The Verdict is In -- Day 19

The Courthouse where our case was heard

It's official -- we were approved at court today for our adoption of Adelyn!!! (We were told yesterday that our court date was moved up from Saturday to Friday at 2:30). We were the 4th family to go before the judge from our group of 5 families, and each of us was approved.

The judge asked us a few questions regarding Fawn's work, the number of hours and our income, and also a couple questions on why we chose a girl. She seemed content with our answers and then adjourned to her Chambers to review our paperwork.

The months of waiting to travel were difficult, but not nearly as hard as the minutes that passed while we waited for the judge to come in and announce her decision. Deep down we knew that the answer would be yes, but there was still that fear that anything could happen. She was gone approximately 10 minutes--which seemed like an hour! When she returned she rendered her approval verdict. She spoke in Russian so we relied mostly on our interpreter (Natasha) to intrepret, but it was confusing trying to listen to 2 people speaking in 2 different languages. Fawn was able to pick-up our names and that of Adelyn Xenia Grace Torcisi when she read her decision.

We are glad that this important step is behind us, and we are officially Adelyn's parents. Now the hard part is leaving Adelyn while we wait the mandatory 15-day processing period and for the completion of her Visa/embassy paperwork.

We celebrated a bit with the other families in one of the lobby areas with wine/beer and appetizers, whatever we could pull together, and had dinner at our hotel.

Tomorrow we will go to the orphanage to see our daughter. Our agency is hosting a "tea party" for the orphanage doctors and us in the morning, and on Sunday, we will host the caregivers/nurses in our room with a party. All of this will come to a quick end as we will begin our departure home on Sunday evening.