Steve here. Well, we're off!  They say that the journey of a thousand miles (7000 miles?) begins with a single step.  It seems like we've already been walking quite awhile, though, what with all of the paperwork and preparations we've worked through these last 8 months.  But today marked the beginning of our final step as we started the physical part of our journey to get our son Benjamin from Kazakhstan.

Our semi-frantic preparations over the last week left us all pretty tired.  But we weren't so tired that we didn't shed some tears when we left today.  Grandma and Grandpa Earles drove us to the Appleton airport where we said our goodbyes.  Leaving Joe was really difficult.  Neither of us has been away from him for more than a couple of days, and though we know Grandma and Grandpa will do a great job taking care of him, the splitting up of the family was painful.  We've been the three of us, Mom, Dad and Joe for so long.  We understand each other's rhythms and patterns so well - our routines are familiar.  It's all part of our shared bond.  As soon as we landed in Chicago after the first leg of our trip, Jen bought a postcard for Joe and mailed it out.  We miss him so much already!

So far the trip has been smooth.  Step one was getting from Appleton to Chicago.  Done!  Step two was to catch a Lufthansa flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany.  Done!  As I write this, we're sitting somewhere in the Frankfurt Terminal, waiting for our flight to Almaty.  The flight across the Atlantic went quickly.  We were well fed, even getting a turkey (such as it was) dinner!   We also got to see the German efficiency in action.  After dinner, they shut off all of the lights - it was clear that we were supposed to go to sleep, even though it was only about 8 pm Oshkosh time.  After about 3 hours, the lights came on.  It was morning already!  What a short night!  

So now we're in Frankfurt, Lufthansa's hub.  There are flights to all corners of the world.  And we're excited about getting to our corner.  We still haven't found the gate for our flight.  In this gigantic airport, all the board tells us is that our flight is out of Gate B.  There look to be about 60 Gate B's here.  Hmmm.  Looks like a challenge for our sleep deprived brains.   

    Hi! Its Jen. I had a restful 80 minute "nap" on a really comfortable "couch" punctuated by incredibly loud flight announcements every few minutes in both German and English.  Now, after waking, I seem to understand all numbers spoken in German! Soon we will meet our travel partners (Mary Lou and Jon Javines from LA). They should be somewhere in this airport as I write ... unfortunately our gate (for the Almaty leg) has not yet been posted - we have a four hour lay over here - so we don't have any hope of finding them yet. This airport is truly international - from here you can fly direct to Africa, India, Russia, China, the middle east, the US, anywhere in Europe. People walk by speaking a variety of languages and in all types of dress.

    At the beginning of the trip I tried to think about our new boy, but all I could think of was my Joe. Now I find that I am starting to think more about Benjamin Aidos - What is he doing now? Does he know we are coming? What does he look like? All I see in my mind is the 5-minute video that was taken last year when he was two.  How he must have changed since then!