My 'to do' lists are growing faster than ever.  Today I was able to mark off at least a couple of items.  It took just about every ounce of energy I had though - although there is a smidgen left for blogging!!

Today we had our medicals re-done - I forget how many times we have done this now, but I think it's more than 4.    While I was waiting to meet with the Notary I stopped in a store and bought a top I needed to wear under my suit for court - on clearance too!!.  I met with the notary at Starbucks (a good friend of ours who has done all of our notaries for FREE!!)  He is having some personal challenges so I ended up talking with him for quite a while.

Of course there is always urgency for everything to get done quickly so I drove to Austin for Apostilles.  I am starting to hate that drive.  It's about an hour and a half from our house, for a 3-5 minute wait at the apostille office while they print the forms and then an hour and a half drive home.  I guess the good news is that now it is free.  I think we reached the Maximum Adoption Apostille fee on our first visit to their office.  I am so glad that Texas has a limit on Adoption Apostille fees.  I am sure it has saved us at least a couple hundred dollars by now.

While I was in Austin I met my friend Susan who adopted her children from Vlad also.  Her oldest daughter is from the same Children's Home as D.  They had prepared some pictures and clothing donations for us to take to the girls who are still in the Children's Home.

When I returned to town I stopped to pick up a suitcase from someone who had listed it on Craigslist - gotta love craigslist, better than ebay sometimes!  We talked for a while about her sister who was adopted and all kinds of stuff.   I need the extra suitcase because we have 24 winter coats to take with us to donate to the Children's Home!  This endeavor has been a blessing for me and we received the last coat just last month.  We wanted to take at least 24 so that there would be enough for each girl in D's groupa.

Ok, next stop Craft Mall.  I had closed my craft booth last month, but still keep in touch with the girls who run the shop. Since I was near that area of town I stopped to tell them the good news.

Then, I stopped to pick up the kids from the sitter, dropped them at home and ran out to the mail store to send the medical forms to our agency.  There is a sweet Indian lady who has taken great interest in our adoption and always takes good care of our overnight packages.

After that I had a board meeting to attend for CHOSEN Foster and Adoption Ministry, that was about an hour and a half long, but on the other side of town.  It was nearly dark by the time that was over.

On the way home I stopped at Walgreens to pick up Dan's passport pictures and have my own done.  (The pictures are for our Visas.) The girl definitely did not know what she was doing and had to take my picture at least 4 separate times.  Finally I arrived back home at about 9:30.  Whew, what a day! 

OK, so now that I can breathe a little better let me tell you some of the details.    We learned that they will not invite the grandmother to court after all!  It still doesn't totally mean the grandmother is out of the picture, but we are proceeding.  Unless she pushes the matter by appealing the court decision, we should stay on schedule.

Speaking of schedule, it looks like we will be leaving the last week of August.  We will attend court and then return home for the 10 day wait.  I know this is not the normal course most families take, but there are several reasons that this is really best for us.  We will do our best to keep in contact with D during this period.  I will then return on my own to take custody and bring D home mid September.

We are hoping that since we have plans to return that they will let us write letters to D now.  We are hoping to hear about that this week.  We have not had direct contact with her at all since we saw her last August.   (Usually, with older children, our agency will facilitate letters to the kids between trips.  Because of the grandmother situation the Children's Home director thought it was best not to confuse her - in case we don't get custody in the end.)  Our agency rep did visit her on her birthday a couple of months ago to bring her gifts on our behalf and tell her that we are still waiting to return.  She was really excited and said she is waiting for us too.

Updates:

Our court date is now confirmed - that was quick, yeah!!

And we will be writing a letter to D this evening - they will deliver it to her on Friday!!

We have a tentative COURT DATE!!!   August 31!!!

After Melissa posted a pic of her receving the news of her Court Date,my co-workers were determined to do the same.  So, Here I am on the phone with our coordinator receiving the news - and trying not to cry too much!

