A day of paperwork and good news - maybe?

We did a bunch of paperwork stuff today. The plan was to go the orphanage at 11 am and then at 1 pm go to get our adoption application signed by the inspector and then track down the mayor to sign it so we could go later and submit it to the judge and hopefully get our court date - yeah! My mom wasn't feeling well this morning so we left her at home with Tony with the idea that we would be back at 1 pm and leave Allie or take Tony with us. However, plans never seem to go the way they are supposed to. Oksana was trying to track down the mayor or someone with similar authority to sign the application and was not having much luck so 1 pm came and went and we decided that we needed to go and get something to eat.

Oleg dropped me, Alex, Allie, Elena, and Katya off at a cafe to eat lunch. We thought that Elena there would make ordering easier (and it did), the only problem was that we had an English menu and a lot of times with an English menu they don't list prices and the English menu seems to only be half the size of the regular menu (because, according the Elena, they either don't want to translate the other stuff or don't know how). So Alex and I ended up ordering this soup that Elena suggested (and one "to go" for my mom), which neither of us liked, and Katya ended up ordering spaghetti, a dish of chicken and bananas, Allie ordered BBQ chicken, grilled vegetables, Elena had a piece of cake and a cappucino-type drink and in the midst of lunch, when Alex discovered that he didn't like his soup, he ordered a plate of spaghetti (although Alex claims that he didn't order another plate of spaghetti, despite the fact that both Elena and I were adamant that he did!). About $40 later, we were there with a bunch of food and the vow to not go to order anything again if we don't know how much it costs. We will probably just stick to the Potatoe House from now on because it is really cheap and we know it will at least be something we can stand to eat.

Anyway, after eating we went to the inspectors office to have the inspector sign the application. We had Allie and Katya with us and the inspector and the other lady in the office thought Katya was really cute and kept asking her questions and gave her a book with pictures of Dniprodzerzinsk (I think this is how you spell the name of the city that we are in). The inspector told us thank you for wanting to help the children in their country. After the inspector's signature, we took Katya back to the orphanage and played with the kids for a while longer while they still tried to locate someone that could sign the application and finally Oksana decided that she would try to submit the application without the other signature and see if we could schedule the court date. So we left Katya at the orphanage and headed to the court house with Allie and waited at the courthouse for Oksana to do her sweet-talking with the judge. Allie was very bored during all this because it involved a lot of sitting and waiting, which Alex and I have become accustomed to, and I told Allie that she should be glad that she didn't go with us to Nikopol (she had complained to my mom that she didn't get to go with us) because that is basically what we did for two days and whatever she did with grandma was certainly more entertaining than what we did!

Oksana walked out of the courthouse with the slight tinge of a smile and told us that we got a court date for this Friday (which we were thrilled to death about!) based on the following things happening:
1) We get the mayor-type person's signature, who is in Kiev right now.
2) We get the document we need from the SDA (I don't know what document it is - just that we need it) signed on Wednesday. Apparently, the person at the SDA only signs papers on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays.
3) We then will have both the paper signed by the mayor-type person and the SDA paper brought back here from Kiev in time for our court date.

This document trail is making my head spin because on our way back from the courthouse, Oleg dropped us off a little ways from our apartment so he could hurry and pick up someone that I believe was going to take the paper that the mayor-type person needed to sign on the night train to Kiev tonight so that the mayor-type person could sign it and have it ready to be delivered back here. Whew!!! I was just explaining my belief of what the course of events is to Alex the course of events and he looked exhausted - this could also have to do with the fact that he and Allie seem to wake up at 2 am every morning because they haven't quite figured out what night time is :)

In any case, it sounds like if our court date isn't on Friday, it will be on Monday, which is still pretty soon. But if it is on Friday, I was counting down the days on the calendar and looking at when we would be home and I was getting very excited because our 10 day waiting period would be up on Monday, June 29th and if we give ourselves a week to get the birth certificates, passports, visas, etc. we could be home the weekend of July 4th. I am trying to not let myself get too excited because I saw what happened to poor Wendy but I am excited to think of coming home. I have only been here for a week but I am ready to sleep in my nice soft bed, cook in my kitchen where all the burners work, use a cutting board and actually know if something is baking soda or not. So here's to hoping that our court date is on Friday!