Alex is Ours

Oh, my goodness. Friday, December 18, was our court date, and it ranks right up there with one of the most stressful days of our lives. Things have to happen for us boom, boom, boom, in order to get home on Christmas Eve. Court was supposed to start at 11:00 a.m. At 12:30 we were still sitting in the hall stressing out waiting to be called into the courtroom. Finally the court clerk came and told us they were still waiting for the prosecutor to show up. About five or ten minutes later, she showed up, and we started. The judge was a woman, and she was very methodical and thorough. The proceedings lasted until 2:30. I didn't think they would ever quit asking us questions. Finally she (and the two jurors) took a break to make a decision, and when they came back, they gave us everything we asked for, including ten-day waiver!!!! The judge told us to come back in one hour for the paperwork. When we came back everybody was gone home except for the clerk. She handed Inna the papers, and Inna started "sewing" them together, which the clerk had failed to do because she didn't know how. Halfway through the sewing, Inna noticed several errors in our birth dates etc., and she had to hunt down the judge and jurors to come back in to sign corrected documents. It was stressful; Inna was stressed as well. She said, "Now I remember why I used to smoke." The process of correcting the documents took about an hour; we hopped in the taxi and raced to Alex's birth town to get his new birth certificate. Inna called and begged them to wait for us. We arrived five minutes to 5:00 p.m. Whew! We got the birth certificate and waited for a bus, boarded the bus at 11:00 p.m., arrived in Kiev at 6:00 a.m., slept three hours, went to the notary's office on Saturday, St. Nick day. Alex is with us. We're sitting in McDonald's blogging. It is bursting at the seams in here; people are waiting for our table. Monday is the passport; Tuesday is the US Embassy, Wednesday we pick up the visa, and Thursday 5:30 a.m. we board plane for home, arriving in the evening of Christmas Eve. We expect no one to greet us and don't want anyone to feel guilty about it. It's Christmas Eve, and everyone should be with their families. I'll post more on Monday if we can get to McDonald's.