Paperwork done...well, sort of... The dozens of documents we've collected are now completed, notarized, county-sealed, and apostilled by the appropriate Secretaries of State. They now comprise our dossier. Our dossier should arrive in Russia by the middle of next week, get translated, and placed before the judge within a few weeks.

When this is put before the judge, one of three things will happen:

1. The judge will say everything appears to be in order, and give us a court date to finalize our adoption and bring Elena home.
2. The judge will reject the entire dossier, often for incredibly nit-picky reasons such as placement of the notary's seal, inclusion of a middle initial on one document and not on another, etc.
3. The judge will overlook one or two little things and review the dossier, accepting an "IOU" for better paperwork.

We are expecting our paperwork to draw Scenario #3; our agency felt it would be better to get our paperwork in quickly even though we are aware of at least one thing the judge will question. Or maybe we'll get lucky and the judge won't notice.

Yeah, right.

  ¶ 4:21 PM