Well woudn't you know, not more than a few hours after the last post, we got the call. Actually our agency called KJ at work, and so I got the call a few minutes later, and now you all are getting the latest breaking news within the hour.

So Libby called KJ regarding our timing for traveling to meet our daughter (are you as ready to know as we were?) and told her --- August!

Wow, didn't see that one on the horizon. Is that bad you ask? Or maybe it's good - is it good? Hard to say really. My first thought is just wow. Then I guess my second reaction is a slight sigh of relief that at least she didn't say we should be there next week. But August. In our heads we were always coming home then, not going over.

I think it will be hardest for KJ who has already given notice at work here in Fryeburg that she would stop working there a week or so before our travel dates, and certainly thought that that date was soon. Now the prospect of a fairly complete summer season before we leave will take some mental and emotional psyching up for to stay in the game. It is sort of like expected to graduate in May and then learning you have to go to summer-school to finish - I hear.

Apart from that I suppose in many ways it may turn out to be a good thing. Certainly my stress level already has gone done in the last hour. Well be able to get the house ready for the market and potentially even find a buyer before we leave, and the house in Boothbay will be a done deal, and who knows, we may even find some time to go sailing this summer.

Regardless of the delay, we have been able to get a tremendous amount done in the last two weeks and our efforts now will certainly pay off later as the real date approaches. More Later. Take Care.

As we get closer I actually feel some relief every day that the phone doesn't ring. We know that we could hear at any time that we have a date to be in Kaz, and that that date could be as soon as a week or two from the call. So are we really ready to be gone in a week or two? We could be if we needed to be, but another few weeks might sure be a nice thing.

If I could pick a date it would be somewhere in the late teens - early twenties of June, and I think that there is a good likelihood that this will in fact be our timing. Here in Maine, KJ and I are feeling as busy as ever as we prepare for a daughter, ready our house to sell, and work out the details of our new home in Boothbay.

We have been feverishly packing up our things and taking them to a pair of storage units we rented here in Lovell, in part to make the construction and fix up part easier, and in part to facilitate an easier move once we return from Kaz later this summer. By the time we get back, the house in Boothbay will be ready for us to move in and we expect that we will move in as soon as makes sense.

KJ had a 4 day weekend this past week, and we certainly made the most of it. On Friday we went back to Boothbay to be present for the home inspection. It was great to see the house again - this time from the perspective that this would be our house, and we remain very excited about all that the new house and location will offer our new family life.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday found us more often than not in our bug shirts (complete with netted hoods), working outside and in the barn. It is amazing how quickly you can accumulate a barn full of stuff. After numerous trips to the dump, storage and Goodwill we a nearly done with the barn and the shop is coming along as well.

The third floor of the shop has always been our 'attic' and is home to boxes and boxes of random stuff. It is a slow place in which to make progress because moving anything often involves investigating what's inside. If you sent a letter or card at any point over the last 40 years, chances are it's there. Not to mention the thousands of photos, box upon box of books, stacks of backpacks, sleeping bags, tents, and boating gear. Why is it all still around, well as I mentioned earlier in another post, it is all part of the memory.

Every object is a memory, whether it is a beach stone from Cape Elizabeth, Maine that still brings tears to my eyes, a tape of a past sermon from my younger brother Jamie, or a ticket stub from a Kinks concert 24 years ago, it is all there. I could make blog entries about nearly everything there, but since this is a blog about our adoption, I'll stop here. Take Care.

Well as promised, here comes the rest of where the last post left off. It is now Tuesday morning and KJ is off to work and around 9:30 am she calls to announce that Libby (our adoption coordinator at MAPS) has called to say that we have cleared the Ministry of Education!

So 'what does that mean' you ask, well let me just say it is a huge step. We have finally passed through the more bureaucratic stages and our dossier is finally assigned to a baby house. So now we know where we are going to meet our daughter. KJ and I will be spending our most important summer ever in Astana, Kazakhstan. I will post some links of interest once I do a little more research about Astana, but what I know is that it is the newly created capital city. I should expect that from there we should have as great a chance as any to stay in touch with all of you as it is a modern city with many modern conveniences. It may lack the true cultural feeling we had hoped to experience on this journey, but we can always come back for that as a family.

