Court Date!!

Well, I'm officially not a good blogger. I promise to try to be better about posting information as it happens. In the meantime, let me get everyone up to speed. First things first, we got our court date!!! Like everything else in this process, there's a story behind how that came to happen. Since we got our referral in June, based on recent patterns, we expected to get a July court date and we probably would have except one of the government offices in Ethiopia closed unexpectedly for two weeks in July. Since the courts in Ethiopia typically close for the rainy season for the months of August and September, we were prepared that this could mean that we wouldn't have a court date until October. We were told by our adoption agency that court closure dates hadn't yet been announced and that there was still a chance that we would get a court date in July or August but to prepare for the difficult news that it could in fact be October before our case is heard by a judge in Ethiopia. We didn't take the news well and prepared ourselves mentally for an October date. In the meantime, Steve and I were being spoiled with multiple baby showers. On July 14th we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary, had a beautiful baby shower thrown for us at my work, and went to an infant CPR class (yeah I know, such a nurse) so it was a full day. The next day when I checked my email, there it was! The email from our adoption agency telling us that we have a court date! It's August 11th! What a great surprise! Just when we had given up hope that we would have a court date before October, there was the email telling us we have an August court date! Apparently the courts are staying open a few weeks into August this year! We were so excited. This is it! The process to finalize our adoption and make Kaiyin officially our daughter. For those of you who aren't familiar with the process, here's what happens now. On August 11th our case will go before a judge in Ethiopia. We won't be there for the court date. Our adoption agency represents us. About 60% of the cases that go to court pass court the first time. The other 40% don't and will have to have another court date scheduled. Reasons for not passing court will vary and mostly have to do with paperwork and the judge needing to ensure that the baby in question really is an orphan. Obviously we are praying daily that we pass court on the 11th. We also have tentative travel dates! If we pass court on the 11th, we will fly to Ethiopia on August 29th and come home with Kaiyin on September 5th. The bad news is that we've also been given word that the courts will in fact be closing from August 22nd through the end of September so if we don't pass court the first time, our next court date would likely be in October. Please pray for us that we pass on the 11th and can go bring our daughter home. :)