Flights are Booked!

It's official, we have our tickets to Kaz. Today, we also received our Visas with our passports!! We are just about ready to head from the sands of Florida to the blue mountains of Kaz. Well . . . almost. Still have lots to do. We are starting the packing process, waiting for our apostilled documents from the Fl Dept of State and getting the boys ready for our departure three weeks from today:-)

We have been so blessed with our friends and family who have offered their assistance in helping with the boys while we are gone. My Mom and Dad will be living in our house and caring for the boys. From the beginning they said "yes", without a question. Many friends have offered to help in way they can: carpooling, taking to practice, babysitting, house repairs, etc . . . whatever is needed. What a blessing to have such great friends. Thank you all! It definitely takes a village, or at least a church, to raise kids. We would not be able to make this journey without each of you.

Sunshine Through the Storm

Through all the clouds and rain we received word today of our long awaited travel dates!! We are leaving for Almaty, Kazakhstan on September 16th. There, we will meet with our agency partners and go over some paperwork. The following day we will then travel to Kokshetau, via a flight to the Capital, Astana, and a four hour drive north. Not the direct flight we were hoping for but yet another page in our travel log. From what we have read, it will be an eventful ride. Finally, then, we will have the opportunity to meet our daughter.

Fortunately, we have almost all of the paperwork we had to update completed and ready to send for apostille. Still waiting on some travel supplies from Magellan's which was supposed to arrive yesterday but is appearantly delayed. Hats off to Fed Ex and the USPS for coming through with our other stuff yesterday.

We continue to endure historic rainfalls from Tropical Storm Fay (one unoffical account says over 20 inches) at the very least it's over ten inches in the last 24 hours. We have gotten the worst of the storm being in the northeast quadrant initially, it has now stalled over us just turning and dumping rain. Hopefully she will move on over the next few hours and we can begin to dry out.

Still much to do.

Good News Today

We received our LOI today! This is our letter of invitation from the government of Kazakhstan to travel. It is in Russian, so we have no idea what it says. We do not have our travel dates, but we know our LOI is good from 9/15/08 - 12/15/08. We can now submit our application for our visas. Yeah! We still hope to get our actual travel dates at the end of the month. Short post, but wanted to post the good news for the day:-)

Busy, busy, ...

This past week has been extremely busy. We go from feeling like we are drowning in paperwork, to confident that we will get it all done and back again. While getting lots of the paperwork updated we found that most of it is easier the second time around. The one page update for the home study seems to be the most difficult. We have to get our full security clearance one more time - Brevard county background check, abuse background check and FDLE background check. So, when we are done, everyone should feel confident that we are pretty safe:-)

Anyway, we are feeling very blessed and excited. Everything is moving along. We are now waiting for the LOI and travel dates - we expect to hear by Sept 1st. Please pray that all the paperwork updates will be complete prior to that date.

Today, Joseph and Daniel had their school physicals. It is hard to believe our little boy Joseph is heading off to Kindergarten. He is pretty excited and feels like the "big boy". I think Daniel is excited to have him at the same school so Daniel can play big brother:-) School starts in less than 2 weeks. I am glad that we will be home for the beginning of the school year and get Joseph off to a great start in his new school.

Today I also recieved our first hand knitted sweater for our daughter! It's beautiful - pink and purple. It will come in handy in the cooler Kaz weather and she will be beautiful in it. It was made by a wonderful friend and colleague at work, Rosina. Thank you!!

I'm getting off the computer and going to relax!