July 17 - we're home - wow what a blur

July 17 - Thursday 5:30 am Wpg time - Hi everyone we're baaaaaaa-ck! After uneventful but loooooooong flights, we arrived on time Wed afternoon and had a wonderful welcoming group of family at the airport - thanks folks! After 23 hours of travel and being awake for 40+ hours, we're not sure if anything we said was making sense, so we'll say thank you again here.

To those who made signs and left food at our house - thanks very much!! That's so thoughtful and we really appreciate it ! Thanks again also to our friend Nick who took great care of our cat and house! Farley was unsure of us for a few minutes, then settled right in our our laps, purring away...... ahhh t'was lovely to be home!

To back up a bit: Tuesday we packed up and did laundry in the afternoon, had our last (for a while anyway) visit at the babyhouse, and had one of her caregivers explain that we have to go away for a while but we'll come back soon to play again every day (sniff, sniff). That was really hard. Then we did a last shopping at Ramstore and headed back to the apartment to finish packing. We tried to clean the place up nicely as well, as we'd love to have the same apartment when we go back for trip #2!

Well, Almaty had something to say about us leaving - the biggest electrical storm we saw the whole time we were there started around 8 and lasted until 11 pm! There were huge winds that pushed even the big trees over sideways, gigantic lightning and thunder (which even set off all the car alarms in our complex's parking lot) and very heavy rain! With the heat we'd been having we weren't surprised at the storm, but wow was it spectacular! Our whole area of the city lost power for well over an hour (all the streetlights and even Kok Tobe, the gondola ride on the mountain which we could see from our balcony - all power was out!) This of course made packing tons of fun, carrying flashlights from room to room and using the laptop screen (on battery power) to give some light. So much for having time for a nap!

Side-note: another fun part of Tuesday was that in the morning there was no cold water - which doesn't sound too bad until you want to flush the toilet (no-go), or take a shower - poor Paul got scalded when the cold water suddenly shut off part way through his shower! We quickly filled all the bowls and pots we had with hot water and put them in the fridge to cool.
Then later in the evening there was cold but no hot water - again making for an interesting shower attempt....

Thankfully the power came back on before we were picked up at 1 am, so we were able to use the elevator to bring all our luggage downstairs - Vladimir came alone as Sveta had picked up Tina and her little guy Aleksi who were flying out on the same flights as us - yay!

The flights and airports were made much more fun hanging out with Tina and Aleksi - he is a happy and beautiful baby and kept us all entertained. Tina is doing wonderfully, especially being on her own and away from home for 9 weeks! We were able to help with their bags and got to play with him when Tina needed to use the washroom or go to the airline counters. We were sad to say goodbye to them in Montreal. Good luck with everything Tina, it was great to meet you both!

Once home, we unpacked a little and played with Farley, then Paul actually went to join his baseball team for their regular Wednesday evening game - I'm stunned he was able to do this as I barely stayed awake until 7:30 pm before I crashed hard! I woke a couple of times then finally got up at 3 am - not bad at all, considering...

Today we'll finish unpacking and do a schwack of laundry, and start calling people to say hi. This may take us a couple of days depending on the need for sleep.....

So that's it for journey #1.........stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Savlac-istan!

Thanks again - take care everyone!
lotsa love, Nic and Paul