We have a flight!

We leave out of JFK on Friday 11/11/05. We hope to be back Dec 3rd or 4th.

We are cleared to travel to Semey KZ!

We just received word that the orphanage will be ready for our arrival anytime after 11/12/2005. So we will travel as close to that date as we can. Probably Sunday 11/13/05 or Monday. We will let you know when the flights are booked.

• We will take 18-20 hours to fly to Almaty KZ. The next day we will fly 2 hours to Semey KZ.
• Semey is about 10 miles from Russia in the very eastern part of the country, along the Irtysh River.
• It is 11 an hour time difference. The area is still very Russian so the adults and kids will all speak Russian.
• We will bond with the kids for 2 weeks then 1 week of paperwork. We will back sometime in early December.

We have a visa!!

Wow! Flo is in the house. Monday 10/31/05 we send our passports to The Kazakh Embassy, we use express mail (They don't accept UPS, the nerve!). Anyway, it gets there by noon on Tuesday. Nov 1st. Because we sent a self addressed, prepaid 'express mail' envelope, we recieved our Passports back by noon on Wednesday Nov 2nd. By the Way(BTW) when things are going smoothly for Barbara and I, we say "We've got Flow" or "We know Flo." We'll it is a good start. The word on the date should be known on Thursday! We will let you know.

We have an Invitation!!!!

Almost two years to the day from when we started our Homestudy we have an invitation to go to Kazakhstan. Thank God for getting us over this 1st barrier. Tonight we celebrate. Dinner at the Clinton House. Yeah that is going all out, around here. Thank you for sticking with us all of this time. Rule number 1 while adopting should be similar to Rule number 1 of pregnancies...Don't tell anyone too early. Who would of guessed it would have taken this long. In case you are wondering, we started our process going to Lithuania. We thought it would be nice to go with Barbara's heritage. You never know with international adoptions and Lithuania decided they would work to keep the children in the country. So we went to plan B. We asked for the country with the quickest, process for multiple kids, That is Kazakhstan!!. Now we wait for a date. One step at a time. God Bless Chris&Barbara