As far as timing, Libby said that assuming that there are girls in our age range ready for adoption right now, the earliest travel date she envisions would be the second week of June. I caution you all to note that I did not just say that we are traveling the second week of June. In fact as a general precaution to any and all whose minds process primarily in known entities and black and white things, let me just say that international adoption is all about the grey. There is a great need to accept that things will just be as they are. KJ and I are fine with it, and therefore, trust that all of you will be as well. I see it as part of the magic of the process that will join KJ and me to our daughter.

There continues to be a lot to get done around here before we leave. As I mentioned in our last post, we are moving to Boothbay after we return from Kazakhstan and as of today have signed a contract for a house there. The closing date is set for 11 June, and I trust we will still be here to attend. KJ and I will go back out there this friday with a home inspector, and are excited to look at it again, this time from a standpont of it becoming our home as a family. I know I have also promised a few links to what our new life in Boothbay might look like and I will make good on that in the next week or so.

So what is like to know where my daughter is right now. Quite intense. I cried as I talked to KJ this morning, and I full out sobbed a bit later after a quick call to my mom to tell her the news. I don't know that I have ever truly sobbed. Tearing up, absolutely, nearly everyday. But sobbing, with sounds and just awash in tears, that was new. There was just such a confluence of emotional rivers that it overwhelmed my ability to process them and the result was just an uncontrollable outpouring - literally.

Sensing, as all gifted dogs do, that this was a time I needed him, Midou looked up with eyebrows raised and ears askew, then walked over to me and selflessly offered to let me rub his butt. What would we do without dogs! Take Care.

What a difference a week makes. In the past week we have:

1. Learned that our adoption dossier has moved from the MFA to the MOE
2. Officially announced our intention to move
3. Accepted a new job (KJ)
4. Made an offer on a new house
5. Begun to pack our house and move things to a storage unit
6. Hired a contractor to finish our basement
7. Replaced the decks on our house (Steve)
8. Contacted an agent to list our house

I am sure I missed something, but that seems like more than enough for now.

With the dossier changing government ministries in Kaz, we should be only a few weeks away from clearing the internal hurdles of the application process. As I understand it, we should hear in 2-3 weeks that we are cleared to adopt, and from there our dossier is assigned to a baby house and we are told where in the country we will be going for our daughter. We may also be given a timetable for travel at that time. it really feels close now. Scary close at times considering the other things we have taken on recently

So the move! Yes we are moving to the town of Boothbay over on the coast of Maine. KJ has found a great new animal hospital to work in and we are very excited to think that the hours should mean that KJ will be home a lot more than she has managed to be over the past 6 years. We are also very excited about the opportunity to be closer to the water and especially sailing. Boothbay is a wonderful region of the Maine coast and has lots to offer a family. I will try in a few days to post some links with information about the Boothbay area and potentially our new house.

KJ and I have been looking at real estate in the area for a few weeks now and until Monday morning had seen very little to get excited about. That all changed with the first house we saw this week, and on Tuesday we made an offer. At present we are in the negotiation phase of the deal and hope to have everything worked out in the next few days, and to close in early June before going to Kaz.

KJ's parents will be coming here to our house in Lovell to look after our wonderful boys (our Rotties) while we are away, and now may have the added pleasure of making our house available to be shown. Before then we are doing lots of work to the house - really things that we have put off for several years now - and hope to have it ready for its debut on 01 June.

As is often the case, we will have lived in the house for years with the intention of finishing out the basement and will only now get around to doing it to sell. I know that we are not alone - many people put more money and time into their house in preparation to sell it than they ever did to live in it. It is a shame in many respects, though the flip side is that you learn to live in an unfished house quite well and really only tend to notice when other people come by and point it out. No deeper meaning there, just what it is.

Well I actually saved this as a draft intending to get back to it over the weekend, but never did, and now it is tuesday morning and there is lots more news to divulge, so I will end this "friday" posting and begin anew in what will hopefully become a much more complete posting. Take Care.

