Waiting and Waiting....

Well, we had thought we would have traveled by now, but we are still waiting for our Letter of Invitation to travel UGH!!! Lots and lots of delays and problems in the last couple of months. Our dossier was originally going to Almaty city and we found out some things we didn't like about that region such as not being able to adopt a child younger than 12 months old, the necessity to make THREE trips rather than TWO to Kaz (a huge difference when each trip is $5,000!!!!) and the requirment that we sign a document stating we'd be willing to adopt a child of any age with any medical conditions...so we begged and pleaded to be switched and after lots of back and forth our dossier is now in Taraz and we are waiting for our invitation. Of course we have since found out that we need to make THREE trips to Taraz, too, but it doesn't have the other issues. So, it is exciting to look on a map and find Taraz (it's in Southern Kzakhstan, about 400 miles west of Almaty) and know that our child is there waiting for us - we'll be there soon baby!!!!


Needless to say it has been a VERY stressful few months and we're hoping that our child will be home by the end of the year at this point...so frustrating and distressing...

So - we've been preparing to travel and the future baby's room is now the packing room! It was so exciting to buy the baby his or her first toys to bring over with us - I got a baby cell phone that speaks, stacking rings and some other toy that promotes crawling!!! We still have a ton of gifts to buy for what seems like every person we will talk to in Kazakhstan - I guess local custom dictates that everyone gets gifts - oh well - you do what it takes I guess?

The furniture is still in storage - it's so beautiful - I can't wait to get it into the room already!! We've picked out bedding and paint colors for both a boy and girl - blue for a boy and yellow for a girl - I can't wait to paint. Well, I can't wait for patrick to paint...

In other news - we had a great summer with Ben and Chris and had a GREAT vacation to the Grand Canyon and northern Arizona...and I finally got to Four Corners! We also got to see Laurie, Doug and meet Spencer - such a cutie pie!!!!!

Alyse and Shawn are getting married in about two weeks!!!!!!!!!!!! So exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that's about it...I will try and post more regularly - I hope to have more exciting news to post soon...