The Rest of the Process

People have been asking about our timeline...."So, when will you get to bring Anya home?"

The short answer to this is...probably the end of February or the first part of March.

And here's the long one...if you're interested :)

Our court documents should arrive in our in-country Coordinator's hands Monday.  She will then translate all the thirty some-odd documents.  As long as she finds that everything is there and correct, all she has to do is wait for the letter from the Ministry of Education that says that Anya is all cleared for adoption.  When she receives that letter, she'll submit all the documents and the letter to the court.  We're praying that this will happen before the end of the month because the courts will be closed from Jan 1-17 for their big holiday. But she told us not to hold our breath. 

So...realistically, our documents will probably be submitted Jan 17. We should receive our court date within a few days from the time they're submitted.  Court dates are usually about a month out.  So that would put it at about mid-February. 

So we will go for our 2nd trip at that time.  We'll only be there for 3 days.  The first day, we'll go have our required 8-doctor medical exam (oh, joy!) The 2nd day, we'll go to court and hope and pray that the judge finds favor with us. If everything is a "go", then we'll return home for the 10 day waiting period, which is required in most Eastern European countries for anything to become "official."  Some people stay there for the 10 day wait.  We don't want to be gone from our little ones back home for 3 weeks, so we're going to come home during this time.

After 10 days, we'll fly back for the 3rd and final trip. Anya will be ours at that point. We can spring her from the orphanage the day we get there, (my heart races just thinking about this day...) and keep her with us at the apartment for about 4 business days while we wait for her passport to arrive.  As soon as it arrives, we'll hop on an overnight train to the capitol city.  We'll be there for 4-5 business days to finish the process with the US Embassy, so that Anya can become a U.S. Citizen. and get her Visa to come home with us. The third trip should take about 9-10 days total. It will be challenging and long and we'll really miss the kids.  But when it's over, we'll have the greatest reward imaginable to bring home with us.

Her.