Still Nothing!

Kenna is almost 10 months old now!! She is still our little peanut weiging in at just 15.6lbs. She and Kayla have the BEST relationship! They both light up whenever they see each other! Of course Kayla thinks she is her very own real "LIVE" baby doll! We have to be careful with her at times:)

From what we were told today, the 5th attorney will now be handling the termination of the fathers rights. Jay (attny # 3) has sent a draft to #5 for her to complete and then submit to the State Court in Globe, AZ. We hope to hear from #5 as to what the next steps are after that. From what we understand, it will be to get a date to finalize Kenna's adoption!

Thanks again for all of your prayers! Looking forward to the day when we can announce that she is OURS!!

Here's what we know

We had a conference call with Dianna this afternoon. So here's what we know:
1. Jay is close to getting the birth fathers rights terminated.
2. After this is done, Dianna will file a petition with Tribal Court. She says that typically she can get a date within a month, but she is missing some of the Tribes adoption law, so she's not certain if there are any time constrictions, prayerfully not.
3. She feels we will only have one final court date in which the 3 of us will have to fly out there. We will probably not take Kayla, but Kenna has to come!

Dianna knows the judge and he was a state court judge before moving to tribal court! He is also favorable for adoption!!! Yeah!!!

Longer than we hoped

The 5th attorney has finally agreed to represent us. We will have a conference call tomorrow afternoon in order to get more information and see if we want her to represent us.

We were told that our chances of finalizing before the years end is not likely! Jay feels the hardest part is over - but we still have to be realistic that Kenna could be taken away from us. We will be going back to Arizona for the final Tribal Court at some point!

We hope to have more information after tomorrow's conference call - this is when Sean and I will get a chance to see if we want to continue with Dianna or search for another. Please pray for our discernment as we seek to finalize Kenna's adoption ASAP.
Thanks for your prayers!

Attorneys...love them or hate them...

We are still waiting on this 5th attorney to be hired. She has had over 3 weeks to decide...from what we were told today, she is a bit under the weather?? So being sick is keeping her from making a decision???

We contacted our agency who is trying to get more information for us. Our questions right now are: why do we need to finalize in tribal court - could we do a state court since ICWA has been satisfied? do we have to go to tribal court, or can the attorney represent us without us going there? what are the chances that Kenna will be taken from us? She believes that the finalization is just a technicality, so we pray she is right. We are so ready to officially call Kenna ours!!

Right now our attorney fees have totaled over $20,000!!! Praise God that Sean and I choose to go with our agency's one time legal fee. Our agency is out quite a bit of money, but thankfully it's not us!!

Frustrated

Apparently being willing to represent us and actually representing us are 2 different things. Since it had been over a week since the 2 attorneys were meeting, we decided to email Jay to find out what was going on.

Ms. Montgomery told Jay last week she has to think it over and will get back to him. If she agrees, then we will need to have conference call to discuss the case, after which Sean and I will need to decide if we want her to be our attorney.

As always...thanks for your continued prayers!

More Info Coming Soon

Here is another email we received today from Jay:

I had a conf call earlier today with John Perlman and Dianna (sp?) Montgomery ,who is an attorney who is lic. to practice in the San Carlos Apache tribal court. Ms Montgomery stated she is willing to represent Sean and Katrina to finalize the adoption. Before she has a phone call with Sean and Katrina, she is going to review the legal memorandum I drafted on the ICWA and she and I will have a follow up phone call on Sept 19th or 22nd.

So sometime after the 22nd we will know what our next step is! Thanks again for your prayers!!

Rounding Second Base!

Here is an email from our ICWA attorney Jay McCarthy:
Great news the hearing in tribal court went well and Cynthia signed the ICWA consent…The Judge was unwilling to sign an order to terminate the alleged birth father’s parental rights, given that he does not live on the reservation . Thus I will file a motion in state court for this order. The next step is John Perlman and I visiting with an attorney to determine if she will represent Mr and Mrs Kelley for purposes of finalization

This is GREAT news for us! Our attorney feels that all should go well, but of course we can't assume anything. We will hopefully know more early next week as to what steps are next. More than likely we will be heading back to Phoenix to finalize Kenna's adoption!

But as Jay said tonight we are rounding second base! We're half way there!!!!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED PRAYERS AND SUPPORT!