So it is another Friday night. Everyday that passes brings me one day closer to my daughter. Of course I don't yet know when that will be, but at least it is one day closer that it was last night.

The photo above was taken just three weeks ago today from the window where I sit typing. Much like the snow already seems a distant memory, soon this waiting period too will drift away to be replaced by the springtime of our family. Outside the window now, spring is in full swing. The daffodils that KJ and I planted two years ago along the stone walls are popping up and small clumps here and there have already bloomed. The Red Maple out the kitchen window that our wedding guests helped us plant almost six years ago now is over 20 feet tall and full of red blooms that will soon be new leaves.

At this time of early evening, as the sun sets behind the White Mountains a few miles to west in New Hampshire, the last of the days flocks of Canada Geese noisily continue their journey north, passing through the sky as sillouettes against a pallet of yellows, and reds. Down on the pond, the peepers have begun their nightly chorus, and a little later tonight, our resident pair of loons will no doubt add their own special song . I don't know where they spend their winter, but every April, the loons return to spend their summer with us and to remind us of the special place we have been able to call home these last 6 years.

Memories - is there anything more powerful, soothing, stirring, and haunting? I know for me, memories are deeply tied to images and music with music providing the chapters, and images being the page numbers within the book that is my life. I can hear a song and go back to a time and then recall an image and go back to a place, and before long the page fills in with thoughts, feelings, smells, sounds and touches. Some of these pages are filled with interactions with others, while a great many are solely my own. I revisit them perhaps more than many do, not as a way of lingering so much as a way of revisiting and, quite often, of honoring.

What will become the backdrop to our daughter's memories? Will she be a highly visual and tactile person as I am? How much of her personality will mimic that of KJ and me, and how much of it will stand in stark contrast to us? Will she be adventurous and curious? How willing and able will I be to let her become her own person, even if it is quite different than how I see myself? Do we all become our parents in the end?

So much to ponder, but then I remember that it all happens in baby steps. I mean come on, we haven't even come up with a name for her yet. Maybe, like the Daffodils and maple tree, you just plant what you like and make time to appreciate those around you like the peepers and loons, and the rest falls in place. Take Care.

So here is our daughter's room in its mostly finished state. It has been a lot of fun designing and making her furniture in our shop here at the house. The challenge of finding quality children's furniture has led me to think that there may be a market there, but then again how many people are looking for quartersawn oak cribs?

We are doing what we can to keep plastic out of her world and to locate toys and other things that are more durably constructed. It may be a pipe dream. Time will tell. It just seems that everywhere you go, what you find for children is a glut of low quality plastic things from China that appear to be only a tumble or two away from the trash. I don't want to get preachy. I recognize the convenience of such things and the prices are often alluring, but what of quality. Oh - we have so much to learn about being parents! Perhaps a year from now I will look back at the things I've said here before our daughter arrived and wonder what I was thinking, but you have to be hopeful.

So what do I think it will be like to be a father? I could come up with a hundred different answers and never be right. In some ways it would be like me guessing at the ways in which our daughter's being adopted will impact her life. There is no one answer, and until you live it there is very little frame of reference from which to grasp it.

Often when people ask about the places I've been and things I've seen, they will of course ask 'what is it like?' Well the short answer is that it is probably not like any part of their world. That is how I feel about becoming a father. I could read lots of things and listen to people trying their best to relate their ups and downs, but in the end, I won't get it until I experience it, and even then it will only be my interpretation of what it means to be a father.

Most of you won't be surprised to hear that I am not prone to worrying excessively about the things I can't control. I like to think that it is a good thing and not just a euphemism for apathy, but I sometimes wonder if I should be doing more to 'prepare' for parenthood. As it is, I am soon to be the father of a toddler and I have only changed a diaper once in my life and that was 27 years ago. I have no idea what it means to prepare a bottle, and the sleeplessness thing - you parents out there are nodding knowingly, I can sense it - how will I react to that. I must admit it seems pretty scary. I do like sleep!

So much to learn. Thanks for being a part of it along with us. Take Care.