We're home! Good night.

Greetings from Minneapolis. We are now mostly finished with our return journey and, inch'allah, will arrive home in Maine sometime after midnight in the early hours of Monday the 9th. The long journey home has been smooth, but the hours of sitting on the plane have given too much time to ponder the disappointment of not coming home from this trip with our daughter as planned. We remain far from bitter, though to some degree jaded.

It has been a long, emotionally wrenching, exhaustive, expensive and fruitless 6 days, and while I certainly take solace in the belief that this is how it was meant to be, it makes the pain no less real. I recogniize that every road to parenthood is different, and certainly none of them are painfree, and so we will continue to move forward with positive energy believing that remaining positive is what is best for ourselves as well as for our daughter.

KJ and I very much appreciate the love and support we have received in this challenging time from family and friends and want you all to know that I will continue write from a point of view of openness and emotional honesty, for while I simultaneously recognize that some of you enjoy reading it, the real value for me is in the writing. Take Care.

Well I am sure that there are those of you out there that are anxiously awaiting this next installment for all of the wonderful details. The truth is we will be returnig to the states in a few days without a child. It has been a very emotional few days for Kjersten and me, and many of the details will surely become more clear to both ourselves and you with a little more time and understanding.

The short of it seems to be that the birthmother of the child that the Baby House had believed would become our daughter came forward a day or so before we arrived and made the decision to keep her child, and so as we arrived there were no longer any adoptable infants available. While we are certainly happy that the child will be reunited with her birthmother, it has been a difficult time for us.

We will fly tonight back to Almaty and await a flight out to Amsterdam. We are currently wait listed for flights sunday and monday and are confirmed for flights wednesday. If all goes well, we should be back in Maine by wednesday night at the latest.

As it stands, it seems most likely that we will return to Astana in the fall, perhaps October, to resume our adoption process. We very much appreciate your interest in our journey and will certainly continue to maintain and add to this blog. Take Care.

Good evening all. Just a quick note to say that we are finally packing, though we hope to go to bed soon. Our flight is scheduled to leave in less than 20 hours and we are only just now beginning to sift through clothing and other such things and starting to get a sense of exactly how much stuff we wil be bringing. With any luck we will wrap things up shortly and head to bed. We still have a few hours in the morning to double check our bags and make any last minute additions and subtractions, then it's off to Boston somewhere between noon and one for a 7pm flight. We are looking forward to the relaxation and sleep on the flight and hope to arrive in Kaz slightly more than 24 hours later at 5:10 am on the 4th local time. Wish us well. We will hope to write a bit tomorrow from either Boston or Amstedam. Take Care.

We're off to meet our daughter,
our wonderful daughter from Kaz
Because, because, because, because,
Because of the wonderful things she does!