Submitted for Ethiopian court on 9/15!!

So my post is a little late.... sorry :-)

We were thrilled to find out that we were submitted to court on Wednesday, September 15th in Ethiopia. This was a surprise, because the courts were still closed and we were originally told that they would not be submitting any families until the courts were to re-open on September 27th.

What does "submitted for court" mean? Good question :-)

That means that all of baby boy's Ethiopian papers were in order and ALL of our papers were translated correctly and in order. All of that is submitted to the Ethiopian court. They review it and schedule our court date. We will fly to Addis Ababa for this court date and will become babies legal parents. For you Colombia families, we are basically flying to be present for the signing of "sentencia".

So far, we have friends that already have court dates through the end of November. Although there is a very tiny chance we might squeak in someplace in November, it will likely be December or maybe even January.

Usually it only takes 1 to 2 weeks for the courts to come back with your assigned date, but we haven't received ours yet. Hence my waiting to update the blog... It's been 2 1/2 weeks now so hopefully this upcoming week we will have news and will be able to start working on our plane tickets and visa applications.

We were very very happy to find that all 4 families that traveled for court this week passed court with flying colors and are now the legal parents of their children. They just have to wait for the court decree this next week, and the Holt staff in Ethiopia will secure the new birth certificate and submit the needed documents to the United States Embassy in Addis to secure their visa appointments.. they are then invited to travel to pick up their babies! We hope they will be able to do this in November. A few more families leave for court next week and we hope all will work out for them as well.

We will send out more news as soon as we have it! Please also pray for a medical/developmental update on baby boy, as our current information is now 4 months old :-) I want to know if he is actually getting some chub!