Day 29, Pre-Court Day Well, the description that the judge is "strict" is putting it mildly...and the adjectives that come to my mind are not nearly as polite as strict. We are exploring our options and hope to have a finalized plan today. We will post when we have more information. No reason to worry, we are fine--and none of the events should affect the outcome of the petition for adoption. However the judge delivered a serious blow to our timetable and is making a federal case out of one little typo in 300 pages of documents.

Day 30, Thursday We are still trying solve the issues from yesterday, no firm plan to report but some things are in motion that may help us...thanks to friends, and some very caring and supportive people at the agencies we used in the States. Since we didn't visit yesterday, Lily was especially happy to see us today. We had all missed each other. While she doesn't understand exactly what is going on, her depth of feeling about us is reassuring. One of the good things that came from court yesterday is that we got to hear her social worker speak to the positive changes from Luba (Lily) since we have been visiting her. She said that her teachers have indicated that she has much more interest in her school work, her grades and self-esteem have shown improvement. She seems to be thriving from the attention and connection with a potential family. Last night was a departure from the regular evening schedule, as we went to the circus! This was a bit of a new breed of entertainment, held in the local philharmonic hall and all the acts were accompanied by pounding techno music. Complete with clowns, magicians, acrobats and small animals such as monkeys, snakes, ponies, it was an interesting show. There were kids everywhere, with glowsticks, popcorn, candy and balloons. During intermission, they allowed children onto the stage to have their photos taken with the animals. For those of you who know Luda, her first phrase in English was "Luda, banana monkey!" As you can tell from the photo on the left, she lit up like a Christmas tree at the opportunity to hold a monkey. Hopefully we wil have more word for you soon as to our status.

Day 31, Friday Update:  We found out last night that the paperwork is headed our way! Thanks to Joe McCord, Jerry Cunningham & everyone at Harmony Adoption and Adoption Ark! So fingers crossed that we can get a new court date sometime after Feb. 16, around the time when we hope the documents will get to us. To make a long story short, the judge required us to redo some of our paperwork and pushed our court date to March 1. We have since found out that this is only her second adoption, and that the first was several years ago. My suspicion is that she is unfamiliar with the process and is concerned about making a mistake--so is erroring on the side of fanaticism. Murphy's Law at its worst, the luck of the Irish must be at play. We have a wonderful support system with our agencies and they are trying to expedite so that perhaps we can get the additional paperwork sooner than expected and move the court date closer to middle February. That said, while the judge is making this long and difficult, the bottom line is that we have found a wonderful little girl to be a sister and lifelong friend to our precious Luda. This is a priceless gift from God and the universe, once again illustrating that the best things in life come with a price and this isn't any exception. While this difficult situation has pointed out to us is that the most important thing is that we have close family, wonderful friends and a great support system at home. To top it off, we have this beautiful child to add to our family. All in all, this is just a small bump in the long road of life. I have an odd confession to make, but in a strange way, I feel grateful to this judge. Because of this adversity, we have been given an opportunity to experience such an out pouring of support, wisdom and love of family and friends. Thanks so much for each of your messages of love and support, offers of assistance, and efforts to help remedy our situation. We appreciate each and every one of you. Tomorrow, we are leaving for Almaty for four days. There is paperwork that needs to be completed at the US Embassy and since we are in waiting mode, we thought this would be a good time to complete that task. Our coordinator Dinara explained this to Lily today, so that she wouldn't worry about our absence. She seemed to understand, but gave us extra hugs as we took our leave this afternoon.

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