Back home!

We arrived safely back home and are trying to adjust to the 9 hour difference again! Thanks everyone for your e-mails and comments. We have no doubt that we will be going back soon...and we left some of our suitcases in Petro. Packing will be easier this time around!!!

To be continued...

We are heading back home next week and will be making a second trip to adopt our little one. We ran into some bad luck. The Dept. feels badly about what happened. They have assured us that they will begin matching us with a child meeting our requirements ASAP once they return back from vacation in Sept. We considered remaining here, but since it could take a few months, we felt it would be best for everyone to be back home. We are very grateful to the officials for their continuing efforts in rectifying the situation. It's def. bittersweet. We have the assurance that we will indeed be matched very soon...but we had hoped to bring our child home with us on this trip. One never knows why things happen...but we strongly believe that everything happens in its own time. Our little one just wasn't ready yet. We feel that it's better for our family to be patient rather than adopting a child whom we weren't in a position to parent.

We certainly have grown from this experience. We stayed true to ourselves and it has made us stronger. We're at peace and can't wait to come back to Petro. We'll miss our new friends and have come to know and love the city.

We are very grateful to everyone for your support. We couldn't have gotten through these last few weeks without your words of encouragement and prayers. Please also think of a baby girl who is in hospital here. We visited with her and she stole our hearts. She has to remain in hospital and may need quite a bit of medical treatments and surgeries. She's a fighter and an inspiration!

We hope to be travelling either next Tuesday or Thursday to Astana and then making our home way through Frankfurt.

We'll keep in touch with our new friends!!! and for those at home... see you soon. I guess you could just say we needed to hit the "pause button"...so stay tuned... To be continued!

XXO Sven, Jocelyne and Yannik

Ah..the good life!

Our "cool dude" at age 5... can't wait to see him as a teenager. He has been so great. We didn't bring alot of toys so are improvising. Yesterday, we had a picnic on the floor...today, he decided that we would be having supper at his restaurant...He drew a picture menu and served us! The best service we've had...and the cutest waiter. We need to give him a big tip!

Three pretty ladies!

Yannik actually took this picture of Maria, Svetlana and Irina...He certainly loves the women... and I can't say that I blame him ;0)) Svetlana had brought Kinder chocolates for Yannik...so he was pretty happy to meet her... as were we!

Meeting with Svetlana

Today, we finally met Svetlana, our coordinator, to discuss our current situation, time frames and options. Tomorrow, she will be meeting with the officials in Petro to discuss our file. I guess we had hit a bit of bad luck, so hopefully we can all work together towards a solution. She is also looking into transferring our application to another region if it comes to that. We really like Petro...but we are prepared to travel to another region if there is a child available. Please think of us while we wait.

I took advantage of more down time today to go out and do a little bit of souvenir shopping...and I wasn't disappointed! Yannik and I also went for a walk to feed the pigeons until they got overly enthousiastic and scared him off. (well...actually, they kind of scared me too!!)

A new bathroom experience

After a rather unpleasant bathroom experience, I make sure to "squeeze" the paper before purchase... This one was pretty soft and I thought...ok, we had blue at the apt, let's try pink for a change.. Well.. I never noticed the raspberry sent ;0))

Eldery lady

The eldery women with their kerchiefs in their hair and their kind smiles have captured our hearts.