Something's fishy

After a week of no news, Tammy and I decided to take matters into our own hands and go to the court ourselves to get some information. First we went to the court where our hearing was to see if they could tell us anything about the appeal. The secretary there found some paperwork from our case, but I'm not sure exactly what it was. I think it just documented our hearing. She then called three different people at the appeals court to try to find out the status of our case, but nobody could find anything. She suggested that we go to the appeals court to see if they could help us there. At the appeals court, the secretary could not find any record of our case by our name. We called our facilitator to see if he could give us our case number or the name of the judge at the appeals court that was in charge of our case. Andrei said that he didn't have our documents with him, so he did not have the case number and he did not know the name of the appeals court judge. He said that he would call the inspector in Simferopol (in charge of all adoptions in the region) and ask her for it. She could not give it to him, I don't remember the reason he gave me, so I asked him to talk to the secretary at the appeals court to see if he could get any information. He has never actually spoken with anyone at the appeals court yet because he didn't have the phone number. After talking with the lady, he got the number there and said he would call her back tomorrow with our case number to see if she could find out anything else. We just think that it is kind of weird that nobody has any documentation anywhere that an application for an appeal was ever made. Tomorrow, Tammy and I are going to go back to the court to see if we can get the case number ourselves and copies of documents from our case. Then we'll go back to the appeals court again with the additional information to see what we can find out. There is only one appeals court for all of Crimea, so it is possible that they are just backed up and the application for ours hasn't been processed yet, but something still seems fishy. Hopefully we can get some answers tomorrow.

No decision yet

We're still waiting to get a decision from the appeal's court whether or not the prosecutor's application will be thrown out.  First they said we'd know Tuesday, then Thursday, then today, and now they're saying maybe Monday.  We don't know what the problem is or why it's taking so long.  Hopefully we'll be able to get our final paperwork from the court on Monday so we can go get Vacya from camp.  We're going to visit him again tomorrow, but it will be hard to tell him that we still can't take him with us.

We've been in Ukraine now for 14 weeks, not counting the 3 weeks that we were home at the end of May/ beginning of June.  We can't afford for Joe to miss any more work, so he's probably going home next Sunday, August 3rd.  Luckily I have a school schedule and still have a few more weeks left before the new school year starts.  We're hoping that we can get everything done here in Simferopol during the next week so we can all go up to Kiev together before Joe has to fly out.  Then hopefully Vacya and I will be able to follow just a few days later.  Please keep praying for things to move along quickly.  We're really ready to be home!

More delays

Apparently during the 10 day waiting period people can pick up an application to appeal, but the application does not have to be filed for 20 days. As far as we know, the prosecutor did actually already file the application for the appeal. However, in order to appeal, the person has to have been a participant in the original court hearing. The judge never recognized the prosecutor as a participant in our hearing, so her application for the appeal should just be thrown out. Today our judge talked with the appeals court judge and he thinks that it should be thrown out by Thursday and we can move forward. We've been told a lot of things in the last 3 months though that haven't exactly worked out how we thought they would, so we'll just have to keep praying and hoping for the best.

On another note, my stomach has been bothering me almost constantly lately. I can't eat much of anything without being in pain. Since we were only home for 3 weeks back in May/June, and didn't know when we'd have to return to Ukraine, I couldn't have my gall bladder surgery. We also just found out that my brother most likely has Celiac's disease, which is hereditary, so I could have that too, but can't be tested until I get back home. If I do have Celiac's I will have to go on a gluten-free diet, but it's kind of hard to check ingredients when the labels here are all in Russian or Ukrainian. So, I may just be eating fresh fruits and vegetables until I can get home and figure out what's wrong.

Appeal

The prosecutor appealed the judge's approval of our case.  Tomorrow the appeals court is going to decide if there are grounds for the appeal or not.  If not, they will just throw out the appeal, we can still get our paperwork from the court tomorrow, and the waiting period will not be extended.  That's what we're praying for.  I don't want to have to tell Vacya that he can't come with us yet after all.  The poor kid has been though so much already.    

Camp

We went out to the camp to visit Vacya this morning.  He was really excited to see us and asked if he was going to leave with us today.  A few older girls that Tammy was talking to said that some of the boys beat Vacya up all the time because he is being adopted.  He didn't look too bad, but there were some older, yellow bruises on his face.  We told him only a few more days before we can take him with us.  We haven't heard anything about the prosecutor appealing, but Andrei isn't going to call the court until Monday when our 10 days are up.  I don't know if anybody from the appeals court would notify us if there was an appeal or not.  

Possible timeline

After then 10 day waiting period (assuming the prosecutor does not appeal) the adoption will be finalized and Andrei will be able to pick up the paperwork from the court on July 21 or 22. Then we have to go to Vacya's hometown to get his birth certificate changed. Hopefully we can do that on the 22nd, but in Ukraine there are only a few people that do any particular job and they only work certain days, so we'll have to see if the person that does birth certificates in Kerch is working that day. Once we get the new birth certificate, we can apply for Vacya's passport. We can pay extra to have it expedited and get it in 3 days. We're not sure yet if we will stay in Simferopol while we wait for the passport or go up to Kiev. Once we have the passport, Vacya will have a medical exam in Kiev and we will apply for his US Visa at the US Embassy. That should only take a couple of days, so we're hoping to be home by the end of July.

YES!

We have our court approval!!!! Now we just have to wait the 10 days until the adoption is finalized. We were not able to get permission to have Vacya stay with us during the 10 day waiting period, so we took him back out to the camp this evening. He was very happy when we told him that the judge said yes and asked us about it several times just to make sure. He was bummed when we told him that we had to take him back to the camp, but we explained that he would be with us after the 10 days and we will come to visit him in the meantime. There is still a chance that the prosecutor could appeal the judge's decision, but she has no grounds, so it would just be overturned. The only problem is that it could extend the waiting period beyond the 10 days if she does appeal. Please pray that the prosecutor will just let it be so that we can get this process finished as soon as possible.

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