And…we FINALLY have a Court Date!

October 12th we will be in court in Volgograd! It is such a relief to finally have this date, you have no idea. It will be 5 months after meeting Elijah for the first time, much longer than we anticipated, but it’s a court date none the less!! Yesterday was a nerve-racking day because we never heard anything about how the preliminary hearing went or if we had a court date…nothing. Thankfully we heard early this morning though, so it was only 24 hours of being on the edge of our seat watching and waiting for that phone to ring. :) (During that 24 hour period we may have engaged in some retail therapy…)

We are now in the midst of booking our flights, then hotels, then working on the next round of paperwork to complete and bring with us. The judge isn’t requiring that we update our medicals in the US, so yay to that! We do have to complete the new requirement of 80 hours of training before court. (I am honestly glad that Russia is now requiring adoptive families to go through that much training. We see so many families at work that have no clue what they may face in the future while parenting a child who has experienced neglect and trauma. I think the training is a great requirement.) Sad that I can’t train myself since I train on adoptive issues for a living :), but Beacon House has schedule a “boot camp” next week in Pensacola, Florida to cover most of this training requirement, so we might as well have a little retreat at the beach and pass the time between now and court. :)

Back to travel mania! Thanks for the prayers, please keep them coming, court should be interesting… :)