Ok, so I don't have any pics from court day of Dave and I because I was too scared stupid to even think about taking pics. Dave did, however, manage to take a pic of our friends after their court appearance and before ours when we met up for sushi!
Court wasn't as scary as I had psyched myself up for...Dave got most of the questions, and they were pretty basic. I got asked a few questions...bada bing, bada boom...court is over, our adoption is approved aaaaaaand our 30 day waiting period is over!
Awesome right?
Not so much. Even though the judge waived the 30 day wait, no one knew what to do to actually get all of the paperwork we needed prior to the 30 days. We changed our plane tickets from Friday to the following Thursday to give our team some time to iron out the kinks.
While that was going on, we were busy taking pics of this beautiful city to put in an album for our princess to see when she's older. We want her to know her roots, where she's from, etc so we decided to make the best of this additional time in Russia and learn all about our daughters culture.
Sadly, we learned today that we will not be able to bring our daughter home on this trip. I will coming back alone in November to bring her home. This is heartbreaking for us, as well as a huge financial blow. We were funded for 3 trips, we even had a family lined up to donate our extra funds to as a matching grant because we would have been close to $2,000 in the black had we been able to bring our girl home with us. The cost of switching our plane tickets, losing the money we used to book our NYC hotel, losing the money we spent to buy Kenz a plane ticket, staying 6 additional days in this hotel, plus food, then food for 5 days in Moscow (we were blessed to have a friend use points to pay for our hotel in Moscow), and so on and so forth...has put us a little in the red, and now I have to buy myself a plane ticket to come back, Kenzi a plane ticket to come home, hotel here for I think 4-5 days plus food, then Moscow again...we're about $3,000 short and I have roughly 3 weeks when I get home to put it together. We took down our FSP on the blog (we thought we were finally done!) but if you would like to help you can donate here:
Court wasn't as scary as I had psyched myself up for...Dave got most of the questions, and they were pretty basic. I got asked a few questions...bada bing, bada boom...court is over, our adoption is approved aaaaaaand our 30 day waiting period is over!
Awesome right?
Not so much. Even though the judge waived the 30 day wait, no one knew what to do to actually get all of the paperwork we needed prior to the 30 days. We changed our plane tickets from Friday to the following Thursday to give our team some time to iron out the kinks.
While that was going on, we were busy taking pics of this beautiful city to put in an album for our princess to see when she's older. We want her to know her roots, where she's from, etc so we decided to make the best of this additional time in Russia and learn all about our daughters culture.
Sadly, we learned today that we will not be able to bring our daughter home on this trip. I will coming back alone in November to bring her home. This is heartbreaking for us, as well as a huge financial blow. We were funded for 3 trips, we even had a family lined up to donate our extra funds to as a matching grant because we would have been close to $2,000 in the black had we been able to bring our girl home with us. The cost of switching our plane tickets, losing the money we used to book our NYC hotel, losing the money we spent to buy Kenz a plane ticket, staying 6 additional days in this hotel, plus food, then food for 5 days in Moscow (we were blessed to have a friend use points to pay for our hotel in Moscow), and so on and so forth...has put us a little in the red, and now I have to buy myself a plane ticket to come back, Kenzi a plane ticket to come home, hotel here for I think 4-5 days plus food, then Moscow again...we're about $3,000 short and I have roughly 3 weeks when I get home to put it together. We took down our FSP on the blog (we thought we were finally done!) but if you would like to help you can donate here:
We don't expect anyone to use the above link. You have all been so wonderful, so generous, it's been humbling to say the least to watch our friends, as well as complete strangers come together to give this little girl a family. We would like to ask you to pray for Kenzi while we're gone. Please pray for her heart to hold out just one more month. She's a strong little girl, we just need God to give her a little more strength to hang on for us a little longer.
So, I don't want to leave this blog post on a down note, so here are some pics with our sweet pea from this morning.
I'm so sorry you can't bring her home! That's terrible, but I am so excited that you're adoption has been approved :).
ReplyDeleteI am sad to hear that things did not work out to bring Kenzi home this trip. Maybe I missed it above, but will you have to wait the full 30 days now, or will it just be as soon as the paperwork is complete? I am so mad that they did not prepare for this for you, but I know that not my feelings, not anyone else's feelings are what is important. For whatever reason this is how it worked out and trusting Him is all anyone can do. Hang in there momma. You have certainly weathered the storm to get to the rainbow. Hopefully the treasure will be that much sweeter! She sure looks like it :-)
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