We have a court date, or maybe two....

I just got the call that our court date is set for either July 9th or 10th (I guess they are covering all turf "just in case"). I have been jumping around my office, I am so excited that this is finally coming to an end and that I can say Lucy is flying home on August 8th with Momma and Nana!!! Yes, that will be the big day at Logan Airport. Right now our flight arrives at 4:55 p.m. Clearly this is once again "best case scenario". There is always the chance we could be home later, or maybe even earlier, but this is what we are booking.

I was also told that Zhaniya our coordinator has been visiting with Lucy almost daily and that she is doing well. We are so thankful for Zhaniya and the love that she has for the children in the baby house. She is such a wonderful person : )

I can't even put into words how I feel right now, so surreal : )

Jon will be in Almaty with me for ten days, and then he will fly home (actually same flights as our friends from Melrose Liz, Anthony and Paul). Nana Nancy will fly over on the 27th of July and stay with me for the rest of the trip (Thank you, Thank you, Thank you).

I still have pictures to post from our last visit; I am going to get those up before the weekend is over.

Thank you to everyone for following our journey and also for all the prayers, love and support. We feel so incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so much support. We couldn't have done it without each and every one of you : )

We're Leaving on a Jet Plane...Well not exactly....

But we are coming home! We leave for the airport in a few hours. Needless to say nothing was done to help expedite our court date, so we will need to wait the 30 days. We should have a firm court date this Friday or next Monday. Jon and I arrive home tomorrow (Tuesday) around 1:00 p.m. Thankfully Jim Kelly is going to pick us up (thank you, thank you, thank you : ) and get us back in our car and on our way to Melrose. I am looking forward to my bed, and of course seeing our families. I hope to see the Waltham crew on our way home on Tuesday, and the Wakefield crew (and Nana) on Wednesday. We will see everyone else over Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I can't complain about staying busy, we have pleny to do and of course jobs to go back to on Thursday morning.

I will update pictures and of course any court info as soon as we hear and as soon as we are settled at home.

Thanks for following our Journey, it's now pending!! HA HA

6/9/07

Hello,
We hope everyone is having a great weekend : )

We visited Miss Lucy this morning, and boy did we have our hands full. She was not in a good mood to say the least. When we arrived they had her outside with her group, and she needed to have her clothes changed (not sure why they wait until we arrive to do it but this seems to be the trend in the morning). I went in with the caregiver and she tried to change Lucy. Boy did she have a fit!! She was screaming and arching her back, and banging her head on the changing table (is this what I really have to look forward too? kidding).

The caregiver was very good with her and got her dressed quickly, and then she came right to me no problem. That's when the fun begins!! She proceeded to scream through most of our visit. She didn't want to be held, didn't want to eat, and didn't want to be put down...so in the end (as you will see in the pictures) we doubled up with little Ali in her group (he is being adopted by Rosemarie from Toronto, she is very nice) and pushed the kids around in the stroller. Lucy was better at this point, but still had her moments.

We decided she was very over tired and we are back to loving our afternoon visits : )

Of course we love all our visits with Lucy, and today was no exception. We have been spoiled by so many great days, that a cranky day must have been in order : )

After our visit we went the Museum of Kazakh History. It was very interesting to see and we were glad we got to go with our translator to explain the exhibits to us.
We were not allowed to take pictures (of course) but the building was beautiful on the inside. We saw wonderful rugs and wall hangings in the gift shop. We might have to go back before we are home for good : )

We will have an update about staying or going on Monday afternoon (Zhaniya is going back to the court house on Monday morning). We hope to have time to post our update (because we hope we are not leaving, that means we got a court date in a reasonable time frame).

Wish us luck, we sure need it : )

6/8/07

TGIF!
We hope everyone had a nice week in the States. We had a great week in Almaty with Miss Lucy! The forecast showed rain for the entire week, but so far we have lucked out and it seems nice during the day (a little cloudy) and doesn't rain until later in the evening.

I think (key word, think) I once again fixed the comments. I think it should work, so try to post one and see what happens. We have had some issues with the blog, but now that I have it up and running in English I hope to fix the problems : )

Today we had an inside visit with Lucy, it was a little wet and cool on the play ground from last nights rain. She was crawling all over her Dad and also crawling all over the room (we think she was trying to escape : ). She loves throwing her balls around now and then wants us to go fetch them for her. She is a smart little cookie : ) She was also crawling to the other side of the room, and raising her arms as if to say "pick me up, it's hard to crawl back". She has us wrapped right around those little fingers : )

Travel Update
We "may" be coming home on Tuesday. We are not 100% sure, and likely won't know until Monday afternoon (thankfully the 10 hour time change works in our favor when we need the business day to make arrangements). We were told today by our coordinator that the families that arrived on or after May 10th are waiting four weeks to go to court from the day the paper work was submitted for court (roughly on your 16th day/or visit). In our case our last visit was on Monday and we think our paper work was submitted on Tuesday. Ida our US coordinator (and saint at this point) is working very diligently to try to speed this up, but in the end the rules are the rules and we are no exception. Our Almaty coordinator Zhaniya agreed today that if she does not make any headway on Monday at court (as of now they have not even met with her to set a date, she was just told that there is a four week wait) it's best for us to come home and return right before our court date.

