176 Days

As of today, that's how many days our appeal has dragged on.

Before you get your Hanes in a half-hitch over how long that's been, I should point something out. A lot of appeals that aren't on the children's fast track haven't even made it to review by the Superior Court by this time. Normal appeals can take nearly a year to be reviewed, and then another 200ish days to the Superior court to file a decision.

That sort of makes the 102 days between the filing and the review by the Court darned fast.

Hubby did some checking, and found records of similar termination hearing appeals. Of the seven he looked at, the average time (and I use the term "average" rather loosely), he said that it took anywhere from 100-250 days between the appeal filing and the date of the filing of the Superior Court's decision.

Incidentally, all but one of those appeals upheld the trial court's ruling. (There were exigent circumstances in that one case that simply aren't present in ours.)

So it looks like we're in the home stretch, as far as the waiting is concerned. I still hold my breath every day as I check the mail, waiting for an envelope from our lawyer's office.

We expect that the Superior Court will side with our trial judge. We'll have another 30 days beyond the date of the Court's decision to wait before we can have the adoption hearing. We're hopeful this can be resolved before the end of the year.

But I don't mind telling you...the waiting is hard. The girls especially are having a tough time because they don't understand why this can't happen yet. "We can't yet" is a difficult concept for them.

Heck, it's difficult for me. I want to scream at the court clerks that our lives are hanging in the balance; what's taking them so long to type up the decision?

Waiting is rarely any fun.