Paperwork!

Some of you may remember that great character, “Roz” from the movie, Monster’s Inc. Her trademark line, “You haven’t completed your paperwork!” runs around inside our heads these days. Because we submitted our adoption dossier back in November 2007, a few of our documents have now expired and have to been done over again prior to traveling to Kazakhstan. “Done over” involves getting each expired document reissued, getting it notarized, getting the notarization authenticated by the appropriate county court clerk’s office, and then getting each authenticated, notarized document “apostilled” by the appropriate state’s Secretary of State. (An apostil, which is as an official seal on a document, deems the document internationally valid.) This was the route we ran for all of the documents in the main dossier, so, while tedious, we're familiar with the process.


Fortunately, it’s not all about paperwork and packing lists and crossing “t’s” and dotting “i’s” during this period leading up to the phone call with our travel dates. Today is a HAPPY DAY, as the baby room is officially done!

This has been a joyful, important process, as it has helped me already begin to bond with our future daughter (we've requested a girl) by making her new home a special place – my first gift to her. In honor of her name, Lilly Grace, I’ve used a garden flower theme and to specifically honor her Asian heritage, I’ve incorporated little Asian-inspired elements like cherry blossoms and a great vintage paint-by-number painting, which you can see here. Steve kids me that after all of this work, we may wind up with a boy!

Thank you all for your loving support to us during this process – we appreciate your emails, calls, cards and donations to the baby house for the welfare of the other children there. We’re glad you’re a part of this journey with us.

Tonya

Where in the World is Kazakhstan?

Before we began our adoption journey, we were not familiar with Kazakhstan, and have found that most Americans aren’t. This is probably due at least in part to the fact that Kazakhstan was a part of the former Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was known from 1936 to 1991 as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

We chose to adopt from Kazakhstan because of the quality of its orphan care, which is consistently good throughout the country, and the ability to adopt a younger child. In "Kaz", as the country is commonly referred to by adopting families, orphaned infants become available for international adoption after six months, and in our case, we will likely return home with our child when she is nine months old.





Kazakhstan is bordered by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and the Caspian Sea. A fact that may surprise you: Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world geographically, making it larger than all of Western Europe.

Here is a brief overview of more information we have summarized from Wikipedia.com:

Kazakhstan is very diverse in types of terrain: flatlands, steppes, taigas, rock-canyons, hills, deltas, mountains, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Its population is relatively small, clustered in cities, and totals 15 million.

Kazakhstan as a distinct entity actually dates back to the 1300’s when it was part of the Mongol empire. The Russian empire expanded to include what is now Kazakhstan in the early 1800’s, and Kazakhstan was ruled by the tsars until, after a brief period of “independence” after the fall of the Russian empire, Kazakhstan was taken over by the Soviet Union in the early 1900’s. After the dismantling of the USSR, Kazakhstan declared its independence in 1991.

Kazakhstan is ethnically and culturally diverse. Kazakhs are the largest group, followed by Russians. Kazakhstan allows freedom of religion, and many different beliefs are represented in the country. Islam is the primary religion, followed by Orthodox Christianity. The official language is Kazakh, though Russian is still commonly used for everyday communication.

Steve

Welcome to our new blog!

Well, we've finally done it. We've created our family blog. The first step in creating a space for our family and friends to visit and stay in touch with our ever-busy, and now dramatically changing lives!

As most of you know, we are in the process of adopting a baby from Kazakhstan, and we encourage you to visit frequently to see the latest in our most excellent adventure. We have requested a little girl. We also plan to use this site to document our lives after we have our new little one home, so you can watch her grow (and watch us try to keep up!)

The most recent progress on this journey is that we've been told we should be traveling in early September some time, and we will be given dates closer to the time we have to leave, so we'll be having to stay very flexible during September and October. For those of you who don't know, the adoption process in Kaz (Kazakhstan) is very lengthy: 6-7 weeks if you choose to make one trip, and if you choose to make two trips, you go for 4 weeks, come home 2-3 weeks and then go back for one week to bring home baby.

We look forward to sharing our story with you all and also to hearing from you.

Tonya