A little more certainty

We made it through the holiday weekend, and the beginning of a new week brought a little more information about our process. As we have said before, we have our court date next Wednesday, January 12th. Since court is on a Wednesday we will not be able to pick up our court decree until Monday the 24th. So effectively our 10 day wait will be turned into a 12 day wait because of the weekend. Ordinarily, we would pick up the court decree on Monday and apply for N’s tax number and birth certificate, but the office that handles birth certificates isn’t open on Monday, so that will have to wait until Tuesday the 25th. We will then begin working on passports which will probably take 3 days. That will most likely put us in Kyiv on Thursday evening and wait for it...the US embassy doesn’t book any visa appointments for adoptive families on the last Friday of the month! I am beginning to believe that we are on one huge episode of Punk’d. I keep waiting for Aston Kutcher to come running out from some building and tell us that we can go to court and get the over with. I mean seriously! C’mon! It’s like a prank that just keeps getting worse. You just have to laugh at some point! What that all means is that we will probably have our appointment at the embassy on January 31 and be headed home on February 2. That could still vary by a day or two, but barring some unforeseen complication, that should be really close.

N was doing well today. Much more chipper! She had rested up from the New Year’s festivities. She spent a good deal of time working on English today on the computer. She is scoring well on the Rosetta Stone exercises. I think we motivated her by telling her that she had to pass a written test before she could get her learner’s permit even after her birthday in April. She is scoring in the high 90s on every exercise!!! We won’t see her tomorrow because they have an all day outing to the circus. Thursday they have another program for Christmas, so we’ll put up all the details. We expect to spend a quite day tomorrow arounf the apartment. I will try to get some writing done and Dense will probably spend the day immersed in more BBC DVDs (thanks Kimberly!).

We appreciate your prayers and love the many emails, facebook messages, and skype calls we have received. The boredom and isolation is the worst! Thanks for keeping in touch.

Blessings,

Rick