The Martin's Kazakhstan Adoption Journey

The Current State of our Kitchen

Happy Labor Day weekend! We will be spending most of the weekend hanging cabinets up in our new kitchen. The photo above shows the current state - hardwood floors have been installed. It may not look like much, but it is great compared to what we had a week ago which was mostly a mess (see photo).
At least we are getting somewhere. The kitchen will probably be done in about one month and we are excited to be able to cook again.

Even Bryce is getting in on the remodeling action. Here he is helping bring a roll of carpet pad out to the garage. He actually moved quite a few rolls himself with no help! He was excited to help us out. Bryce is getting big and doing great. He recently graduated from speech therapy and is pretty well caught up in other areas. He pedals his tricycle everywhere and climbs around on the playground like a pro. He is enjoying day care and comes home with all sorts of songs that he sings for us.

Here is Bryce hanging out with Toni on the porch. It's hard to tell from the picture, but Toni now only has 3 legs after being diagnosed with bone cancer about 2 months ago. She is doing great and gets around very well (up and down stairs, running around the yard, jumping) on her 3 legs.

Here is Chuck putting in the first cabinet. We will post some more pictures when we get more done.

I am 3!!

Since our last post way back in March, Bryce turned 3! We had a party for him, complete with a Cars cake and way too many presents, of course. His birthday was a fun event this year, because he seemed to understand more of what was going on. He is in the 3-year old group in daycare now and seems to come home with a new expression or a new song every day. Bryce likes to play outside at the playground or in the backyard. He also still likes his Thomas trains, cars, and Legos. Bryce has recently started his hiking career! He is able to walk along the trail by himself for a while and enjoys having a picnic lunch outside. Of course, mom still gives him a ride in the backpack for longer hikes.

We have been keeping busy. Now that the weather is nice, we are walking and biking around town and able to spend a lot more time outdoors. We took a trip to New York recently where we were able to go to the Greek Festival, ride the Albany Aquaduck tour, and visit New York City. We are also still working on the house. The bathroom is still torn up and now we are starting on the kitchen...but we are not taking that one apart until we know exactly how it is going to go back together. It should be an adventure. Here are some of our latest pictures.

A Long Awaited Update

Happy (almost) Spring from Colorado! As most of you know, we moved back to Fort Collins in December. We got to our house the day before the big blizzard hit and had us snowed in for 3 days. Our house this time around is a 1966 built split level that we bought from the original owner. We will be having fun doing some updating as you can tell from the picture of Chuck taking apart one of our bathrooms (we didn't use that one anyway). We are both back to work. I am still with the same company and Chuck moved back to take a job at his old company. After being home for an entire year, going back to work was a bit of a shock for Chuck, but I think he finds it slightly less challenging than staying home with a 1-2 year old toddler. Bryce is going to day care full time and starting to transition from the 2 year old class to the 3 year old class, since he turns 3 next month. He really seems to like it, and he has started talking up a storm ever since he started. On his first day he came home singing his rendition of The Wheels on the Bus, something the speech therapist in Cleveland had tried to get him to do for about 6 months. At home Bryce also enjoys playing with his trains and cars. Now that the weather is nice, he also likes to play outside as much as possible. As you can see from the photos, we are able to get out and enjoy the outdoors fairly often. Most weekends we will try to fit in a hike. Bryce is big enough to do some hiking now, but he is still content to ride in the backpack too....which reminds me, did I mention how big he is getting??? We will post another update soon.

At the Halloween parade.

Eating his M&Ms

Bryce really liked his train costume.

Halloween!

Happy Belated Halloween! This year, Bryce really enjoyed Halloween. He dressed up as Thomas the train and even had fun trick or treating. He managed about an hour of trick or treating and got lots of his favorite candy (M&Ms).

Bryce really likes babies. Here he is showing his friend Abbey the best crawling technique.

On the horse at Hoffman's (once it got going, he really did like it).

Bryce having fun with packing peanuts!

April Update

Things are so busy around here, it's hard to keep the blog updated, but here are some new pictures of Bryce. Bryce continues to be doing well. He has been home for just about 11 months, and our court date in Almaty was 1 year ago on April 8th - very hard to believe. Bryce turns 2 later this month. He is very excited about cars, trains, and everything with wheels. He also is fascinated by water and likes to "help" me do laundry. He also likes to "help" out in the kitchen and brings a chair over to watch whenever someone is cooking. Since the weather is getting nice, we are able to go outside more, and Bryce loves to explore the neighborhood, especially when he walks around the block with Toni.

As you can see from the picture, we are doing some home improvements. This includes tearing down a very old deck and replacing it with a new one. Chuck is doing most of the work, but Bryce was very excited about the power tools Dad was using and all the noise they made.

Bryce continues to be quite mellow and has quite a sense of humor. He likes to put shoes on his hands and bowls on his head to get a laugh! Hope that continues as he heads for age 2.