He's Our Boy!

Well, we went to court this morning and everything went really well. We were suppose to go in at 10:30 a.m. but the orphange director and inspector were there for another hearing, so the judge moved us up. We went in about 9:30 and we were done by 10:05 a.m. The judge just kept saying this was going to be very quick and it was. They first asked to see pictures of "R" and when the judge saw him, she realized she was the same judge to terminate his biological mother's rights. How is that for coincidence. Both Dan and I were asked about 3 or 4 questions and that was about it. We were nervous for nothing but of course there were a few tears when they read the ruling (no, not Dan...me!:) . The judge congratulated us and that was it. We are now beginning our 10 day wait which means we can leave Donetsk on July 8. If all goes well, we may be on a plane for home on July 11.

In one of my earlier posts, I talked about the number 12 being a good omen for us. When we were looking through our dossier last night, we realized that the date last March when we found out that our dossier would not be submitted because of the quota for Canada being met, was March 12. At the time I thought I would never forget that date but actually did. That was the beginning of the number 12 for us. "R" entered the orphange on March 14 and like I said in an earlier post, we were the first family to see his file. God had a plan, we just didn't know what it was at the time. We are now counting our blessings which include Sydney and "R" (not sure if I can use his name yet).

We had a tour of the orphanage this morning and it is a really nice place. "R" is lucky to have had this for his home for the past 15 months.

For anyone who will be going to court, I wouldn't worry too much about what to wear. At least in our case, it was pretty casual. The blouse I brought to wear to court ended up being locked in the washing machine!! I went to do a load of laundry the day before yesterday and the door of the machine wouldn't close completely or open at all. So, our clothes are being held captive. Our landlady said we should try to open it ourselves, which of course we did for about 45 minutes before calling. Anyway, I had a bit of a dressy t-shirt that matched the skirt I had and our facilitator said it was just fine. Dan wore dress pants, a dress shirt and a tie and Syd wore a dress. The prosecutor was in jeans, so I knew we didn't need to worry to much.

I also keep forgetting to mention this to anyone travelling; bring both a Ukrainian and Russian phrase book with phonetic pronunciations. We couldn't find a Russian one so it has been a bit of a struggle. We do have a phrase book that was created specifically for adoption which helps but it is limited.

That's all for now.