Life with Sam - when it's time to eat ...

We've been telling friends we have a Siamese cat and a beagle puppy ... better known as Lily Grace and Sam.  When Tonya turned her back, Sam once again lived up to his billing ...

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Steve

Legacy – A labor of love is born

After two years of grabbing bits of time for planning, writing, recording, catching some of Nashville’s best musicians when not touring or involved in other commitments, re-recording, mixing and re-mixing, we are happy to announce that our Legacy music project is finished!

Legacy, a collection of Celtic and Appalachian folk music, is a tribute to our family heritage and to yours – to those who came before, and upon whose shoulders we stand.

It has been a joy and privilege to work with my brother, Marty, who has become a fine Irish whistle player, my niece Audrey – a budding singer-songwriter, and the amazing multi-talented Melissa Du Puy, without whom this record would not be possible.

Our guest musicians are Celtic vocalist Meghan Doran, fiddler Deanie Richardson of Patty Loveless, Vince Gill and now The Chieftains fame, and Matt Combs – Grammy nominee and multi-instrumentalist.

This all started because of a trip to Scotland with Tonya, which inspired me to write Iona Homecoming for our wedding.  Other songs followed, as I learned more about our family roots and in particular, the story of Mary Young Lamont, whose bravery and sacrifice in the mid-1600’s made it possible for the Young family to be here today.  (Read her story in the About section of the Legacy web site.)

This musical journey has resulted in all of us reflecting on those who came before – realizing that the values we’ve learned from our families didn’t happen by accident, but have been carefully passed down, generation after generation, by those who placed their faith in God and took the risks and made the sacrifices necessary so that their children would have a better life.  This album honors them.

We invite you to listen to Legacy, and to share the music (and its message) with others.

Steve

Family, Faith and Fall

Hello Everyone, from our family to yours!

The nip of autumn is finally in the air, and it’s hard to believe that the holidays are not far away. We celebrated Sam's baptism last weekend – made all the more special by so many of our immediate family being here with us to share it.


Sam turns 18 months today and continues to make great strides. He’s on the verge of walking and we’re sure talking won’t be too far off. :-) Lily Grace is a proud almost 4-year-old with her “Gotcha Day” coming up at the end of the month and her birthday in January.








We continue to adjust to our “new normal” and even in the most chaotic of moments are so thankful for the blessings in our lives – friends and family like you being chief among them.

We hope you all have a wonderful fall season, and we’ll be back in touch once the holidays are underway.

Steve and Tonya

Summer Update

Summer 2011 has been a time of finding our feet as a foursome, celebrating the progress Sam continues to make as he settles into his new life and helping Lily Grace get used to her new reality. Special time with family and friends, the Blackberry Jam, Lily Grace's first "cousins camp" in Arkansas and Vacation Bible School at HFPC have kept us busy. Here are some of our favorite pictures taken this summer:













We hope you all enjoy the rest of your summer, and all the special memories this time of year brings.

Steve and Tonya

Update on Sam and the Fam ...

Slowly but surely, we are learning the two-kid dance, but we’re stumbling amateurs compared to all of our veteran friends and family. As an engineer friend told us, “adding kids isn’t linear, it’s log-rhythmic”!

Sam is doing amazingly well – he seems to change every day. He’s a happy, animated little fellow, eats like a horse and is curious about everything. Commando crawling is his locomotion of choice, and we’re working with him to learn how to crawl on his knees. He is also starting to pull up and hold on in a standing position. He loves to swing, jump and get baths – making sure more water winds up on the floor and on Mommy than is left in the tub. :-)

Lily Grace is tolerating Sam a little better each day, tells her classmates in pre-school how much she loves him (he’s great in theory), and is working through this “sharing Mommy and Daddy” thing. Her role playing now routinely involves little brothers and sisters, as do her favorite books to read at bedtime.

We thought you’d enjoy seeing some pictures from Sam’s first bath (we started him out in the sink), and how Lily Grace responded to that:

We hope each of you are enjoying springtime and are looking forward to the end of school and summer days ahead.

Steve & Tonya

From Schuchinsk to Franklin - Sam's inspirational journey

When I returned to Kazakhstan on Saturday, April 2 to bring Sam home to Franklin, TN, I had two main thoughts on my mind – 1) it was Sam’s first birthday! and 2) this wasn’t going to be easy, but I could handle it.

