August 1, 2006

The judge said YES...the judge said YES! We are the legal parents of Mason Randall Lanser. Yesterday was court and all went well. Ryan was perfect with his 4 page speech and I only got through two lines of my five line speech. I cried too much. But, the judge said YES. Today starts our 15 day waiting period to get his birth certificate, and we'll get to bring him to our apartment on the 16th. We can't wait. We'll continue to see him everyday until then.

He is wonderful. Everyday we learn a bit more about him and everyday it's harder to leave. We have found out he loves music. He dances when he hears it and we let him play the piano in the music room and he basically head bangs while hitting the notes. He went to far the other day and hit his head on the back of the piano. I laughed so hard I was crying. He just gave me a look like I was crazy but, I hugged and kissed him and he was fine. He loves Ryans moustache and beard thing. He'll pull on it and rub it with his hand.

Life here is okay. We're surviving on noodles, dumplings, yogurt, and sometimes potatoes. Surely different, but okay. When we go out to eat, it has always been good. We went to a house warming party for our translator the other day and had some horse meat. We only ate the meat, but the 4 Kazakh couples ate all kinds of stuff. I only know for sure that some of it was fat, intestines, liver, and some other unexplainable stuff. They love it, we just couldn't do it! It was nice to experience the culture though. For their dinners, they fill the table with salads of all kinds. No lettuce though, there was a carrot salad, a vegetable salad, and a greek salad. All excellent. You eat all that and drink lots of vodka for about two hours. Then, they clear all that and lay out a spread of about 6 desserts which you sit and eat for another hour or so. Then, when a couple gets ready to leave, they prepare a bag with a little bit of each dessert for you to take home. It was great. We really enjoyed ourselves.

Our drive to the baby house has been interesting. They started road construction about a year ago, and plan to be done in 2008. It is very bumpy, and has a ton of huge boulders that our driver weaves in and out of. It's the most interesting drive. But, he is an excellent driver and we enjoy him. We're teaching him a bit of english, and he's teaching us a bit of Russian. Interesting stuff. And, for about 5 minutes of our drive, we go through a town where most of the people sell horse milk on the side of the road and have their cows tied up in their front yards. Different living, but enjoyable for them.

We've found a new internet cafe that has many computers and seems to be more reliable. So, we should be able to post every other day and on Thursday I will have some pictures to load.

We miss home and can't wait to have our family in our house and back to normal.

Take care everyone and we think of you often.

Love,
Ryan, Rachel, and Mason Lanser