Anastasia

I know, I haven't posted about Anastasia in such a long, long time. I guess I'm just feeling frustrated, or maybe I'm holding my breath and don't want to jinx anything. Sigh. It is actually all good news, but we had really thought we would have our court date in June, but no dice.

However...we have supplied every last thing that the Department of Education has asked for- for all of our extenuating circumstances. They have everything now and should be requesting "The Letter" from the Ministry of Education very soon. The process now is that the DOE requests a letter from the MOE stating that Anastasia has officially been removed from the Database and that she is available for us to adopt. After the DOE gets that letter (takes 2-4 weeks), then they will submit our dossier to the Courts for review. After the Courts review the info, they will give us the court date. There is usually a several week lead time on that too. Still, we could get the court date in August if everything goes smoothly, for which, of course, we are praying and praying.

I just sent Anastasia another letter letting her know Max won't be coming with us (for finanacial reasons). I also asked her to consider either changing her name or going by "Anastasia" or Ann or Annie. Or if she likes it, we could change it to "Nadia" which is still close to Nastia but is a bit more usual for Americans. However, I told her if she wants to continue to go by Nastia, we will support her fully. I just think that in a couple of years she won't be comfortable with Nastia anymore - just like Daniel came to hate "Dmitry" and Max never goes by Maxim. Well, whatever she decides is fine - we just want to get her home.

Now, we face the next problem. Our plan is for Robert, Rosie and I to go to Russia for the court date. Robert will be gone about 5 days. In Vladivostok there is a 10 day waiting period after the court date. I will have to stay there with Rosie and Anastasia for the 10 days but Robert will come home to the boys during that time. He will have to take off work. I will then have to take Anastasia to the U.S. to get her citizenship. It is going to be an awful long time for me to be away from the boys and I'm trying really hard not to freak out about it and keep an "eternal perspective", but I've never been away from them for more than a night. Also, we aren't sure that my mom will be able to stay with the boys while both Robert and I are gone. There are lots of logistics to still figure out but its hard to do when we don't have the court date yet.

Well, I'm trying to focus on the good news and know that it won't be long before Anastasia is at last at home where she belongs. All the seats at the dining room table will be filled...oh, I can't wait!