May 16th- Logan will be coming home !!!

Logan will be coming home officially on Saturday, May 16th. I will be going to New York to pick him up.

Yeah..... finally, our baby boy with the big beautiful blue eyes is coming home.

The Wait is Over. Now the story of the night that the lights went out in Almaty.

OK, OK, I know that I have left you all hanging. I am sorry about that. Here is what happened.

It was Wednesday night at 9pm. We were scheduled for our driver to pick us up at midnight with our plane planning to leave at 2 am. We had spent the day doing some sightseeing around Almaty. We were mostly packed up and just hanging out in the room waiting to go home. At around 9pm, the lights went out in our room. We go out into the hallway and the lights are on out there. We call down to the front desk and they inform us that the entire hotel is out. After looking out the window, we realized that most of the city appeared to be in the dark. Street lights were out so cars were honking their horns as they tried to travel through the intersections. We had no idea what could have caused such a drastic power outage. The other family traveling with us came out into the hall and we discussed our options. Our biggest concern was that there was not any power at the airport and we would not be able to go home. We all wanted to go home very badly at this point. After making a few calls, we were able to get in touch with our coordinator and he informed us that the airport had power. Yeah.....we all said a prayer of thanks. We can get home.

We had a couple of hurdles before we could get home. I forgot to mention that our rooms were on the 17th floor and the elevators were not working. So if we were going to leave, we had to get downstairs with all of our luggage. Between the three of us, we each had a backpack and a large suitcase. We had a total of three large suitcases filled to capacity, three backpacks, a large duffel bag, and the sacred bag of souvenirs.

Our next hurdle was how were we going to check out of the hotel. We had called down and asked them if they had a way to check us out. They said that we would need to wait until the power came back on. They told us it would only be a little while until the power came back on.

So, both us and the other family were sitting in the hallway where the lights were on. We had succeeded in packing up the remainder of our stuff with the use of the flashlights that I had brought. My father loves flashlights and he has always said how important it is to have a flashlight with you. I keep a little pin light in my purse at all times. My parents had given me a flashlight to pack in our luggage. I am so glad that we had it. It was used by us as well as the other family. Thanks Mom and Dad for the flashlights.

We were sitting in the hallway trying to determine how long the power could possibly be out and at what point that we should begin our journey down the stairs. We decided at 10 to begin the trek down the stairs. There were two set of stairs. Each family took a different set of stairs.

We began our journey each with our backpack on; Madalyn had the large duffle and sacred bag of souviners; Brian had both of the large suitcases; and I had the other large bag. We were doing pretty good as we went down floor after floor. We made it to the 10th floor when we encountered a waiter who had been delivering food to someone on that floor. He had pity on us and took the suitcase from me and eventually also took the duffle bag from Madalyn. He was so gracious to help us. Since he did that, Brian and I were able to each have a large suitcase. Slowly we made it down the stairs. When we got to the lobby, the waiter ran off to do his other job seemingly without a thought for the help that he gave us. I tracked him down and gave him some money for his assistance. As it turned out, we made it down before the other family.
One hurdle down.

The other concern was how were we going to check out. The power was still out when 11:30 came around. I had told Brian that I would get us out of the here just by flashing some of our crisp one hundred dollar bills. Our coordinator arrives and talks to the hotel staff. They calculated what our bill was and we were able to pay cash to check out. The other family was planning on using their credit card and with the power out that was not possible. I was able to give them the cash to check out as well.

So, despite our challenging tasks, we checked out and headed to the airport.

We found out later that there was a major incident at a power plant in a neighboring country who shares power with Kazakhstan which caused most of the city without power. The power was restored around 2am when we were safely abroad a plane to Frankfurt.

I hope that the story was worth the wait.

We are Home !!

I wanted to quickly update the blog to let everyone know that we are back at home in Georgia. We are so glad to be home although we wish that Logan was here as well. He should be coming home in the middle of May. We have so much to do to get ready for Logan.

Whoa do we have some stories to tell about our journey. I will update you soon on our adventure. Brian described it as a mix between the Biggest Loser and the Amazing Race. For our avid followers, just wait until you hear. I will update you soon with the details of our journey when I have some time so stay tuned.

And then there were Four !! It is official.

Today we went to court. Court went very easy. Our translator told us that if there had been issues then we would have known about them last week. We were asked some basic questions about our jobs and how long that we had been married. The judge also asked about how Madalyn felt about the baby. Then the Doctor, the Orphanage Director, and the lady from the Ministry of Education spoke about his health, and the fact that he was abandoned by his mother. There was a prosecutor there dressed in a military uniform. He did not say much except that he approved our application. The female judge left the court room for a few minutes and came back and read from a Blue Folder. She approved our petition and legally Yuri became Logan and the new member of the Wright family was "born" at approximately 9:50am Kazakhstan time on April 13, 2009.