Clearly a big GLITCH in the plans! As you can imagine we are both very upset, and anxious to get our baby girl home. The more delays, the longer that will take.

We are going to try to iron out the details by the end of the day on Monday, and hopefully we can have a court date to work with so we can book return flights to come back (if we are leaving).

Thank you to our families and friends for being such great supports and shoulders through this whole process. We don't know what we would do with out all of you, but we do know Lucy will be one lucky girl to be part of what we experience on a regular basis : )

Sorry to be a downer today, I am working on about 4 hours of sleep, and expect another late night tonight trying to get things squared away.

We will keep you posted as we hear, thanks for reading our blog and for caring about us (and of course little Lucy).

6/7/07

Happy Thursday!
We had a very short visit with Miss Lucy today. We had to go with Zhaniya our coordinator to have some documents notarized. Of course nothing in Kaz seems to take under an hour, and we were stuck there for at least that long. In addition the traffic here is awful. It's like down town Boston 24/7!! Zhaniya agreed with me that it's rush hour at all hours : )

Lucy was ready to come out and play when we arrived, so we quickly scooped her up and took her out. She has been very playful this week, and we really enjoy the smiles and her exploring her new toys. Uncle Eddie and Auntie Debbie will be happy to know that Lucy loves her mini shaker I brought her from home. She already bops around when she shakes it. She wants to know when are you taking her to her first concert? We think we have a music lover on our hands : )

We decided to set Lucy up with an email address. We thought it might be nice to print out the emails and save them in Lucy's life book. We hope that everyone that is following along will take a few minutes before she is home (you still have over a month) to send her a message. She will be very excited to hear from Family, Friends, and of course other families that adopted from Kazakhstan. We also thought it's a nice alternative to those who are not comfortable posting comments (although they are now being emailed to me directly, I think?). Please feel free to email once, twice, or as many times as you like. We are setting this up for people to have fun and send her messages.

Her email address is: kazjourneytolucy@hotmail.com

Of course Mom and Dad will check the emails for her, although we are sure she will be checking her own by the winter...HA HA

Have a great day : )

Comments

Hi All,
Just wanted to let you know we adjusted the way the comments are being posted/sent. We have had issues with the blog, and discovered that having the comments emailed to us directly vs. having them posted on the blog will help to speed up the process of posting and save space.

Please keep the comments coming, we love them!!.....

6/6/07

Hello Everyone,
I am starting to sound like a broken record, but we did have another great day with Miss Lucy. She was very playful and smiley today. She of course eats her snack, and then she is ready to explore. Today we played with Sam, a little 12 month old boy who's parents just went to court today (and everything went great). Lucy is such a little flirt, she kept wanting to be closer to them, and hanging on Lisa, the Mom. It was very funny : )

Lucy had something sticky in her hair today, we couldn't figure out what. Of course I tried to wash it out, with out much luck (as you will see in the pictures). She also clapped for us when swinging with Jon. She was a very happy girl today.

We have another family working with our coordinator. They started there visits today, and they are adopting an 18 month old girl. They will have the same visiting time as us, so that will be another little face for Lucy to see. She does seem to love being around the other Children.

Tonight Jon and I are going to eat out. The apartment has treated us well, but we can only eat so many sandwiches or so much pasta : ) So we are off to the "Soho Almaty Club". We of course have eaten there twice before, but the food is good and we like it. We like to keep things simple........

Enjoy the smiles of the day : )

6/5/07

Hello,
It's a cool and cloudy day in Almaty. We tried to load the pictures and update the blog earlier this morning, and of course the Internet cafe was having issues, so we had to wait and do both yesterday and today this afternoon.

Lucy was great, as usual : ) We got to spend a little time outside, but not much it was really cool out and the playground was pretty wet from the rain last night. She is definitely into the routine of going out, and gets very antsy if we don't follow through.

We played in the music room, and Lucy of course being the chowhound that she is, was very happy to eat her snacks. She had double fisted bread and butter when we arrived, were talking a ton of butter (she was a little grease ball : ) We gave her yogurt, applesauce, cookies and cheerios. She loves her snacks! If we don't instantly open the bag and offer her something she starts pointing and grunting. She is too much : )

Here are the pics of the day, enjoy!

6/4/07

Sorry we didn't update Sunday or Monday. Sunday was a very hot day in Almaty, so hot that we only lasted outside for about an hour. It was about 100 degree's out, crazy!...

