Aug 3 - a mid-summer update...

Aug 3 - 9:30 am Wpg time - Hi everyone! Just thought we'd drop a note to say hi - we're doing well, getting the house ready for our little girl has sure kept us busy!

Oh by the way - her name is Angelique! Sorry, still not ready to post photos on the blog, but it's exciting to be able to share her name with you!

Thanks to our translator Sveta and some of the families who were in Almaty longer than we were, we've been kept up to date on how Angelique is doing at the BH. Sveta has even sent a few photos, which is very thoughtful of her. We're missing A like crazy and we're so looking forward to going back!

We've learned that our court date in Almaty will be Sept 3, so we hope to get back there on the 1st to give us some time to recover before court. Which means we'll hopefully be home as a family of 3 (yay!) during the first week of October. Now there's something to celebrate at Thanksgiving the following week!

So now we apply for the travel visa/papers we need and then we'll book our flights. Apparently Lufthansa is on strike so we'll see what airline(s) we'll go with this time (and where our stopover will be??)

Re our house: we're very lucky to have such wonderful families, who have come over this past week to help tackle an enormous painting project - thanks sooooo much! Now all the bedrooms, hallway, and main bath have new coats of paint on the ceilings, walls, doors and trim, and we have new baseboards in all these rooms. Wow what a difference! Thanks again!

Paul also went back to work this past week, so we're not actually semi-retired as we'd hoped! (we'll keep checking those lottery tickets!)

This coming week we have a couple more smaller projects (prepping furniture for A's room, cleaning up the yard etc), and then I can start the pre-packing-process of organizing clothes and stuff to bring. We'd kept lists during trip # 1 of things to bring for trip #2, so there'll be a bit of shopping to do but nothing huge. And the weather will be much easier to take in Sept than it was in July - not so much like the surface of the sun!

Hope everyone is having a great summer! We'll send a quick update before we leave, closer to the end of August. Take care!
N&P