Court

I apologize for not updating you earlier on our court hearing, but we have had a lot of emotions to deal with.

Let me just start by saying that our court hearing did not go as planned. We have had some unforeseen complications with paperwork, and the judge has scheduled a second court hearing for us on Monday. We will find out then if a third court hearing is necessary to resolve the paperwork issue.

During our court hearing, the judge decided that she wanted additional paperwork that has never been requested before. As you can imagine, this was a very unexpected request for both us and WACAP staff, as the judge gave no mention of requiring this document when she looked over our paperwork 1 week ago. As of right now, the paperwork has been prepared and is being sent to Novosibirsk. While we can't be sure, we do believe that this request is stemming from recent allegations of a child adopted from Russia who was abused by his American parent's.

We have another court date scheduled for March 15th, but it is highly unlikely that our paperwork will be received by then. As a result, we are expecting to wait for another court date to be set so that the judge can review the paperwork. We are hoping that this third court date will be set early in the week so that we can proceed with our trip with only a slight delay. However, as this entire adoption process has been laden with one frustration after another, we are not expecting things to go as we hope.

This was very discouraging news for us so please keep us in your prayers. We will update you as we know more.

In the meantime, we are enjoying our visits with L. She is getting more comfortable with us every day. We especially love hearing her belly laugh as she is being tickled, and her constant smiles are very encouraging.

Anna