Bombay High Court

We are on the docket... we can hardly contain our excitement! While we still do not know exactly when our case will be heard, it seems like it will be very soon!

I can't tell you how happy this makes us, and I can not tell you how many times (a day) I have checked this over the past few months!

New pictures...

We are still frustrated by the wait, but that was made a bit easier today as we got three new pictures of Leah! The one with her short hair was taken yesterday, the other 2 (where she is looking at the book we sent her) were apparently taken a couple of weeks ago....

Bal Asha cuts the hair of the children fairly often to try as best as they can to prevent lice.

As our friend Marc pointed out either that phone is large or Leah is pretty tiny! But she looks like she has chubby cheeks and a bit of a belly too! Anyhow, we think she is pretty darn perfect and just can not wait to go get her!

Great weekend!

Our skiing weekend was wonderful and did just what we hoped it would- got our mind off waiting for Leah at least for a little while! The weather was gorgeous and the views from the top were unreal. Oh and the girls have decided we need an outdoor hot tub! Only downside to the weekend is I have done something to my back and neck and am flat on back!

A pic from the Top or TOS as Michelle pointed out- Top of Sugarloaf, oh, so that's why the radio station is called that!

Slow judge

Apparently the hold up on guardianship for Leah has been a difficult judge in Mumbai. In some ways, it is wonderful as he really investigates to make sure in the case of an abandoned child (which Leah wasn't- she was relinquished) that he tries very hard to track down the birth parents. However, it seems he is doing this more because he has a strong opinion about International adoption and is voicing that with his power if you will. The good news is his term for adoption cases is ending and a new judge will come to power in the near future. Judges sort of rotate through in India and are in charge of different areas for different periods of time. The bad news is this new judge (hoping he too doesn't have a political opinion about adoptions) has a backlog of cases at this point. So, MAPS has no timeline to give us right now and as you can imagine we are quite distressed as also Leah's grandparents are!

We are off to Sugarloaf for the weekend with our "first girls" Michelle and Megan. Next weekend Saddleback. Thank god for spring skiing! It will be good to be busy and try to not think about Leah 24/7!

Surprise Shower

I just got home and unpacked from a surprise baby shower thrown by all of the ladies at my school. Over 30 wonderful women who I work with made Indian food, decorated with indian decorations and brought Leah wonderful, wonderful presents. Of course TONS of adorable dresses, TONS of wonderful books and unique gifts like 2 homemade blankets, a very special Hope angel and a very special star mobile.

Words can not express how grateful I was and Andrew was when Michele dropped me off at home with all of the gifts. It is really overwhelming. We feel so blessed. I have been crying my eyes out, but happy tears! I sure will miss all of these ladies when I am a stay at home Mom- Leah and I will have to take field trips to the Academy to visit.

Now it's almost time to watch Anoop Desai on American Idol. Yes, he is Indian and we are HUGE fans! We are also rooting for Scott MacIntyre as he goes to Andrew's brother Anthony's church.

Eight Oscars!!!!!

We have never been so excited to watch the Oscars as we were this year. As Andrew said it is pretty ironic that the "buzz" movie of the year happens to be about an orphan from Mumbai in the same year we will be going to Mumbai to get Leah. The movie is incredible, we are in love with the child actors and enthralled by the adult actors!


We can't wait until Leah is enough to watch the movie with us and for us to share with her what this has meant to us during our wait!

Today we are both home for a snow day which was great timing so we can watch all of the morning talk shows with the "Oscar talk" on them and recover from staying up late trying to watch the entire show. This also extended my Feb. vacation week by another day!

Fingerprints, shots and visas...

We are inching closer and closer to getting Leah home with us!

Last week we had our fingerprints done (again) and had a great meeting at MAPS. At this point, we should pretty much be ready for "the call" at any time and once we get "the call" we can make travel plans for about a month from then! Grammie Rozanne is in hopes that Leah will be her 55th Birthday present on April 2nd!

"The call" means that the Judge hearing our case at the Bombay High Court has granted verbal guardianship.

We also got information on what to bring for gifts for the orphanage, for Leah's caretakers, what to carry for cash, how much to tip our driver, etc.... Tons of information.

We also made plans for lots of shots, medicines, and immunizations for our travel. We will go to the travel clinic next week to have them done. The lady on the phone asked if we wanted to take medicine for travel diarrhea with us- um, yeah!

Also, we can now apply for our own tourist Visas, another big step. A bit scary to mail our passports off though.

Grammie Carla sent Leah's car seat home with us on our way back from Portland. So Leah now has a full closet, a place to sleep, ride in the car and eat. I think we are as ready as we can be.

Speaking of a full closet, Daddy was a good sport and went to the GAP, Carter's outlet and Patagonia to do a bit more Leah shopping over the weekend. His version of hell, Mom's version of heaven!