Leaving Today

The day we thought would never arrive is actually here! Soon - in about 9 hours to be exact - we are leaving for Kazakhstan. This will truly be a trip around the world. The time difference between Denver and Almaty (the city where we will be staying) is 13 hours. We leave Denver tonight at about 5pm, arrive in Frankfurt Friday morning, and will finally get to Almaty around midnight on Friday night. We will probably meet Bryce for the first time some time on Saturday.

Bryce is 10.5 months old and resides at Baby House #3 in Almaty. His Kazak name is Timur which we plan to keep as a middle name. As soon as we figure out how to post photos to this site, we will post some photos of him.

For now, we are too busy running around with last minute stuff to do to worry too much about photos. We will have plenty of time in Kazakhstan to figure things out. The process for Kazakhstan adoption actually involves 2 trips (so we have to do this again, but next time we will be experts). The first trip lasts about 3 weeks and consists of 14 days of court-mandated visitation. After the 14 days, we go to court and petition for adoption of our son. After the adoption is approved (and we're hoping that's the case, because our agency, World Partners Adoption has a 100% track record so far), there is a 15 day waiting period. We plan on returning home during that time. After the wait, we go back to Kaz to pick him up, get his passport, and take him home.

But on this first trip, visitation typically consists of 2-4 hours each day spent at the Baby House. That means we will have a lot of time to sightsee, explore, and get to know Kazakhstan. It also means we have ample time to figure out how this web stuff works!

We'll write again once we arrive.