Our family has grown!!!!

We had court today and....we are now the proud parents of 4 children!!!! Praise the Lord!!!! It only becomes really official once we have our 10 day waiting period and are given the court decree. But, to us....it's official!

So, the details----we rode to the courthouse and arrived about 12:45. Shortly afterwards, N and A arrived with the orphanage lawyer, Irene. We were escorted into the courtroom. At this point, I was full of emotion. Then, we had to wait for the Chief Prosecutor. This took the emotional side of it away from me, as the wait was long. All of the kids did great, waiting and the candy we gave them as bribes really helped! She finally arrived and court began. The judge walked in and we all stood. He then went over why we were all there. David was asked to stand and tell them about himself and then I did the same. More reading of documents. Then David was asked to stand again and go into a little more detail of why we want to adopt A & N and about life at home in the states. Then, they asked me to stand. The first thing the Chief Prosecutor asked me if I was scared now that I would have 3 boys and a girl. I thought it was a funny question and laughed and explained that I was already a boys' mom and couldn't wait to have a daughter. She asked me a few other questions- pretty harmless. They asked N if she was in agreement with the adoption- because of her age. She said yes and was very quiet and shy during her questioning. Then a few more readings, introductions of the Inspector and the lawyer.

The judge and the one juror left us to discuss the case and make a decision. The boys were asked at this time to come and answer a few questions about the adoption. They were embarrassed but did a great job! The judge then came back and declared us the parents of....Natalie Hope and Benjamin Andrew Dunham.

Wow!!! It was a very successful time in court and the kids were really emotionally pumped up-all 4 of them. We had to walk to a notary then headed back to our flat. Then we were off to the requested destination to celebrate....McDonald's! Then back to our flat to hang out for awhile, bath for Natalie, then back to the internat. They really don't want to be at the internat now! I walked Benjamin and Natalie to their areas to be dropped off for the first time. As we walked, Natalie was singing "10 more days, 10 more days..." After dropping Benjamin off, Natalie showed me her classrooms and then I dropped her off. It was a long good-bye today.

An interesting side note- as we were at the flat hanging out we had someone ring our doorbell. All I can say is that we are very thankful Zhenia was here! It was the passport police. They wanted to see our passports and wanted to know why we were here. Zhenia complied and did some questioning of his own. It seems like one of the tenants of this flat complex may have called them to have us checked out. I do not know what we would have done if Zhenia had not been here with us! Many phone calls were made when the passport police left and we have a plan if we ever have visitors again. We also have 3 locked doors to enter before you even get into our flat, so someone had to have let him in! Well, we will try to be as quiet and unseen during our duration here!!! Talk about weird....

We now have 10 days to wait and then more paperwork. Please pray with us that after our 10 day wait that we will be able to get moving quickly on birth certificates, tax papers and passports which will all be done here in Poltava.