Welcome to the family, Josina Margaret!

The day finally arrived to go to court. As you could guess, I've been worried for the last couple of days about the outcome. Mom's been a great support and has kept me as calm as possible : )

The courtroom was in an unassuming building. The room itself a white rectangle with the judge's desk at one end, a desk on the left, where the prosecutor and court secretary sat … and another on the right, where the guardianship representative and the Baby House rep. sat together. At the back were several wooden benches where Anara, Zhaniya and I sat. My “speech” to the court was well practiced and went well – Anara translating a sentence at a time. I was allowed to take a copy of it with me, which I referred to briefly a couple of times. Then some questions from the judge, prosecutor and guardianship rep.

The judge asked several basic questions, some harder and a couple of really off the wall, odd questions. My favorite? “It's a tradition in Kazakhstan that if a brother has many children, then he can give one of them to a family member with no children. Why doesn't your brother with the four children just give you one?” He asked this with a smile, but pursued it with a follow up question along the same lines … seemed obvious that he was joking… I think. My answer was that I'd take any of my nieces and nephews in a minute because they're such good kids, but that their parents would probably be unhappy to give them up. (Chris and Laura may have their own answer to that, depending on the day!)

In the end, he debated a few points with the guardianship rep. and then granted my petition for adoption. Yay! I am now legally Josie's mom! We still have to wait for the appeals period and paperwork to be completed. But in about a month, I can return and bring her home forever. This is truly the happiest day of my life : )

Yesterday's visit to Josie was nice. She's still sick, but improving. Mostly she just wanted to be held, but we did spend quite some time blowing raspberries at each other and “practicing” our babbling. In the three weeks since I last saw her, she's learned how to crawl and makes good speed across the room. So, back home to baby proof the house and finish up her room!

Tomorrow Mom and I will go to visit Josie – don't know if we'll be going on Saturday yet, so this may be the last visit until we return. Because we won't be allowed to visit next week (too many other families there and sickness amongst the kids), we've changed our return tickets to leave on Sunday.

With much happiness!!! Kelly

Note to anyone reading this in Grand Rapids – could you get me a newspaper with today's date (January 15) to keep for Josie? I have two from Kazakhstan (one in Russian, one in Kazakh), but it would be a nice keepsake to have one from her new hometown, too : )