I think this is real...

This post is written with cautious optimism.

I think we have a court date.

I mean, we do have a court date, which was kind of communciated to us out of the blue. We were expecting word on if the judge would accept our mortgage letter and instead got an e-mail saying we were supposed to be in Russia in about three weeks. In adoption lingo, that's an EEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!

(I'm just not certain I'll really believe it until we're sitting in the court room being grilled by the judge.)

There are, of course, a gazillion stressful hoops to jump through, not the least of which is a quickly expiring federal government approval which essentially CANNOT expire (on June 5!!!; I've been working for WEEKS to try to get the government to respond to my requests of, "What do we need to do?!" and just got word late last week) or we're sunk. Insert social worker making a special trip to our home at 6 p.m. tonight and Holly working every piece of suggestive persuasion she can in getting everything we need from everyone to get it to the government in time to get it processed and back to us before the June 5 expiration.

And, I just got what I thought was the last batch of documents apostilled but found out I'll have to make ANOTHER trip to Topeka for revalidation of our psychiatric assessments (which I'm now coordinating getting from the psychiatrist), which "expired" May 13, since Russian courts only count medical stuff in our case as current for 3 months.

 But, now with an actual court date I have more ammo to beg people to help me. We'll likely leave in about three weeks, have a couple of days in Tver for redoing our Russian medicals (do.not.get.me.started) and visits with the girls (!!!) before two half-day court sessions. We'll likely be there over a weekend (bummer!) and finish up court early the following week. Then we'll likely come home as non-custodial parents, waiting out a 10-day appeal period that's standard. Then we'll likely return to take custody and wait in-country (for a long time) for their Russian and US passports, then come home.

Needless to say, I am SPINNING.