So, I thought I was prepared for come what may as I rode by car the three hours north to Schuchinsk from Astana (the capital) the next day to take Sam from his baby house, his only home for his first 12 months. I was wrong. When I walked in, expecting Sam to remember me from our seven weeks of bonding that Tonya and I shared with him between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, I felt a heavy sense of dread as Sam burst into tears of fear, shaking at the sight and sound of me – he had no idea who I was and was trembling with terror. Of course, I played it cool – not a problem! I insisted – as we dressed Sam in his new clothes, strapped him into the baby carrier I was wearing, and walked out into the cold air, with him screaming at the top of his lungs.

As he cried himself to sleep in the back of the car, now speeding its way to the Astana airport for the in-country flight to Almaty, it was time for some serious God consultation and re-calibration of my expectations for the days to come in Almaty (where his exit processing was to take place) and then the long, long trip home. I asked to be given daily bread – hourly bread actually – to have the peace needed to be there for this terrified little boy. I fought back tears, and stayed in a state of prayer for much of the three-hour drive back to the Astana airport.

I won’t put our blog readers through the scene at the airport, and subsequent day to day life in our Almaty hotel, but I know you can picture it. Fear-based crying, interspersed with moments of temporary calm, as Sam’s body took over his mind to make sure he ate and drank. Amazingly, I remained relatively calm and even peaceful throughout, staying focused on Sam.

It soon became apparent that Sam wasn’t eating and drinking enough, and since he was often strapped to my chest, he was receiving plenty of chest virus germs as I breathed down on him, having become sick the second day I arrived with the “crud” that’s going around Middle Tennessee right now. That turned out to be a bad combination, and by Tuesday, Sam was in pretty bad shape as we ventured out at midnight to begin the 30-hour door to door trip home.

We had two significant flights – Almaty to Frankfort and Frankfort to Chicago – both nine hours - and Sam somehow managed to scream and cry through most of both. Concerned flight attendants hovered trying to help, other passengers shared words of comfort and of course a few passengers shared looks not so comforting, and Sam viewed them all as potential threats, sending him higher into orbit.

The flip side to all of this was that there was only one place - one person - where he could escape and seek refuge – his daddy, and even though I still hadn’t passed full muster with this little guy, I beat the alternative of all these well-meaning strangers. And gradually, through it all, he began to trust me more and more.

Our seat mates on both long flights were angels and a saint – a Kazakh woman and her mother flying with her 12-month-old son to meet her husband in San Francisco, and an Indian man on the way to the States on business who proudly spoke of his own two kids back home. Neither was the least bit bothered by the din – and just the opposite, repeatedly did anything they could to make our lot better – cleaning up around us, taking down bags, then stowing them again, swapping seats – anything I asked for and much I didn’t. And always with a smile and a tenderness that affirmed all that can be good between fellow human beings on this pale blue dot of a planet.


On Wednesday evening April 6, at 6PM, our final “cigar tube” flight touched down in Nashville, and our long awaited uniting with Tonya and Lily Grace took place. It was special, but I was so sick and tired (literally) it didn’t fully register. But one moment did – Sam was intrigued the minute he saw his beautiful sister Lily Grace (who wasn’t sure what to make of him) and he reached out his hand and grabbed hers. LG swelled with pride and said “he likes me!” and a huge sense of relief came over Tonya and me. Not that we weren’t going to have adjustment problems, as we certainly will, but because in that one moment, we could see what was possible for this new family of four.

Sam’s dehydration and sickness got worse, and Friday night, we wound up in the emergency room of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, where he received two rounds of IV fluids and a chest x-ray, which confirmed that Sam now had pneumonia. He received IV antibiotics to “get ahead of it”, and we have been administering oral antibiotics ever since. After we arrived home, Lily Grace was treated to some special big sister celebration time by her cousins, including a sleepover and a trip to the zoo. What a blessing to have such a supportive family to make her feel special throughout this time of adjustment.

Today, Sam visited his pediatrician for the first time, and his doctor liked what he saw – a little boy becoming comfortable with his mommy and daddy, fighting his pneumonia, and giving lots of smiles and eye contact. He declared that Sam is on the way to full recovery and adjustment and the second huge sense of relief came over Tonya and me.


As we reflect on the last several days, the ultimate inspiration is Sam. He left everything he had ever known, was scared, then sick and managed to have the fight in him to see it all through, and the lung power to prove it hour after hour after hour. He’s a tough little guy, with a huge heart, and it is a privilege to welcome our son into our family. Throughout, all of your prayers have sustained us and we can not thank you enough. It’s been miraculous to us, and we’ll be reflecting on all that we’ve experienced for years to come.

Steve

Welcome home, Sam!

Dear Family and Friends,

After a journey that for now, we'll simply call "epic", Samuel Ethan Young and his daddy arrived home to his mommy and sissy!


