Okay. We did not accomplish everything that we set out to this morning, but it was still an encouraging day. Just after 3:30 this afternoon, Yulia called to ask if Kristie and I could be ready to leave our place in five minutes. I told that we absolutely could, and a few minutes later we were in the car headed back to the vital statistics’ office. When we left, we were cautiously optimistic that perhaps Yulia had found an opening this afternoon where they could process Mikaela’s passport and that, long shot though it was, we just might be able to apply for her passport today. In the end, that did not happen, and we are going to have to go do that tomorrow. The good news from today is that Mikaela’s new birth certificate is now finished, and so we can move on to the next steps in the process. As it turns out, the vital statistics’ office does not process birth certificates for adoptions every day of the week. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to their schedule, and today was a day when they were only supposed to be issuing birth certificates for newborns. One of the workers, however, agreed to stay a bit past closing time to take care of the paperwork for Mikaela’s birth certificate. Thus, just after 5:30, we left the office with her birth certificate! That leaves us with a few steps to complete tomorrow morning, and as Yulia was enumerating our errands, she threw a curveball at us.

She is going to pick us up at 8:30 in the morning, and we are first going to have her tax ID# (similar concept to a Social Security Number) reassigned to her new name, and then we are going to have her birth certificate notarized. We assumed that our next step would be to apply for her passport, but here is where Yulia surprised us. Since we are going to have to take Mikaela with us when we apply for her passport—she has to have her picture taken for it—Yulia is going to go ahead and help us fill out the dismissal papers for Mikaela. So, as long as the time works out well in the morning, when we leave the orphanage to apply for Mikaela’s passport, we won’t have to take her back to the orphanage ever again! We are a little bit concerned about the timing, however, because Yulia has to be in court with another family at 2:00 in the afternoon, with another family’s court right after that. If any of our steps take longer than expected in the morning, then we probably won’t have time to go through the dismissal process with Mikaela tomorrow, which would be extremely hard for us. Hopefully, tomorrow afternoon we will have applied for her passport and we will ALL be together for a little pizza, cake, and movie (Pete’s Dragon) celebrating both Josiah’s second birthday and Mikaela’s “home”coming. We’re don’t know what to expect with the timing of our return home, but that has taken a decidedly backseat to the thought that we could have Mikaela with us within twenty-four hours. We hope to have good news to share on both fronts tomorrow.