Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July!!!  Wish we were back home to celebrate, but made the best of it today.  Dustin's whole side of the family is celebrating at our house this weekend and they all got together with my side of the fam for dinner.  We were jealous and of course wondering how the conversation went without us...probably about us, I'm sure.  For the last couple mornings, we've been able to Skype with family and it's been fun.  Ry has no idea how it works, but loves showing all of his stuff to whoever on the other side of the camera.  I'm sure our family is loving getting to see and hear him live.

Ryland's First Boat Trip - Irtysh River Cruise

View of the beach from the river

We may not have had fireworks for our 4th, but we had a great day on the boat & at the beach!

Big Hugs, Kazakh Flags...could this pic be any cuter?

Checking out the scenery!  Words of the day: boat & jet ski.  Every few minutes he would get so excited, and I mean beyond excited.  Go figure, he now wants a boat and a jet ski!  He would point out every one and whether or not it was fast and tell us the color.  "Smo-tree, Smo-tree (look, look) boat, fast, yellow". 

Happy boy on the boat with his new shoes (don't hate...there's not a lot of shoe choices here!  You get what you get...).  Can't wait to get home & shop for little man!

YES...there are rednecks in Kazakhstan...

After the River Cruise & lunch we took an impromptu long walk and ended up at the beach.  We plan to go back tomorrow for a more prepared beach excursion, so hopefully better pics to follow.  Every time I see parents with their kids in underwear instead of bathing suits, it absolutely appalls me, but what were we to do???  When in Rome...

Sitting here, watching the excitement in Ry in getting into the water like this for the first time was overwhelming for me.  He was just overjoyed to strip down, run to the water, to splash and squish the "sand" in between his toes.  He was in awe, he just couldn't fathom that he could do that.  I got choked up just watching the happiness and feeling so lucky to be able to bring this joy to him.  Then I got even more choked up thinking of all the kids just in this town, let alone the world, that have never experienced it, never had the chance to have a normal childhood like so many of us take for granted.  It just broke my heart. 

A HUGE thank you goes out to our parents who did everything they could for us to make our childhoods as special as they could...that's all a parent can do!  I never thought about it before...  I'm sure our parents weren't over the moon about taking us to amusement parks, roller skating rinks, and all those other fun kid activities, but I know they were thrilled to see us have such a great time.  Thanks again...like you always told us, we'd never even begin to understand until we had our own.

Love,

Cort