Knocked Down But NOT Knocked Out!!!

Thursday, June 1

Here's a picture of us at court waiting to go in before the judge.

Well we are back from court and have another not so good story. We have another court date set for June 6th. When the judge went through the documents he said he does not show anything saying the biological parents gave up their parental rights and wants to know how they feel about the kids being adopted by us. We do not even know why this is important since they gave the kids up originally 7 years ago in 1999.

Marina says the mother no longer lives in Karaganda and can not be found and the father is in prison for manslaughter. The social worker may have to go back to the father to get him to sign a document stating he does not want the children. The vice principal from the orphanage said to the judge, "Are we going to keep the kids until the father gets out of prison so he can raise them?"

Apparently from what our lawyer says the judge has to cover himself from any fault because the legal system approved this adoption without this document and the prosecutor could appeal and then we would have to go to the Supreme Court. That would take much longer plus the fifteen day waiting period on top of that.

Marina was shocked and said as we walked out of the court area that she had no words. She thought this was a slam dunk and was 200% sure this would go through today without a hitch. Now she has alot of work to do. So here we are at day 27 still waiting...

The judge is going to check with the Supreme Court to see if we must get the biological father to sign away his rights. We should know tomorrow whether we have to do this or not and if not what will be required to satisfy the judge.

God has brought us this far and we are not going to give up and neither is He. We are very confident this will be finalized soon.

So what does one do when you get bad news when you were expecting good you may ask? Well you get yourself two extra kids to spend a couple of nights over of course!!! We had already planned for Andrey and Rada to come over to celebrate the big occasion and “go Aqua Park”. It has been several days since we were seen there. I know, why would a blue child want to go swimming again in cold water, but they can’t get enough of such fun that causes you to shiver to the bone. They are tough!

So are we! We refuse to fear and give up. These are our kids and we are going to stay until this course is finished. There is no denying that. Even Marina says we will get the children. She is just very frustrated and angry at such an injustice to us and the children. She truly has their best interest at heart.

It was an interesting venture that is for sure. It is a strange and weird feeling when a group of 5 people are huddled in a parking lot after court making decisions about you and your case and you have no idea what they are saying but you know they are real mad! You want to kinda say every now and then “yeah!” “right on!” “You go girl!” At lunch today the ladies that work for Marina just came by and smiled and English)

We have every right to be angry and ticked off but we choose not to be. We KNOW this will work out in our favor. There is not a doubt in our mind that we win.

You guys are going to love these kids. They are so great. They were so awesome at court today. They looked great with big smiles and said all the right things. One cute thing when Sasha was asked by the judge what his name was he immediately said Alexander Gabriel …. Then the judge said your name now. We all giggled as he stated his current name. He was such a little man. It is awful that they even have to go through this to begin with. They seem to be holding up well and once again believe this is going to work out and we will come to America soon! I think it is a good thing Andrey and Rada are here to let them have some good fun and not think about all this stuff.

So we hang out tonight at the tiny apartment. Please pray for pleasant sleeping arrangements and then tomorrow we Aqua Park and Saturday …..bowling! Garrett and I have noticed lately that we are starting to talk like cave men. We have lost the ability for complete sentences. We say “we eat now”, “ we go magazine” etc… You may say to yourself well that is normal talking to kids that do not speak English well but Garrett and I have started talking that way to each other. Sometimes we just grunt for something…mostly Stella! We catch ourselves writing that way too so forgive us if we do that. I am sure we will pick up the native tongue again once we hit American soil!

As you can tell we are keeping a good humor about us and persevering in having a great time here in Kaz no matter the circumstances. It is hard to be in a bad mood when you hear the joy of carefree laughter in the other room of four buddies having a good time!

We love you all very much! Thank you for all the emails and notes on the blog. One request, if you are sending us a note we can not respond back to you if you do not tell us your email address on the blog. We want to write each of you back but have been unable to.

You are so important to us! We will one day soon be sitting at home with all of you sharing live and in person out story with children in tow!