Court (8/20/08) Readoption Day...

This is not a picture of her before court; as I forgot to take one? But this is a cute picture with Simret and her Dada.
Court went a lot smoother than our previous experiences with the Ethiopian court system. However, right before the judge called us into the court room, I am talking seconds before, Simret had a huge blow-out! Isn't that just like a her....or I guess I should say...isn't that just like a baby? We live 2 blocks from the court house, and of course I had just changed her and decided to leave the diaper bag in the car...as this was only suppose to take 15 minutes (rookie move!). So, there I am embarrassed watching our attorney explain to the judge that it would be a couple of minutes; that Lance was going out to the car to get the diaper bag and that we needed to change her?

Otherwise, court was only about 10 minutes long. The only question he asked us is "if we were sure we wanted to do this?" He said that no one had every answered "no" to that question, but that "there have been many that had to think about it for a while". Interesting...huh? So, of course we said yes and Simret politely waved goodbye to EVERYONE in the court house. Overall, it was a success and now she is a US citizen and hopefully within the next couple of weeks we will have her birth certificate. We also were able to change her name from Simret Lance Proctor to Simret J'Laine Proctor finally!