Court Results!

Today we had a normal visit with Jackson in the morning.  He must have known that something was in the air because he was very calm today and got very snuggly towards the end of our visit.  Today was the day that the children have their 6 month check up, so our visit was cut a little bit short.

We had court at 3:00 pm.  Man, Ukrainians cut some things so close!  Our paperwork from Kiev arrived on the 12:20 train this afternoon and even after they dropped us off at the courthouse at 2:00, they were still collecting paperwork.  Tatyana “prepped” us by asking some of the questions that the judge usually asks adopting parents.  She wanted to make sure that she had the answers so that she could correctly translate it back to the judge.  We waited in a long dimly lit hallway for about an hour.  Girls in high heeled boots kept walking back and forth with their heels clicking with each step they took.

About five minutes before we went into the court room, Tatyana leaned over to Scott and I and whispered, “Wow, when I get nervous, I start to forget how to speak English.”  WHAT?  Scott and I’s jaws just dropped!  haha!  Any amount of nervousness that we had just quadrupled.

The judge called us in and there were 8 people in the room.  She read through a book and we had to respond a couple of times that we understood what was happening, even though we didn’t know what she was saying.  She asked Scott and I questions individually and we made our way through it with Tatyana’s translation.  She later told us that the judge was speaking in Ukrainian and she was translating it to Russian and then English in her head.  After we answered the questions, she read some more, asked the other people in the room if they had any questions, and then read through our documents.  She had our dossier.  That thing has literally been around the world and back!

The preceding was over then and the judge said that she would have her verdict in ten minutes.  We went back to the dimly lit hallway, but then she called us back in about 2 minutes later.  She read some stuff and Tatyana translated that, “The court has satisfied your request to become parents of Bohgdan and that his name will be changed to Jackson.”  We were so happy!

Now that we have the judge’s decision, we must wait 10 days.  This waiting period is put into place so that if any of the biological family members have any second thoughts, they may voice their concern.  We do know that Bohgdan’s grandma and sister still visit him, but we are confident that God is in control of the situation.  In the meantime though, they have told us not to mention anything to the orphanage about already having court.  It’s just the way things are done here.

To celebrate (and because it’s Friday) Scott and I went to our usual pizza place.  Since last Friday, they have turned it into a sit down restaurant with a waitress.  We got our usual large pizza with the works, 2 beers, and a celebratory ice cream sundae!  With the generous tip we left, it was still around $10!  To top it off, the waitress really made my day by giving us a frequent visitor card and she retroactively punched it for our previous visits!  Only two more pizzas before we get the next one for 1 Hryvnia (about 12 cents)!  She must have known what a penny pincher I am!