The weekend we got home we had to unpack from one trip and immediately pack to go to Las Vegas for the funeral.

Here are a few shots of our group while we there. We stayed at the Excalibur which has a great buffet.

Erin, Jeffrey, Alex and Kevin:

Kevin and Alex:

Sarah, Emily and Grandma:

Erin and Jeffrey:

We went to the huge indoor aquarium at one of the hotels.

Aunt Robyn is all the way on the right.

I was jet lagged and cranky but by the time we got home again 5 days later we had re-adjusted to our own time zone.

Thus began 2 months of waiting for Russia to grant us a court date. 2 months of checking my emails daily hoping for some news. Any news.

All I got for the most part were emails telling me I needed another piece of paperwork. More verifying the previously verified.

And one thing after another.

Jeff's passport was expiring. We didn't want to have to redo his passport because our coordinator told us if we redid it, then it would have a different number (she was wrong) and it would cause too many paperwork snafus for the Russian government. Russian adoption is one big snafu from start to finish so we didn't need to add any new ones. But we were worried we couldn't secure a visa because there are rules that say you cannot get a visa if you don't have a certain amount of time left on your passport before it expires.

In the end, after much sweating, hair pulling and worrying we were granted a visa. I don't know how, but thank you "Russian Connections Travel Agency" and whatever connections you have that got it approved. I am quite sure some money must have exchanged hands for this to have gone through.

I finally received word that we had been granted a court date for Tuesday April 12th and purchased plane tickets accordingly only to have it changed on April 10th to the following Friday, April 15th.

We changed our plane tickets which of course cost a fortune, but it simply would have cost more to stay in the hotel for those extra days.

Monday, before we were set to leave on Tuesday, I got an email telling me the Russian judge wanted 2 more pieces of paperwork. I spent the better part of the day scrambling to get the paperwork I needed, getting them notarized and taking them to the county to have them certified, verified and stamped with blood (well it felt like it).

We were in downtown LA getting the last official stamp put on them on the way to the airport on Tuesday. Talk about cutting it close.

As we sat on the plane I simply could not believe that we were on our way. I spent quite a bit of the ride worried that I had forgotten something.

Thankfully that turned out not to the case.