Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all the special Mom’s out there! We would love to hear all about how you spent your Mother’s Day.

Many have asked us when we will be coming home. We wish we had an answer for you, as we too, are getting anxious to return. What we know right now is that, by law, we have to visit Veeka for 15 days. That could possibly be completed by next week Sunday or so. Then we wait for a pre-court date where the judge reviews all our paperwork and tells us what we will have to do for court. The next step is the actual court day (for Mike & Debbie they had pre-court last Thursday and because of the holiday they will not have court until Tuesday). Since the holidays are done we are hoping to do both within the same week, but again, it depends on how quickly the paperwork can be processed.

After court we will be able to pick up Veeka. At this point in time Jack will be coming home. Because of the unexpected additional expenses and since he’s not getting paid for his time off we have no choice but to have him come home. I’m more than a little nervous about that but there’s really not an option. If staying in the apartment is not comfortable without him we will go to the Pushkin Hotel -- it’s way more expensive but the peace of mind might be worth it -- we’ll have to see how that plays out.

The girls and I will be in Uralsk for 7-10 days after court because all the paperwork has to be processed and a passport & visa have to be issued so Veeka can leave. Once this is done we will travel back to Almaty, go to the US Embassy for more paperwork processing and hopefully be cleared to return home in 2-3 days. As to an exact date, I have no idea. We might be in a better position to guesstimate once Mike & Debbie have court on Tuesday -- we can use their timeline.

We’ve also had quite a few requests for our address here -- I talked with Yulia and she said that on a good day the mail takes about 6 weeks to go between Uralsk and the United States. There is also no guarantee that anything sent will actually make it to the person you are sending -- customs does not always let things come through she said. We know that first hand as we’ve sent things to Yulia and Natalya that have never made it. Thank you for the thought -- it is very nice of you.

Beautiful day again here in Uralsk -- a bit breezy but sunny and warm. Our visit today went quickly - an hour is much too short of time to do much. Hailee, Veeka and Jack threw the frisbie around and a lot of the orphanage children joined in. The caretakers would come and shoo them away but within minutes they were back again. There was one young boy who stood right next to Jack and mimicked everything he did - if Jack put his hands up in the air the boys went up, if Jack put his hands on his hips so did the boy -- so fun to watch - Jack never missed an opportunity to do something for him to mimic.

If Hailee or Jack missed the frisbie the children raced to pick it up and either hand it back or give it a throw. A couple of children tried to “help“ Veeka but she would have none of that. Not sure what she said but she usually ended up with the frisbie. I asked what Veeka was telling the children -- I‘m pretty sure Luba knew but she told me she didn‘t know for sure. That happens a lot I think -- we only get to know what they want us to -- many times there’s a 5 minute discussion and the translation to us is a sentence long.

Tonight we are going to Mike & Debbie’s around 5 ish -- Mike made chocolate chip cookies - he knows the recipe by heart and they searched out all the ingredients they could and are improvising the rest. We’re all looking forward to the visit, we’ll be heading to a new pizza place first and than to their place for dessert. We’ll let you know how the cookies were!

That’s about it for today -- Happy Mother’s Day again to everyone!!! Love you all!!!