Check him out.....

Hey everyone...

Check out the cutie pie on the right side of the blog...yup - that's Drew!!! His favorite pasttime so far is playing with stacking rings - kid can't get enough of them...and cookies too of course!!

We officially accepted the referral today, so we've put the wheels in motion to adopt him...today was day 4 of our 14-day bonding period - 10 more days to go, then we go to "commission," which will ask us questions about why we want to adopt and then we will get our court date. There's still hope we may go to court this trip, but most likely we'll have to come back.

The baby has had a cold since we met him and today he wasn't feeling too well. He wanted to be held and cuddled a lot, which was no problem for us. Apparently they don't give the children any medicine when they have colds - even when you can hear that it's in their chest like we could hear...I wish I could give him something, he was so miserable :(

Tomorrow we're going to do some sightseeing with our translator before we go visit Drew - she's going to show us some famous Kazakh landmarks, etc...it will be good to show him these things when he's older. We took some pictures around Taraz today - it's a very nice city. Though this morning Patrick ran into an open-air meat market - get your heads out of the gutters - it was literally sides of meat from various animals out for people to buy - in the middle of the city! Oh, and disco music played as people shopped for their meat...

We've met some very nice people from Belgium who also are adopting babies - and we hear five American couples are on their way....

That's about it from here...

Big shout out to Alyse and Shawn who are getting married today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We love you guys and are with you in our hearts...have a wonderful wedding and celebration and honeymoon - can't wait to hear all about it and see pictures...and I'm wearing my matron-of-honor dress (and both pairs of shoes I bought!) to the video showing!!

Kel - Yes, you can share the blog :) And tell Cole I told Drew all about him!!

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful comments - keep 'em coming - we love to read them. It makes us feel closer to home...

OK - time for sleep - I am STILL very jetlagged, and the food isn't agreeing with me too well and I'll leave it at that for now - LOL!!!