A recap of court day!!

Here I am with the Webbs at the start of the day :)

Here is the court house in Zaporozhye, Ukraine

Here is the court room

Waiting for the judge :)

I got to go first :) The Webbs had to wait in the chambers.

I had to sign a piece of paper and show my passport.

Marina and I stood side by side as the judge, 2 witnesses and social worker came in.

The judge said court was now open :)

The judge then read my court application, the orphanage report and the social worker report.

I was asked my name, date of birth, where I lived, etc.

I was asked very easy questions:

How did we raise our family (with love and understanding)

Did we find it difficult to raise children from around the world?

Did we think it would be a financial hardship to have another child?

Would it take away from our other kids?

Were our other kids excited about having a new sibling?

Were we prepared for her disabilities?

Did we have insurance?

Then he said he would consider our case and they all left the room.

A couple of minutes later they all came back in.

The judge said he had personally met Sveta and thought her a wonderful, smart child.

He said he was very happy that she would have a wonderful, loving family.

He granted me approval and an immediate decision!!

He ended by saying he wished us much happines, love and patience!!!

By then I was crying as was Marina :)

I was able to leave the courtroom and wait outside for my court decree.

Since interpol held up so many court cases there were 4 other families waiting on court, so my paperwork was a little delayed. I did not get the first court decree for 2 hours.

While waiting we saw Serge and Nicolai go by us with the kids in the taxi getting their visa pictures taken :)

Nicolai and I jumped in a waiting taxi and headed off for Svetlana's birth city.

I can not pronounce the city, but something like Vasilavesk. Here are some pics taken out the window.

Some are blurry, cause we were flying!! (45 minutes)

Burning debris on the side of the road, saw lots of this

My lunch, and thank heavens for my ipod!!!

Here is the city building where we got the birth certificate

I had to use the potty - can you guess which is for men??

At least it has a seat!!

Too bad the light didn't work :)

I saw this while Nicolai and I walked around the 45 minutes it took to do the cert.

I splurged and bought us ice creams :) cost $2

I thought it was trash at first, but nope kitty sleeping

Here is a picture of the first page of our court decree!

You can see the string on the left side?

Here is the back, with string, seal and stamp!

They had to do 14 of these for EACH family!! Sewn by hand!

Here is the treasured birth certificate!!

Once we had that in hand we headed back to Zaporozhye (only 30 minutes back)

We went back to court to see if they had the rest of my documents done. They did not, but we got 2 more copies. We went right to the orphanage to drop off 1 set and get the bank information.

Here is Sveta's bank book:

In Ukraine each child in the orphanage has a bank account and the government deposits funds into their account every month. The idea is that if a child ages out at 16 without being adopted these funds are to start their life or go to school.  As an adoptive parent we sign these funds over to the orphanage to thank them for taking care of our child (ren) to be used to fix up and take care of the orphanage and staff.

From there we headed to the notary so I could get a notarized copy of the birth certificate and do the passport application. It was already too late to turn it into the passport office.

So we headed back to the court to see if the rest of the docs were done.

We picked up all the docs for the families.

We ran to the bank to try to make the transfer, but the bank closed at 1:00 today since it is the last day of the month :) :)

We then ran to the train station so Nicolai could buy a ticket on the train to take all of our documents back to Kiev to get translated and submitted to the US EMbassy today.

So I left the hotel at 9:30 in the morning and got dropped back off at 6:30!

But I was lucky, we got lots done and the birth cert was pretty close.

Poor Robin had to go to Berdyansk, which was 2-3 hour ride EACH way!!

She had Serge with her and they had an authentic Ukrainian meal while waiting for her birth cert.

They looked very tired when they got back at 7:30.

Serge was happy that he was able to buy this salted local fish:

Marina was very daintily eating hers :)

Robin ate one too!!! so very brave! you go girl!

Hubby was gagging just being in the room :)

I am thinking Robin slept by herself :)

Doesn't this look yummy??

Ah - no I did not try it!!

We all sat around and had a drink and just relaxed.

We knew we were going to be done in the morning and be springing the kids from the orphanage and our documents were going to the embassy to start processing!!!! It was such a great way to end the day after such craziness!!

The only downside is that I don't know if Gerri Sveta was told why I did not visit today :(

One last day princess!!

Of course I had everything packed just in case :)

The bag on the left are Gerri Sveta's traveling clothes,

The bag in the middle is the champagne and chocolates for the director and staff.

The bag on the right is for her groupa: biscuits, cookies, lollipops and balloons

I do not know if we will fly, drive or take the train to Kiev today.

Today is a new day and our last in Zaporozhye! And it started out beautifully!!

Our flights are booked we land in Florida at 7:13 pm Saturday!! 

I do not know if I will have internet once I check out of the hotel.

Paka!!