(Maureen's Post)

Well, it's time! We are so ready to jump onto that plane today to finally reunite with our baby, Michael. James is very eager for Michael to come home, too. Earlier this week he told me he felt sad because Michael is not home yet. When I reminded and assured him that Sean and I were leaving this weekend to get Michael, he instantly brightened up and proceeded to tell me all the things that he would teach Michael once he came home. We are all so excited, and I just hope he remembers us since it's been 6 weeks since we last saw him.

However, at the same time it was hard to say good-bye to James yesterday when we dropped him off at my parents' for the week. Even though we've discussed it with him and he understands that we will be back home soon with Michael we know he will miss us, and we will miss him like crazy, too. He's spent weekends with my parents before, but we were always in-town when that happened. I have never gone out of town without him since he's come home (Sean has had to go out of town for work, though), much less travel to the other side of the world! So, obviously, this is also hard on me. He hugged us tighter and longer than usual and gave us a lot of kisses yesterday when we said good-bye. I'm glad he did not cry, even though he looked like he might (not to mention, I was trying not to start crying in front of him), but luckily my dad was able to distract him back into the house with promises of watching a DVD as we drove off. Plus, we marked off on their wall calendar the day we would return home so that he can count down the days.

We've got three flights ahead of us before arriving in Kazakhstan. We fly to Denver, Frankfurt, then finally to Astana. We will then get picked up and drive for 3 hours to Karaganda. We will probably finally get into Karaganda early Tuesday morning and will see Michael that same day. So, don't worry if you don't see another posting until Tuesday since we will be in transit until then. We still have the wireless USB modem we bought when we were there earlier this summer, so connecting in Kazakhstan should hopefully not be a problem.

So, paka paka for now, and we'll see you in Kazakhstan!