We're home ...

Hi everyone. This won't be too long. We got up at 7 AM in Amsterdam and finally made it to our flight, barely. Then we flew 10 hours to Houston. We had a two hour layover, which we totally ate up going through Passport control, customs, waiting almost 30 minutes on our luggage, re-checking our luggage and then going back through security. We barely made it to our gate after stopping to get iced tea and Diet Coke. We landed in Monroe a little before 5 PM. We had quite a welcoming crew at the airport and now we're at home and getting settled in for the night. I've been trying to unpack and go through things. Mom and Dad came by and watched some video and looked at some more pictures. My friend Beth called and I told her to come on over and visit.

Now it's quiet here and I told Sarah I'm about to take a soak in my own bath tub. The laundry can wait until tomorrow. Then we may play a board game or something quiet.

I'll update more tomorrow. Good night.

Kathy

Amsterdam finally ...

Monday, April 30, 2007 - Introducing our newest daughter, Almira Kathryn Bradford.

Court Day! Sorry it has taken me so long to post. We got back to the apartment about 1PM and we could not get the internet to work for anything. Sorry. Court went good and Almira is now our daughter. I woke up this morning at 4:45 a.m. and could not go back to sleep. My body is revolting. As I write this we are on a plane flying from Petro back to Almaty. We will arrive about 8:30 on Monday evening and will spend the night in Almaty. We walked to court this morning, not a good idea in high heeled black boots, but at least I finally was dressed like some of the women here in Petro. Mariya told us we could just walk to court it was about 2 blocks. Oh my goodness, it was about 5 city blocks. We don’t have city blocks in Monroe. It would have been quite a nice walk, but my feet hurt by the time we were half way there. I was cursing myself for not slipping my flats in a bag and putting my boots on when we got to court. I was just a bundle of nerves. We arrived at court about 9:30 for our 10AM court appearance. Almira arrived with Tatiana, the orphanage social worker and the nice lady from the Ministry that went on our visits with us about 9:40. We went upstairs to court and sat in the hallway for about 30 minutes. I found out we were waiting on the prosecutor. Finally at almost 10:20 they called us in to the Judge’s office. It was a Kazah judge. They started off with Jon and asked him why he had come to Kazakhstan. He couldn’t think of what to say. He said later his mind just went blank. He stumbled around and answered the judge’s questions. Then it was my turn. I think I did pretty well and told the judge about our family, our community, the school where Almira will attend. We talked about her having the opportunity to go to college and about our family eagerly waiting for her at home.

Then they brought Almira in. She was fine. I could tell she was a little nervous, but she answered everything the judge asked. The judge asked her if she was sure she wanted to come live with us, she said yes. The judge said what if you get home and have problems, she said “I won’t.” The judge said are you sure you want to change your name to Almira Kathryn Bradford and she said “Yes, I chose that name”. The judged asked, are you worried about learning English and going to school and she said she would study hard and learn English, she was very good at school. Then they asked her if she wanted to just leave the orphanage and go to America or did she want to just leave to go with us. She said I want to leave and go home with my Mama and Papa. They asked her if her parents moved to Kazakhstan, would still want to live with them and she said yes. We were so proud of her. She did great. Then they asked me some more questions and the judge told us to wait outside.

It was a little after 11:00 at this time. We waited in the waiting room for close to 30 minutes. Then the judge called us all back in and said she was granting the adoption. Then Almira just threw her arms around Jon and then me. She was so excited. We got some pictures with the judge and everyone and then left and headed to the notary’s office. We signed one more set of papers for Svetlana’s power of attorney and then Svetlana left and took Almira back to the orphanage. She hugged us over and over again and kept looking back and waving as she drove away. It was so hard to leave her, almost as hard as leaving Sarah in Monroe. Mariya will continue to go to the orphanage almost every day with another couple and will see Almira. Also Boris will go every Thursday and can give her messages for us and can send us messages as well.

We will fly on Tuesday morning to Amsterdam on the 7:20 am flight. We will land in Monroe at the airport at 8:30 if everything goes as planned. I will try and post as I can.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 - Amsterdam time

Well, it is Tuesday afternoon at 5PM in Amsterdam. We just got into the Sheraton at the airport.

We didn’t leave Almaty headed for Amsterdam until almost noon. So much for our 4 hour lay over in Amsterdam. We arrived here 15 minutes after our flight left for Memphis. We were really excited about getting home tonight and seeing Sarah.

We are safe and sound, just home sick. We are in a much better place than we were at last night. We were met by an elderly man at the airport last night in Almaty when we arrived. He barely spoke English. He took us to that hotel by the airport, that you just walk to. I can honestly say it brought back memories of church trips from my junior high days. It was awful. Two twin beds, almost on the floor that were about the size of Almira’s bed at the orphanage. Only a sink and a chair in the room. It was really bad. It had a community bathroom down the hall that was the toilets with no seats on them. Also, every time a big jet took off last night, it made the alarms on the cars in the parking lot go off. It was a fun night. I laid down and tried to sleep and Jon said something funny and we started talking about the beds and the room and I got the giggles so bad my stomach muscles are sore today. I was crying I was laughing so hard. The exhaustion and surroundings didn’t help any. It was either laugh or cry.

We slept in fits on and off for about 3 or 4 hours. Put our clothes back on and headed to the airport at 4:30 AM on Tuesday morning. Then we sat at the airport and waited for the plane. It arrived 3 hours late and then sat at the gate for another 1 ½ hours. It was torture knowing we were so close to making our Memphis flight. We finally left Almaty at almost noon and made it to Amsterdam at 2:30 p.m. Our flight out to Memphis left at 2:10. The KLM crew was absolutely no help, no hotel, no nothing. Just sorry, no flights out tonight. I did stand in line at the desk and waited for 1 1/2 hours just go get an earlier flight home. We will fly through Houston and then into Monroe on Continental.

So we are flying out of Amsterdam in the morning and arrive in Monroe sometime around 5 PM on Wednesday. We had on purposely told Sarah that we weren’t coming in until Wednesday night so she wouldn’t be disappointed if we couldn’t make it. As many of you know, with this many connections, the timing has to be right and it wasn’t today.

So one more night away from home and then we hope and pray everything goes good tomorrow. We are anxiously planning my and Sarah’s return to get Almira. I can’t wait to see her and bring her home.

Thanks again for all the well wishes and prayers.

Pre-Court day

Today was Sunday and we took it nice and easy. We walked to the Iceberg and got some pictures for court developed and then bought some groceries so we could eat lunch at the apartment. We watched the Bridge to Tarabitha and Chronicles of Narnia in Russian this afternoon. Svetlana and Maria came over to discuss court and we feel like we're ready. I've never heard of anyone being turned down, we we are happy about that. Tomorrow will be 3 weeks since we arrived and we have seen Almira every day.

It is going to be hard to leave her, but we know it is for a short time. We will be back before the end of May to bring her home. We have court at 10:AM tomorrow morning which will be 11Pm at home. We hope to be through with court in about one hour. I will try and post to the blog when we are done.

Keep the prayers up. We are almost done here. We are so excited about coming home and seeing Sarah and everyone.

I'll try and post tomorrow before we head out of town. We will fly out of Petro at 5:20 p.m., which will be 6:20 a.m. on Monday morning back home.

Thanks again and talk to you later,
Kathy

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.