Monday May 21st

Today we ran downtown to get pictures taken of the girls for their American passports. Afterward, we returned to the internot (orphanage), and gave away a suitcase full of new toys. The kids went nuts. One of the big hits was the kites that we brought. They would get the kite up in the air, and then run with it. If it fell down, whichever kid caught it, got to run with it next.
We also ran into Valik, a friend of Sveta’s. He is quite the painter. We ended up buying this painting from him.
We found out that we got our approval

from the SDA, so we can go to court tomorrow as scheduled! (See below for Tue May 22nd)

Tuesday May 22nd

We had our day in court today, and the judge said, “Congratulations, you can now be a family!” It was an awesome moment that has FINALLY come. We have been on cloud 9 all day, and can hardly feel like it is real. Now we start our 10-day wait, to see if anyone wants to appeal. If not, we go get new birth certificates made with their new names, and then have them authenticated along with some side paperwork which will take a couple of days, and then we‘re off to Kiev to get the visas, and then we‘re heading home! By the way, their new names are:
Svetlana Victoria-Marie Benson
Layna Victoria-Marie Benson
Olya Victoria-Marie Benson
Yes, you don’t have triple vision. They all have the same middle name. We decided to do this for a number of reasons. The first was that the kids wanted a name that reflected their new dad and mom. Also, it is very common in Ukraine, for the daughter’s middle name to be some version of the father’s first name. All of their middle name(s) were Viktorivna, (their birth father’s name was Victor, too). So, we all thought it was very interesting that their new dad had the same name as their original dad, and their new middle name was similar to what they already had. It’s also common on Janet’s side for the middle names to be from the parents.
Sveta did not want the day to end, so she begged to sleep over tonight. So, we ran Layna and Olya back to the orphanage, because they have school tomorrow, and Sveta stayed with us. Oh boy! Janet was talking about the two of them getting up and doing some hair tomorrow morning. I think I’d better find something to do tomorrow morning! (We took the picture of the billboard on the way to get the pizza and ice cream, because it has 3 newborns, and the billboard says, "We are ready for everything now!")