Thursday, June 11, 2009

Has it really been more than a month?

Unbelievably, yes.

I think there have been many things to keep our minds occupied. Despite all attempts, we returned to our daily lives. It was only about 2 weeks after we returned that it finally kicked in that something, someones rather, were missing. Sure we talked about them, and thought about them, and looked at pictures, and captured our trip on this blog, but it wasn't the same.

Ironically, during this time I haven't once been worried about them. I haven't wondered if they are growing, or eating, or missing us. I think Steve and I both saw they were taken care of (albeit, not like we want to) in the orphanage.

We have also felt the attacks of the enemy during this time. About mid May, we started ramping up for the next round of paperwork. Just as we were getting ready to complete a crucial part of the paperwork, we got a notification that we needed to stop. Because of all the events with adoptions from Russia, the officials have really started cracking down and enforcing the rule. The officials is Russia have complied a list of American agencies that prepare homestudies, for which they are no longer accepting paperwork, most likely because a post-adoption requirement was not met. Our agency happens to be on that list, which meant we would need to find a new social worker to complete the remainder of the work. We finally found one, and hopefully we can get the rest of everything completed quickly.

Yesterday we got an email from our adoption coordinator stating that the officials are ready to assign a court date, and were inquiring about the rest of our document. Holy crap! Most everything was done except the background checks and physicals. Quick scheduling should have those completed by Wednesday next week. It looks like we might be making another whirl wind trip to Columbus to get all of our documents finalized!

So the current estimated timeframe is late July/early August for a court date. We had initially hoped for August as it looked like this might be the soonest. We have definitely been blessed that our timelines have been shorter than projected. The sooner the boys come home, the best!