Arrived home finally...

Well we survived our trip in one piece and arrived back at the house around 10pm Sunday evening. Upon arrival at Dulles Airport the Captain announced that due to a glitch in the baggage handling software at Heathrow on Sunday most of the bags for the flight did not make the trip. We thought,"great, way to end the nightmare of our journey home with having our bags not arrive with us." Well, we were one of the lucky few who's bags did manage to get transferred and loaded onto our flight to Washington, DC. Whew!

Seeing as we are both still adjusting to the time change we were both up early, before the alarm, and headed to work early. Not sure how long each of us will make it on our first day back but we'll see.

After looking at a calendar, we will probably arrive back in Almaty on July 20th for our final trip. We are looking forward to the last trip being done.

We will keep everyone posted on when Lukas will be arriving state side. I know several people have asked about what Lukas needs for when he gets home. He is registered at Myregistry.com for all the things a 3 year old needs to be spoiled and pampered. There is a link to the site under the links section of this blog on the lower right hand side. It can be accessed by either parent's name.

Thanks to everyone for all your thoughts and prayers. They obviously were at work for our trip home.

Lynda and Wayne

The long, long trip from hell!

28 Jun 2009

We left Taraz around 3:30pm on Saturday, June 27th. Wayne still wasn't feeling well, I was starting to feel poorly as well (sore throat, ears hurt)and Ernur's car wasn't feeling well either. I quit counting the number of times we stopped to add water and antifreeze to the radiator. He called Zema to have her tell us what was going on and to make sure we weren't worried about getting to Almaty. Considering our flight didn't leave until 7am the next morning my only concern was not getting stranded on the side of the road in the middle of no where. He finally got the car fixed at the gas station in Kordai. It took 8 hrs with all the stops. He left us at the airport at 11:30pm. We camped out on a bench at the far end of the terminal until it was time to check in for our flight on BMI (the airline from hell!)

They never did post a check-in time so knowing the issues we had in Heathrow we decided to get in line early. The passport check let us through and we headed to the checkin counter. They had an eticket for Wayne but the one for me was locked. The showed we both had reservations but only one ticket. He asked if I had my bording pass stub from the London trip which I happened to still have. It had my name on it but came up as being Wayne. We were about to buy another ticket just to get me on the plane which would have meant I would have to go back out and downstairs to the ticket counter. God was with me and the manager gave the checkin agent permission to print me a new boarding pass and they would work it out with my travel agent later via email. He, however, put me 3 rows back. I guess he couldn't issue my original seat because the ticket was locked (whatever that means). Fortunately the plane wasn't full. We opted to keep our newly assigned seats since it gave us more room. I slept most of the way but Wayne says he wasn't able to sleep very well.

We are currently sitting in Heathrow Airport waiting for our British Airways flight home. We figured since the tickets were purchased through BA we wouldn't have a problem with my boarding pass in London. Wrong! He couldn't locate an eticket for me. Just Wayne. Fortunately I had the receipt from my agent showing I had paid for two round trip tickets. Again a call to a supervisor. God was again with us because she said to go ahead and issue a boarding pass and note a comment in the computer regarding my eticket and they would work it out with my agent later. Eldo is going to be getting a great deal of international calls this week about my ticket.

Fortunately both of us seem to be feeling better although very tired. We have had a bite to eat and rehydrated. I hear the stores calling my name and some British pounds saying they need to be spent because we plan on using Lufthansa for the next trip even if it is more expensive. We don't want to have to deal with these types of issues with Lukas in tow on the next trip.

Time to shop!
Lynda and Wayne

Family Reunion

20 Jun 2009

We awoke to a beautiful, sunny day after about 15 hours of sleep. We ate lunch at Aral on Friday with Quentin and Kara. I guess we are memorable or weren’t gone long enough because they recognized us and brought the English menu over without our asking.

We were surprised this morning with a different translator. For court we have to have a translator who has a diploma so Farida, who will be our court translator, is working with us so she can get to know us before court. She is very nice and I feel like I already knew her because she was Christian and Nathalie’s driver/translator. They are the couple who sent us pictures and videos of Lukas in our absence. I followed their blog daily so I heard all about Farida. It ends up she also was the translator for a couple 2 years ago that live in Ellicott City. I have spoken with this couple through email. It is definitely a small world.

We went to visit Lukas this morning. When we got there they took us to the music room as usual to wait while Janetta and Farida went to fetch the children. When they came back they told us they were all outside. So off we all went to find Symbat and Anton. Symbat was the first to be located. So we headed on down the way to find Anton. We figured they were over by the playground somewhere. Sure enough we heard them all over in one of the shelters we played in the last time. One of the other children saw us and I heard him call Anton. He came walking out of the shelter and over towards the walkway real quiet. He didn’t seem overjoyed or upset. He just stood there quietly.

I pulled some of his old toys out of my bag and that got a happier look from him. He picked them all up and headed off down the drive. We walked all the way around the building to the shelter at the other end of the playground. Once there he started playing and interacting with us just like before. We got lots of smiles and laughs out of him. He didn’t look for food right away which I guess is a good thing. After a little play we sat down and he ate his banana. Then we played some more before he decided to search my backpack for more tamook. He enjoyed unzipping all the compartments and looking through everything just like last time.

He got all excited when a man came by on the other side of the wall with 2 horses. Wayne held him up and took him closer so he could get a better look at them. He accidentally threw the ball over the wall of the shelter and thought it was great fun after Wayne threw it back to keep tossing it over the wall. He jibber jabbered away and every so often you heard the word papa.

All in all I would say it was a very good visit. He was his regular old self and we didn’t have any tantrums.

