Appeal - 14 days to go

Wow, 800 page views yesterday, that's a little above average!!!!

We have now entered the annoying but necessary stage known as the 'Appeal period'. After the court decision Kaz law states that there must be a period of 14 days when anyone can come forward and appeal the courts decision to grant the adoption. We are not concerned about this and in the past the period was normally waived but for the last year or so they have been stricter in enforcing it. Once the 14 days has elapsed Leah can finally leave the baby house and come back to our hotel for a week or so while all her passport, visa docs, etc are sorted.

The court process itself was very straightforward, we entered the room and sat down till we were called forward by the judge. Once we were called he spoke for a few minutes explaining our rights and why we were all there. We then gave our petition to the court, basically asking permission to adopt Leah and explaining our reasons for coming to Kazakhstan. Then the lady from the MOE and the High Doctor from the baby house spoke about how wonderful we were and how that it would be in the best interests of he child to be adopted by us. After all this the judge asked the court appointed prosecutor (who is there to speak for the child) if she had any protests to make, thankfully she had none. We then all stood up and left the room to allow the judge to reach a decision. 10 years (4mins) later the door opened again and we all filed in for the verdict. The judge, resplendent in his purple robes stood and very formally announced that the court of the Republic of Kazakhstan, sitting in the region of Ust-Kamenogorsk had decided to grant our petition to adopt Leah. All in all it was a quite fantastic experience!!

Jeremy and Elaine from South Africa had court right after us and thankfully it went well for them also. We all went out for a slap-up meal in a fancy Ust restaurant afterwards with our wonderful translator Ragul and the one and only Victor. They both made very touching toasts at dinner wishing us good lives, health and happiness with our new children. We were slightly concerned that while the rest of us were drinking fruit juice Victor was toasting us with Vodka however we think it actually helped his driving as its difficult to imagine anything that would make our bus rides with victor more terrifying!!!

Phew, that was long winded, well done if you made it this far. If you just skipped straight down to look at the photos, shame on you!! I'm looking at you john!

Philip, Amanda & Leah



After court.



Happiest child in Kazakhstan.



"I love the dolly!"



Kiss from mummy.