Another weekly call with our agency.  We still didn't get any BIG news, but it's news all the same.   Our agency rep was able to meet with Judge Irina on her first day back in the office to ask her about our case - so maybe our adoption really is the most pressing legal matter in Vladivostok after all!  ;o)  The judge did not give any definite information, but that she would give the case directly to a prosecutor for further detailed review.  We are hoping that this will happen sometime this week.   Without a prosecutors' detailed review Judge Irina's initial thoughts on the case are that she will issue us a court date and ask the grandmother to attend the hearing so that they can validate the reasons for which she was denied custody.  (I suppose this means her criminal history, job status,housing, etc...I don't really know for sure)    So, WOW, I was not expecting that news!  I did have some inclination that they would notify the grandmother, but invite her?  WOW, I'm glad we are hearing this in advance so I can prepare mentally for meeting her.  It will be fine, we have made it this far and God will see us through whatever we must face through the course of this journey.  I'm sure it won't be as bad as the images that are developing in my mind.  - right???

OK, so I'm not totally freaked out or anything.  We heard such a timely sermon this weekend on the topic of Peace.  I will choose to let peace prevail.  

Phil 4:6-7  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Ok, I tried to post earlier today but when I clicked 'publish' the post just disappeared, so I will give it another try.  Nothing major happening this week, just a lot of little things:

• Last weekend I had a 'girls day out' with my mom.  We went for haircuts and then clothes shopping.  I had received some money for my birthday so I treated myself to a new outfit (or two)  It was a fun time.
• Last week we had a plumbing leak.  It took the plumber 3 visits to finally fix it.  The main water connection at the meter was leaking.  And of course the leak was on our side of the meter so the water company would not fix it.  Luckily it was out in the yard so there was no damage - except to our bank account - OUCH!
• This week I have been trying to contact some medical specialists regarding D's diagnoses.  We do not feel that any of them are of major concern, but I want to be prepared to stand before a judge and say that I have spoken to these specialists.  In a feeble attempt to support our request to waive the 10 day wait I will also ask these docs if they will write a letter indicating that they want to see the child urgently.  I say a feeble attempt because the 10 days is never waived in our region - but who knows - we are, after all, praying to a mighty God!    I am finding it amazlingly difficult to make these appointments.  The clerk who answers the phone has policies and procedures and they are adamant that they cannot schedule an appointment if the patient is in Russia!  How absurd!  I have had to ask to speak to someone else (office manager or Nurse) to finally get someone who can think outside the box and schedule the appointment for ME.  Persistence pays off and now I have appointments scheduled with a Pediatric Otolaryngologist and a Pediatric Orthopedic Podiatrist. Now if I could only find another Opthamologist - the clerk at the office I called was not giving in to my insistance to speak to someone else. They put me on hold then told me that their office manager would not allow it. - Thank You, I said, I will find another Doctor.
• My mother is traveling to Boston this week to visit my Aunt who is celebrating 25 years as a nun.  Congratulations Sr. Mary Joseph!  (just Mary Jo to us).  I am pet-sitting for mom while she is gone.
  
• Next week my younger son will be going to church camp - for 5 days!  He is so excited - I am a little more worried about him, but he will be OK.  What I am most worried about is his temper, I am worried they will call me mid-week and say 'Come get your crazy child'.   Tonight was the parents meeting - it sounds like they will have a blast.
• On the way home tonight I stopped at Scrapbook 911!  It is a fairly new scrapbook store in town.  I had been wanting to stop by but it is on the other side of town- near church.  Since we were on the way home from church I convinced the kids to give me 15 minutes (no complaining) while I checked it out.  It is a pretty cool place, I will go back again when I have more time to seriously shop.  They have a program where they give you a $10 store credit for every $100 spent - they track it for you on their computer.
• No news this week on our adoption.  We just spoke with our agency about our medical forms that will AGAIN need to be updated before we travel.  I was a little concerned when I learned that our primary care doc is no longer with the same  medical group, she has left to start her own practice.  The good news is that this will nt be any problem for our dossier.  We are continuing to pray for judge Irina and the prosecutor while we wait for further news.