Now we will begin our journey home.

Sorry for the delay.

Sorry we haven't posted lately.Let me fill you in on all the news.


We went to the Ministry of Education on Wednesday.....a breeze.We are going to court on Monday then going to have a tea party with the doctors.(I have always wanted to have a REAL tea party).




-Madalyn-

What do we do all day ???

I know that you are all wondering what we do all day and what does it look like there.

This is the entrance into the Baby House.

The first week we went to the baby house at 9:50 to 12 and then from 3:50 to 6 everyday and in between we came back to the room and ate a little something and usually took a nap. This past week we were only able to go to the baby house in the afternoon from 2:50 to 6 everyday.

So, it gave a little time in the morning to explore the area. One day we found a neat outdoor market down the street from the hotel a little ways. They have everything from fresh fish to pantyhose. They also have beautiful fruits and vegetables as well.The sellers have what equates to a small metal building or trailer off of a truck which they use to display their wares. I did find some cute baby clothes and Madalyn found a fashionable purse high quality too ;)

Pictures from the Market

While we are with Logan at the baby house, we are in the same room every day. We generally lay out some blankets on the ground and lay in the floor for three hours or so and play with him. We get to feed him once during that time as well as change a couple of diapers. I am going to attach some pictures so you can see what the room looks like.

Here is a picture of Logan's bottle. I told Brian that it looks like a cow's udder. It is not pretty but he seems to love it.

Goodnight from Kaz. I will upload more pictures tomorrow if the internet is up.

OOPS !!

Hi Everyone,

We just found out this morning that somehow the blog was set up to not allow any comments. Thanks Lanetta for the e-mail letting us know. I went in and fixed that this morning. 

Stay tuned for  more info ! Cynthia is working hard to get everything up to date :-)

-Brian-

Meeting our Son for the First Time

We were driven to a neighborhood about 5 minutes away. Their neighborhood consist of a series of apartment buildings about 10 stories high. They appear to be much need of repair. The orphanage itself is behind a brightly painted fence. The orphanage is very clean and well kept.

Our first day at the orphanage was more than a little overwhelming. Both families were ushered into a room with a couch at one end and a large wardrobe/bookcase at the other end with giant stuffed animals. One wall was completely windows with long sheers covering them. We were told to sit down and get a pen and paper ready as well as a camera because they were going to introduct us to the children who were available to be adopted. So, we got prepared. They brought in the children one by one and we took pictures of them along with writing down their names (or at least what we could make out of a name). They also told us if they were a boy or a girl which was a good thing because there were a couple that I thought were boys which were actually girls.

Yuri was baby number 3. Here is what we saw when we saw him for the first time.

He is being held by one of the doctors. He was so alert as he looked around the room. His blue eyes and way that he was so observant is one of the things that drew us to him. He was the smallest child but in a mother's eyes... the cutest.

We did interact with the other children that were presented. They ranged from 7 months old to 18 months old. There was one other little boy and we tried to interact with him but he started crying and threw down his toy when Brian held him. We just did not have the connection to him that we had to Yuri.

They are correct.....God just makes things work out like it is supposed to. We even discovered that he even looks like Brian a little.

So our adventure with Yuri began.

Karaganda

Our story continues......

Luckily, we and all of our luggage arrived without fail. We were greeted by Natasha, Tolik and Sasha. We traveled to our hotel from the airport. There was piles and piles of snow everywhere. I have never seen that much snow in my life. The trip to the hotel was not very long. Since it was late, we could not see much of the city only snow.

We were quickly checked into our hotels by Natasha and told to be ready to be picked up in the morning at 8:50am to be taken to the baby house. The process of checking into a hotel is much different here in Karaganda. We did not need to leave a credit card, deposit or anything; we only signed a piece of paper and we were good to go. Based on our last experience, we were not sure what the room would be like. We opened to door to a very nicely equipped room. It had a full size bed along with a twin bed so we all had plenty of room to sleep. It also had a couch, desk, tv and a very nice bathroom. Compared to our last hotel, we felt like we are staying at the Ritz.
I had to unpack everything and get settled before we called it a night. We had a very big day coming up.
We got up early and got dressed out in all of our dress clothes. It is important to make a good impression. We went downstairs and waited on our drivers.

Here is a picture of what is across the street from the hotel.

Next post will be about when we met our son for the first time.