Schedule

Many people have been curious about our travel plans.... here is a rough outline of what the ideal trip will look like... if all goes according to plan...

Saturday May 9th: depart Bangor in the afternoon... leave Newark around 8pm for a direct flight to Mumbai
Sunday May 10th: arrive Mumbai their time at 9pm
Monday May 11th: Leah Day or Gotcha Day
Tuesday May 12th: fly from Mumbai to Delhi
Wednesday May 13th: do paperwork at US Embassay in New Delhi
Thursday May 14th: pick up finished paperwork (from what we understand) atEmbassay and fly late that night on a direct from Delhi to Newark
Friday May 15th: 4:30am arrive VERY tired to Newark, have a long layover and arrive in Bangor early afternoon...

A funny story some of you may appreciate. As many of you know Andrew and I love Kidney Pond at Baxter State Park- specifically cabin # 1, so we had originally made reservations to be there with Leah on opening day... when we thought we would have her here sooner....

Andrew, being Andrew, did mention that the gatehouse at BSP does not close til 8pm so we could still fly in and make it there in time! I mean, afterall, the trout might be biting!

Luckily the ladies at Baxter Reservations were very helpful and we can change our reservations to later in the season!

May 9th it is!

It's official... we just booked our flights- we leave Bangor on the afternoon of May 9th. We stop in Newark and then board the 15 1/2 hour flight for Mumbai, arriving on Mother's Day!

Words can not describe the excitement Andrew is feeling nor the mush that my brain is right now!

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers...

If we ever come down off from Cloud 9 we will try to fill you all in on more details!

Written Court Order!

Written guardianship has been issued! Now we just need Leah's passport! Not a lot of details yet, but tentatively planning to fly to Mumbai on May 9th!

Stay tuned....

"GG" turns 90!

Leah's Great Grandmother, Andrew's "Nana", and Grammie Carla's Mom, Althea Hamlin turns 90 on Wednesday! Austin and some of the other Great Grandchildren call her "GG", hence the title of this post. So most of the Hamlin gang got together in Milo on Saturday to throw Leah's "GG" a party. It was wonderful- a huge crowd of friends and family...

We all had a wonderful time catching up with friends and family we had not seen in a long time! It was also neat to know that we would not see many of them again until we have Leah!

Jai Ho

Jai Ho (roughly translated means Victory, Hallelujah or Thank God) and we are feeling all of that and more... after receiving this email today.... and this is NOT an April Fool's Joke!

I have some really good news to share with you J. Today your case was approved by the judge! You now have verbal (soon to be legal) guardianship of Leah. Both the lawyer and Bal Asha were able to confirm this, though it’s not yet listed on the website. Yours was one of just three cases that have been heard in the last several weeks, so we are certainly counting our blessings. It could take anywhere from 2-4 weeks for the written court order and then another 7-10 business days for the passport. Best estimate is that you could be traveling in approximately 6 weeks. We ask that you wait until the written court order has been issued before booking tickets. If you’d like to start looking into flights, please feel free.