We will go back in the morning again to visit. Then on Monday at 10am we have the first of a 3 part series with the court. We have been told that we have a female judge who is very nice and in favor of international adoption. On Monday’s session we have been told that we will go and listen. Then on Tuesday we will go and answer questions and speak. On Wednesday, the judge will come to Umit to observe us with Lukas Anton. She may also speak to Anton. It should be very interesting and we will be sure to give you all the details. So, say your prayers for us on Monday as we start the process. That would be 8pm Sunday evening EST.

And, yes, Janetta needs our passports again, surprise, surprise!







Paka until Zaftra,
Lynda and Wayne.

Taraz Revisited

19 Jun 2009

We have made it safe and sound back to Taraz. We haven’t seen Lukas Anton yet but we are once again situated in are old room at the Zhambyl with Quentin and Kara next door.

Our flight from Dulles to Heathrow on British Airways was uneventful. Since we left at 10pm we pretty much slept off and on most of the way. Heathrow has really changed and grown a lot since I last passed through. We arrived early so we unloaded on the tarmac and were bussed to Terminal 5. We then had to take a second bus to Terminal 1 were we picked up BMI Airlines for the second half. I had heard rumors that there were some issues with British Airways and BMI cross ticketing. So I had arrived prepared to have some sort of hiccup in the process. After walking for what seemed forever we finally made it to security. Once we cleared there it was on to the BMI ticket counter to check-in and get our boarding passes. I knew it was a bad sign when he got on the phone. Long story short, the two airlines computer systems are not on speaking terms and depending on who you purchased your tickets from the other airline has problems with getting the system to process the tickets. He could see our reservations but British Airways system had a lock on the e-tickets. The gentleman at the counter was very nice and after about 20 minutes he had resolved the issue, called us back over to the counter and handed us our boarding passes.

In spite of our short layover we still had plenty of time. It was then another jaunt to the gate. BMI is ok service but their jets are small and old. The seats were tight together, no screens in the back of the seat in front and some seats didn’t have access to the screens in the center aisles. It was 6 seats across, 3 on each side. We were 1 hour late leaving Heathrow. First they were missing 4 passengers whose luggage had already been stowed underneath. If the passengers did not board or were not located they were going to take all the bags off in order to remove the bags belonging to the 4 passengers. Once they had that resolved we had another delay because of “2 birds on the runway that they need to clear off”, those were the captain’s words. I kid you not! I don’t know what kind of birds or if they were dead or alive but it was another 15 minute delay. We still managed to arrive only about 15-20 mins behind schedule.

Our trusty drivers were waiting for us outside baggage claim. We headed to the parking lot where we met up with Quentin and Kara. With stops it took us about 7 hours to get to Taraz. The roads are in much better shape and we managed to sleep off and on during the drive.

When we got out of the car in front of the hotel it was like we had never left. Janetta had evidently been by the hotel because they had our keys to our old room all ready for us. Room pretty much looks the same. They have trimmed some of the vines covering the windows back a bit and fixed the tile on the bathroom floor. Wayne checked the AC unit and it seems to be functioning properly and blows out nice cold air.

The weather today is sunny, with a slight breeze and warm. It was actually a bit chilly in the wee hours of the morning as we made our trek from Almaty to Taraz.

I guess that’s all for now. We’ve been to the store and hopefully we will get to see Lukas tomorrow if we don’t go this afternoon.

How much do the bags really weigh?

We can laugh about this now but at the time it was quite frustrating. We managed to get everything in our 2 suitcases with room to spare. Then we weighed them. The one bag was under the weight limit and the other was over. So we moved things around. Now they are both over. We re-arranged items several times, took things out and put in our carry-on and could not seem to get both under the weight restrictions. I knew we were in trouble when we took items out of a bag and it weighed more than it did before. We were using one of those hand held scales that you hook on to the bag and hold it up. Well, it ends up Mr. Muscle was jerking it a little to hard and it was making everything seem heavier. When we tried on last time and slowly lifted the bag it ends up both are about 3-5 lbs under the weight limit instead of 5-7 lbs over! We re-checked several times just to be sure.

We are now officially packed and ready to go. Next post will be from Heathrow in London if we can link into the internet.

Getting ready for trip #2

Well, we leave tomorrow evening (Jun 17)to head back to Taraz for our court hearing and to visit with Lukas Anton some more. Since we will only be there for a little more than a week we are packing much lighter this trip. Having been there once already definitely makes it much easier to plan and pack this time. We are flying British Airways through London this time. The second flight is on a subsidiary airline named BMI that we have never heard of before so that will be a little bit of an adventure. We will try and post daily again to keep everyone posted on how Lukas is doing and our court experience. We are not sure at this point what time our court hearing will be on Monday, June 22nd. Although we don't anticipate any problems with getting a positive court ruling we welcome everyone's prayers that day.

Tentative dates for return to Taraz

Well, we heard from our translator today that we will most likely be having our court date June 22-23. It is evidently a 2 day process where you have the hearing one day and get the ruling the next day. She told us to plan on spending a week in Taraz. So I guess that means we will be gone for 1 1/2 to 2 weeks this trip. That was the good news of her email. She also gave us a list of documents that we need to re-do so that they have 2009 dates on them instead of the 2008 from our dossier. Bear with me as I vent on this one...is it our fault that they took so long to process our dossier and invite us over to get a referral? I know it is out of our control and we must do whatever they ask without question but it is really annoying when you spend time and money to prepare the documents exactly as they have told you to, in the quantity they have told you just to have the court tell you they want them done over because it is a new year. Oh well, I guess it's off on the paper chase yet again. At least they are all things that we can do quickly. It will give us something to do to keep us busy for the next 2 1/2 weeks. At least we have an idea as to a court date. One more step closer to the end. Yeah!