This picture was taken just as we were uniting for the first time. We'll post a more detailed account with updates regarding Sam's transition in a few days.

Thanks to all for your love and support during this time of abundant blessings for our family.

Steve and Tonya

Operation: Bring Sam Home!

Operation ‘Bring Sam Home’ is about to begin!

Steve leaves Thursday for Kazakhstan, returning the following Thursday, April 7.

Here are the particulars:
Thursday, March 31: Depart Nashville
Saturday, April 2: Arrive Astana, Kazakhstan (Sam’s first birthday!)
Sunday: Drive to the baby house in Schuchinsk, pick up Sam, drive back to Astana, fly to Almaty, Kazakhstan
Monday: Doctor appointment for Sam at The American Medical Center
Tuesday: rest day
Wednesday: appointment with United States Consulate, process paperwork and receive necessary permissions
Thursday: depart Almaty for home, arrive in Nashville 24 hours later, but on the same day, at 3PM

Steve will not have his laptop, so will not be making posts during the trip. He will have access to email, though, and enjoys staying in contact. :-)

A special thanks to David and Melanie Hill, who have been through this before and have provided much-needed guidance for this trip.

We thank you all for your prayers and support during this last important step of our adoption journey.

Tonya and Steve

Introducing Samuel Ethan Young

Hello dear friends and family … We have just passed a huge milestone in our adoption process: COURT! We know you have all been waiting a long time to “meet” our precious little one, Sam, and here he is!!!











This video we made for Lily Grace shows our typical day with Sam at the baby house:

This is such an exciting day. All went smoothly during our court proceeding and we are breathing a huge sigh of relief right now! There are still several weeks of paperwork to get through, but this was the major hurdle.

We will return home on Monday for a long-awaited reunion with Lily Grace. Then Steve will return in late March to finally bring Sam home.

Thank you all for your prayers and support during this entire journey. We appreciate you all so very much.

Tonya and Steve

The Eagle-hunters of Kazakhstan

For a country and a people with a history of profound loss – from the Mongolian conquests of the Middle Ages to the “cultural amnesia” effect of Russian/Soviet occupation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries – Kazakhs have a incredibly rich heritage, which they are working hard to reclaim. Archeologists tell us the horse originated in what is now Kazakhstan, as did the apple tree, in the foothills of the Tien Shan mountains. (Almaty, the former capital city, is also spelled ‘Alma-ata’ – the Kazakh words for "apple" and "father".)

And no Kazakh tradition is more fascinating and unique than hunting with trained birds of prey, particularly golden eagles. We had the opportunity to meet an eagle-hunter and a young trainee prior to the Asian Winter Games torch relay – it was an amazing experience.

The tradition of eagle-hunting is believed to have originated 6000 years ago, and was later adopted by other countries. 13th century records indicate that both Genghis Khan and Kubla Khan owned thousands of hunting birds.

Berkutchy

An eagle-hunter is called a berkutchy. It is a life-long profession, and in Kazakhstan is often a hereditary one. The art of wild bird training was developed over centuries, the secrets imparted from father to son.


The relationship of the bird and its master is constant and all-consuming. In the training of a young eagle, the berkutchy must sacrifice sleep for long periods. For weeks, the growing bird is rendered sightless under a leather hood and fed only by its berkutchy, until the bird is fully dependent. This intimacy turns into lifelong trust with the eagle - twenty years or more.

There are currently only about 40 officially recognized eagle-hunters in Kazakhstan today, but those numbers are poised to increase. Interest in the sport has been growing since the republic became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

A Kazakh proverb states: "There are three things a real man should have: a fast horse, a hound, and a golden eagle.” (We assume that a good woman figures in there somewhere too, but it’s still a great proverb.)


Golden Eagle
The Golden Eagle is common throughout Central Asia. These huge birds weigh up to 17 pounds with a wingspan of seven to eight feet. The talons on an eagle's toes are curved and razor-sharp for catching and holding their prey. The eagle's eyesight is especially remarkable. With vision about eight times sharper than a human’s, they can spot prey up to a mile away.

Early winter is considered to be the best season for hunting, as game acquire winter furs. The gear required includes tough leather gloves, leather hoods used to cover the eagles' eyes to keep them calm, and saddle-to-wrist supports needed to carry the birds for long periods of time on horseback.

The eagles are trained to hunt marmot, rabbit and fox, and the best eagles can even bring down wolves.




This is our last Kazakhstan “cultural post” as we are set to return to the United States next week. We have enjoyed sharing all that we have learned with you and appreciate your interest.


Stay tuned for our final post this Friday, when we will finally be able to introduce you to Sam!

Steve & Tonya