First of all - THANK YOU so much for your prayers, it really is all we have that makes any difference. 

We were supposed to find out yesterday wether or not our documents were successfully submitted to the court.  Well, our agency did not receive their daily e-mail from Russia yesterday so we did not find out until today that they WERE SUBMITTED!!!  I knew it was too soon to hear yesterday, it had to be told to us only on 7-11!  (Some of you may know my story about the numbers 7 & 11)  So, Happy Birthday to me - this hurdle is past us.

However, there is a bit more to this story....  This is really par for our adoption journey isn't it? Delay after delay - I think I'm kind of getting used to it. (NOT)   ... the judge to whom our case is assigned will be on vacation until July 23rd.   Ok, I'm still too happy about the docs actually being submitted to let that part get me down today.  We figure it is actually not such a bad thing, because this means that she is MUCH less likely to be taking a vacation in August when we hope to go to court - which is typical vacation time for government officials.  I am also thinking that if she comes back from her vacation refreshed and happy then this might be a good thing too.  (I'm praying now that she has a good vacation)  ;)

The judge's name is Irina.  I could tell you her whole name, but probably shouldn't give it out on the blog so for now please join us in continuing to pray for Judge Irina - that God would prepare her heart for reviewing our case and that she would ultimately rule in our favor.

So, yes, it is my Birthday today - but I won't tell you my age, you'll have to guess - and if you do try to guess, be nice.  The girls in the office took me out to a nice lunch and had cake and ice cream and decorated my desk.  Last year they made me a sign which said Happy Birthday in Russian.  This year, since they know I am decorating D's room with butterflies, they hace approriately decorated my desk with butterflies also.  :)

Well, no news is really good news today.  I just got off the phone with our agency a little while ago; no news from Russia means that we are "ON" for submitting our documents to court!!   The plan is to submit the paperwork on Tuesday, July 10th.  We don't know precisely the time but most offices open at 9am.  Let's see, 9am Tuesday will be 5pm Central time, today!  - that's only a few hours from now!  We are asking everyone to join us in prayer at this time.   We believe that there is power in prayer and that we can ask the Lord's favor over the situation.  God is our judge and can command the heart of the judge in Russia.  We are praying today for two things specifically:

1.  That our paperwork would be successfully submitted to the courts on Tuesday.  (That eveything has been properly prepared, translated, notarized, apostilled, etc)

2.  That we would find God's favor with the judge and prosecutor who will be reviewing the case so that we would be granted a court date quickly.

This is a critical time in our long, long journey to bring D home.  While we still do not know what the end of this journey looks like, today I feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Thank you for joining us as we pray.

So I just knew it was too good to be true.  We will not actually have our paperwork filed to court next week because, alas, there is yet more paperwork to be done.   Apparently some documents we signed in Russia last August need to be re-done.  One is the Medical Conclusion - they have actually written a new Medical conclusion and D has undergone more tests and been given more diagnoses.   None of them severe, but now we know she has flat feet.  So, for new information we need to sign a new acknowledgement of having received this information.  And, since we are having you do this new document you might as well go ahead and re-do all of the other docs that were signed last August just so that they have fresh new dates on them.   I just laugh - it's all I really can do anyway.  I can't change the situation, I can't make things move faster all I have control over is my reaction so I choose to laugh at this one.  I will take tomorrow off from work and drive to Austin for Apostilles on the fresh new documents and then when I return home I should have a pre-paid delivery slip waiting for me so that I can send the package directly to Russia.  Do not pass GO, do not collect $200, go directly to Russia.   IF this package gets to Russia in the proposed timeframe and IF there are no other documents required and IF the sky doesn't just fall then maybe, just maybe our paperwork will be submitted to court the following week.

Isn't International Adoption Fun!?!