Sunday we walked to the Green Market and looked around. It's basically a huge flea market. We didn't find the type of souvenirs we were looking for, but it was fun to walk around. The rest of the day was a lazy afternoon in the apartment with the AC on : )

Monday was of course a Lucy day, our favorite kind of day. We had a wonderful visit with her, and we noticed many new families visiting with different children. It warms my heart to see other children being chosen by families and knowing in the end they too are going home : )

Lucy was finally dressed in summer clothing. We got to see her arms, and her little legs. She was very playful today, and seemed to enjoy her stacking cups (well knocking them down and then Daddy would build them back up : )

She had yogurt for the first time and absolutely loved it. So today's menu was a yogurt, a banana, a bowl of cheerio's and some apple. At this rate she will gain about 10 pounds before the summer is over. That's ok, we want to plump her up!! You know us American's, we love to eat (or maybe that's just us O’Neill’s...HA HA).

Enjoy the pictures, and we will post today's when we return from the baby house...so stay tuned......

6/2/07

Greetings!
We are finally at the Internet cafe with Wifi connection. WOO HOOO It's been a long three days with no way of loading the pictures. Our Camera card will be happy today as well : )

We will add pictures from Thursday, Friday and of course Today.

We had a great morning with Lucy at the baby house. We got to see the other families that visit in the morning, and as always it was great to have some English speaking conversations. It's so wonderful to see how much all the babies have blossomed over the past two weeks. They all noticed it in Lucy as well : )

Lucy is definitely more tired in the morning then the afternoon. Figuring she wakes around 6:00 a.m and has been up for four hours when we arrive, we think she likely still needs a morning nap (that she has been getting in about three weeks, since she left the other baby house). She of course is always up for food, and today we noticed other families feeding there babies yogurt. Next week we will bring yogurt as well as apple sauce. Hopefully Lucy likes the new additions to her diet : )

After our visit we went to the Mountains of Almaty. They were very beautiful and we will post a few pictures. We also got to see the Olympic size skating rink that is situated at the base of the mountains. I of course can't remember the name off the top of my head, but we have these facts written down at the apartment.

We then went to lunch with Zhaniya, Assel and our driver. They took us to an Italian restaurant, so still no traditional Kazakh food. We are not complaining, Pizza treats our stomachs well and knock on wood so far no issues at all with food or water.

Two weeks down today!! Jon just asked me if I can believe it, and my response was "yes, I believe it" and I couldn't be happier. The longer we are here, the sooner Lucy comes home to the States. WOO HOOO We certainly appreciate all that the US has to offer us and likely will always remember our time here, but always cherish our true home in Boston.

Lots of love and hugs from Lucy, Jon and Julie and we hope everyone has a great weekend!

Paka Paka (bye bye)

6/1/07

Greetings from Almaty!

Today is Jon and Julie's 5th wedding anniversary. When we answered our door this morning to let our coordinator in so we could get going to the baby house, she brought the driver up with her, and she handed me a bag with a gift and he handed me white roses! The gift was a traditional Kazakh husband and wife doll. I have to say it started the day off on a great foot : )

We then headed to the baby house for the celebration of the children. The baby house was decorated with stuffed animals, balloons, streamers, plastic monkeys and donkeys. Very nicely done by the staff at the baby house. We were the first and only family that was invited to attend this celebration. The families that normally visit in the morning were asked to come later today. Jon and I feel EXTRA special to have been there. We of course went and scooped up Miss Lucy, who seemed very happy to see us (she was so cute standing in the play pen smiling over at us).

We were then asked to go to the music room upstairs. All the baby house officials and staff, and children were sitting and there was an open area for a performance. We were so surprised to see all the 3 and 4 year olds dressed in there Sunday best (were talking tuxedo vests and ties on the boys and very fancy dresses on the girls) and they sang and put on a performance for the group. It was FANTASTIC! Of course Lucy had a different agenda while this was going on, and was wanting to get down and crawl, so I got to experience what it feels like to stand in the back of the room with the fussy baby (just kidding). : )

We took TONS of pictures and I will share a few, that is as soon as the darn Internet cafe is back up and running. We walked over again today to find out that it's still not up. Jon is scooping the map right now to figure out were there sister site is, and if it's close we will pack up the bag and head over there tonight or first thing in the morning. We are now up to about 100 pictures needing to be transferred. If no luck, we will ask our coordinator to direct us to another place tomorrow after we get back from the mountains.

After our exciting morning at the baby house, our coordinator took us out to lunch (wine, beer and all) on her for our "celebration". She toasted us several times and also told us we are the youngest couple she knows that has adopted from Kazakhstan. We did not eat Kazakh food, but rather Chinese (her pick). She also told us she is very happy that Lucy Zhanna has found a loving family, and she knows that the baby house feels the same way. She hopes to come visit us in Boston some day, and she also hopes we will come and visit her in Washington D.C in a year or two when she goes to visit a few other families. We told her we would do our best : )

We certainly feel lucky to have found our special girl on the other side of the world. We just can't wait to take her to our side : )