Drumroll, please...

We are proud to announce that as of 11:15am, Friday, August 31st we are the official parents of Esther Anastasia Lass! We will be able to travel about October 5th after the court decree takes affect to pick her up and bring her home.
 This afternoon when we visit her she will get one of the first visits ever outside the orphanage to go and get her passport photo taken. We were able to visit her yesterday afternoon after court. It was actually warm and sunny outside so we had a very fun visit at the playground. She is beginning to try and communicate much more with us -- copying us and expecting us to copy her, etc. We introduced her to the chocolate pastries which went over very well. We added swings to the playground equipment she got to try. Definitely have a thrill seeking gene there! She'll be on roller coasters with Luke and her Dad before you know it! She freaked Bryan out by wanting to lean off the swing and stare at the ground while she as swinging.
After our visit Bryan and I walked to the river and did some site seeing. We also had a chance to find some souvenirs...we only had about a half hour, so we'll have to do a little more next trip so no one gets left out! There is about a mile loop of paths along the river and over 2 bridges that shows off most of the sites in Tver - a soviet era movie theatre and buildings along old Soviet Street, a palace where royalty (including Catherine the Great) would summer, several churches and a monastery, soviet era statues, etc. Very beautiful.
 This morning was our final court hearing. Yesterday our court was held just in the judges office which was actually very nice - it made it feel much less formal and we had been in her office before so it was not intimidating at all. Today we were in one of the courtrooms. They are very small and very informal compared to the courtrooms I have been in in the States. It was the same people as yesterday - the judge, an interpreter, the social workers, a prosecuting attorney and the orphanage doctor. Bryan answered the majority of our questions - describe me (and then my faults...would you believe that I burn rice? I mean, I DO, but still. I had to tell the judge later on that he teases me about it because I can cook very complicated things, but somehow can not do something so easy...). He had to tell about the boys and their health and discipline and many, many other questions. We both were asked if we were sure we wanted to adopt her and how we felt about her after meeting her. She asked alot about our church and services there and even how we chose her name (she seemed very pleased when Bryan told her the boys helped pick it and that they all have Bible names and Esther was a girl in the Bible who was orphan who became a queen. Bryan was the only man in the courtroom and every single woman there did the "awww" face when he said that.).
My time on the stand was much briefer than Bryan's (ha!) and very much the same (although, now that I think about it, I didn't have to tell them his faults...wait a second!). I don't think were really any surprises...we were told some examples of the questions we would be asked and our coordinator told us some people write down some notes to help them answer.
I'll be honest...we totally winged it. I think one of the hardest things was speaking through an interpreter and yet speaking TO the judge. You have to pause every few seconds to let the interpreter catch up with you...just strange to do.
 After we spoke each of the other people took their turn...the social worker gave a brief history of the child and described observing us with her and how we interacted. She apparently was very impressed with the things we brought and how we noticed what she liked and had those things along. The prosecuting attorney spoke very briefly and had no questions for us (we were later told that was very unusual, that usually she questions the parents as well).
The orphanage doctor also spoke and I think, for us, that was the most interesting. She talked about how many of the "neurological" problems that she had had before disappeared after our first visit. She said that immediately after we visited she began to eat better and sleep better, seemed more emotionally stable, to be in less distress and be more comfortable interacting with people and she said that it was as if she knew she belonged to someone and that they attributed the marked change in behavior and attitude directly to the time she spent with us.
We asked about that later, if that was something she normally says to all parents and we were told no, that that was something rather unusual for her to say. Our coordinator paused and thought for a minute and said that he had noticed it too, that the last times he had been there she had seemed very different. That was very reaffirming to hear (and about the closest I came to really tearing up!). I mean, as parents, you hope that you affect your children and that your prayers for them are being answered, but when you are half a world away to have such a clear affirmation that God is working in your home before a child even enters is very precious.
 Our court was very short (we were told to expect about 2 hours and it only about an hour and 15 min), the judge went out for, literally, a few moments, came back and read the official decree declaring that her birth parents would be removed from her birth certificate, her birthplace would become the city of Tver and that she is officially Esther Anastasia Lass. It's amazing all those months of paperwork and 2 hours later it's done! Very stress relieving! There will be a little paperwork when we return to get her Russian passport and her American visa, but all in all the next trip is nearly paperwork free! We will get translated versions of all the paperwork for court, both from our dossier and Esther's. A lot of information about her family which is great and a little unexpected for an international closed adoption, so that was a good surprise. In the future it will be amazing to have that complete of a history for her to have in black and white.
 Anyway, it's been a day already and we're only at mid-afternoon here so we are off in a few to visit Esther and bring some gifts for the orphanage. We leave early tomorrow morning for Moscow and then fly out early Sunday morning. Please pray for safe travels. :)