday) when we were out walking, the smoke in the city was awful. Everyone is cleaning up here. It was in the mid 60's here. It is like spring has suddenly sprung. You can actually start to see grass popping up. I was beginning to think that the town is always so muddy looking, but I'm seeing signs of spring and the mud is going away. We are sitting in our stuffy apartment this morning, unable to open the windows because of all the leaves and things burning around us. Okay. That's all for this morning, I'll post more this evening.

Today was Day 14 of bonding and also Almira’s birthday. Today didn’t go as we had hoped. We left and went to the orphanage at 2PM for the performance. There was some sort of inspection, but I’m not sure we ever saw those people. Several groups of the children sang and there were several ladies that had birthdays, along with an older boy and Almira. Each of them were recognized and then an older group of children came out and did a wonderful dance in colorful outfits. We saw Michael (Dee’s son in his suit), Vika and Saltant in their school uniforms. We just didn’t have a chance to get pictures, but Jon tried.

We then left the orphanage and took Almira out for her birthday. She had already eaten lunch so we headed back to the apartment and she worked on her scrapbook. I put on Finding Nemo, just for something to listen do and Almira worked on her scrapbook for about 2 hours. Then Almira opened her birthday presents from Jon and I and from Memmie and Pawpaw. She loved them all. Still her favorite gift so far is the kitten, Milky, from Sarah. I brought it to the orphanage with us today to pick her up. When I pulled it out of the bag she exclaimed “Milky” and hugged her kitten. Then we had to run back to the orphanage to get the director to sign something else and had to take Almira back. She did a great job working on her scrap book. She didn’t finish, so I will take it with us tomorrow to the orphanage. Maria dropped us off and went to the court to meet Svetlana. About 30 minutes later our door bell rang and it was Maria, Svetlana and Lena. They came in and said they had been to see the judge and took all our documents. They had declared May 1st, 2nd and 3rd national holidays. So it looked like our court date would probably be on Monday, April 30th. We talked some more about other things and I mentioned about Sarah being sick and went to the doctor on Thursday. I told them her asthma was really flared up and we were hoping to get home as soon as possible. Svetlana said she would talk to the judge again tomorrow and let us know as soon as possible when court would be set. We will hopefully have a firm date set tomorrow. We are a little disheartened right now, but knew this could happen. We will continue to visit with Almira every day at the orphanage. I will post tomorrow as soon as we know a firm court date.

A Pre-Birthday celebration

We got off to a lazy start this morning. Jon called Dickie on my cell phone finally. It was 10AM here and 11PM there, so we hung up after a couple of rings. Thankfully Dickie called back pretty quickly. For those out there that don’t know us, Dickie is Jon’s best friend. They have been best friends since elementary school. I know they must talk on the phone just about every day. I know Jon has been in Dickie withdrawals. I also know he would hate me putting this in there, you know how men are. A few times on this trip, Jon and I would be alone somewhere and he would say “Where you at, Mule?” For those people that know Jon, they are just laughing right now reading that, because they’ve heard him say it so many times in the way that only Jon can say it. Well, the two best friends have been reunited by phone for just a short time. Everyone back home as well as Jon and I are pretty ready to return back to Monroe. We are past the home sick stage now. Just being with Almira and talking to Sarah and Mom every day is making it possible to stand it.

Almira and her three friends arrived shortly after 11AM with Boris. Today she has with her friends Rosa, Altyl, and Zhenya for her Antares outing, birthday celebration. First we started off with watching the Pirates of the Carribean 2 movie that she picked out last weekend, in Russian of course. Jon and I had already watched it in English, so we could follow. We had juice (sok) and chips for the girls. I told Jon I wanted to make deviled eggs for them. I told Boris it was a southern tradition to have deviled eggs and he said they have something similar here, with garlic and mayonnaise. I guess things aren’t so different in our two worlds. Doug, I was thinking about you when we served deviled eggs, I know you love them.

Then after the movie we left and headed down to the Doner Café. We ate lunch and then Almira picked out her birthday cake. We barely ate half of a beautiful round chocolate cake. I'm going to be one of the only people to come to Kazakhstan and not lose weight. I have been to 2 birthday parties and Almira loves ice cream, along with Jon. We lost track of the time, got a late start going to the bowling alley. We arrived at the bowling alley about 3:45 and there were two people in front of us to bowl. The other girls had to be back to the orphanage by 5:00 so we headed on back to take Altyl, Rosa and Zhenya. We pulled up to the orphanage in the van and so many of the children were outside playing. It was a beautiful day here, almost 60 degrees and sunny. When we stepped out of the van we were swarmed by children. Vika came running and hugged and kissed me. Then someone yelled at us from the 3rd floor window and we looked up and there was Katya hanging out the window yelling at us. She had her hair in those two long blond ponytails like she did on Friday. She is a sweetie as well. We had to take tons of pictures of all the children. Almira had the camera and she started taking pictures. Katya came down in just a few minutes and joined the fun. I’ve got so many pictures to post when I get back to the states and can do it faster. The children are just wonderful. Then Boris mentioned to me that there was a little girl hanging on to him and it was her birthday. He asked if she could have one little piece of cake. There was a teacher there and I told him to give her all the cake that was left. She and the teacher went in the orphanage with the little girl running all the way.

We left then and headed back to the apartment. Jon and I told Almira that she could open one birthday present at the apartment today. She knew what she was getting from Mom, her CD player, because we already used it. But she didn’t know what she was getting from Sarah. Almira opened her birthday bag and just loved it. Sarah had picked out a newborn kitten from Furfriends. It has batteries and it meows, purrs, opens and closes its eyes and moves its head. She was so excited. She said she wanted to name her kitten “Milky” because it was the color of milk. Beth you will appreciate that, another animal in our house named for it’s color. :-) She would not open the birthday card from Sarah; she wanted to wait until her real birthday. She did not know what it was, Boris told her. I told Almira that I had a scrap book for her and I wanted to take all the pictures we had made so far and let her pick out which ones she wanted for her scrap book and which ones she wanted to get copies of for her friends. Then we put them all on our flash drive and walked to the Iceberg. We went to the photo counter and Almira ordered her photos. I bet she printed about 100 pictures total.

We ran out of time today, but when we pick up Almira tomorrow she wants to work on her scrap book. There is some inspection at the orphanage tomorrow and we can’t do our visitation there. The director gave us permission to take Almira out of the orphanage for her birthday tomorrow. I’m guessing we will go have lunch with her, since they eat around 2:30 and then come back here and work on her scrap book. We are looking forward to her actual birthday tomorrow when she can open her birthday cards and she can open her other presents. We’ve been working on English again today. She told me “Thank you for the pictures and thank you for a wonderful day.” She is really coming along. We practiced English today as we walked, just talking about every day things, like sidewalks, roads, parked cars, apartment buildings and things like this. We just can’t wait to get her home with us. Today was day 13 of bonding. Just one more day to go and then hopefully by tomorrow night we will have a court date. Let’s just pray for 3 or 4 days. ]