Check Cashed!

So I was checking our bank statement and noticed that the check we sent with our Dossier, way back in April, for the translation fee has finally been cashed. I was starting to get "concerned" that something "wasn't" happening correctly because none of the three checks we sent with the dossier had been cashed. The one I was most concerned about was the translation fee and now it has cleared!!! WooHoo!

Daydreaming...

Some of you may have read my Daydreaming post on my other blog. Well, I've been at it again. This time I'm dreamin' about what kinds of things we might need for our little one. Tough thing is that we have no idea how old he* will be when we get to bring him* home. The youngest he'll be will probably be about 12 months. We're hoping the oldest he'll be when we get home is 22 months.

So, another blogger who's in the process of adopting has a link to Kaboodle, a wish list. I thought it was a really cute website and decided to start a couple of lists myself. See side bar under Links of Interest. I put a few things on there but I'm kind of clueless as to what to get!

I need your help!

Those of you 'in the know', please comment here on what you think we'll need, or can't do without, for a child that's between 12 and 22 months old. You'll need to sign in to make a comment. If you don't have a blogger account, it's super easy to create. Just click HERE , or go to blogger.com. (Be sure to write your username and password somewhere so you don't forget it)

On the topic of Comments: I am creating a memory book using these posts along with their comments, so please make comments so I have something to look back on. Thanks to all who've commented so far. It's really fun to read what you're thinking and it's encouraging to know you're checking on us.

Latest news about our paperwork is that our i-171H has been apostilled, sent to our Agency, and they have sent it to Russia. Woohoo!

I think that's all I have for you today! Thanks for lookin'!

*Though it's remotely possible we get a little girl, it's not likely, so rather than always say he/she or them, I will just use "he/him".

Reality.....

So we get this letter in the mail. It's from the Bureau of Consular Affairs (our government). It basically says that our orphan petition application (the one we had approved), has been forwarded to the "visa-issuing post"... in Russia. The letter also includes a real address in Russia where our case has been forwarded.

It's becoming more and more real that this is truly happening. There is a place in Russia that is getting our personal information. Real people are going to be looking at it.

REALLY!

i-171H Received

We have finally received the "Notice of Favorable Determination".

We have been approved, by the USCIS, to adopt a child from Russia!

We have to make a copy and send it for an apostille. The copy will then get sent to Russia to join our other paperwork that's being translated. This clearance was pretty much the last thing we've been waiting for in order to be registered in a region. It will still be a while before we get assigned a region but at least all our "ducks are in a row". Woohoo!

7 months & Counting

According to the ticker at the bottom, we've been on this "expedition" for over 7 months. So, now we are in the waiting room. I got word that our Dossier is most likely being translated right now. That would be in Russia! The estimated time for a referral, from when we submitted our Dossier to the agency is 6 - 9 months. Looks like November might be the earliest we'd hear anything. Of course, we are praying for it to be sooner.

So then, how's about another Vocab lesson?

For Mrs. Salty:
Good morning = DAWB ra ye OO tra
Good night (couldn't find good evening) = spa KOY ne NAWCH ee
Hello = ah-LOH!
Goodbye = daas vee DAAN ya

Yes = dah
No = nyeht
Please = Puh-ZHAHL-stuh
Thank you = spuh-SEE-buh

Car = mah-SHEE-nuh
House = dohm
Boy = MAHL-chik
Girl = DYEH-booch-kuh

pryee-KRAHS-nuh (excellent!)

Anybody there?

OK, so I know some of you are wondering what is going on with our adoption. Well, I'll sum it up for you... I dunno! haha

We're waiting to hear where our paperwork is and I'll let you know as soon as I hear back from our coordinator. She's been really swamped and with the holiday weekend, I'm sure she's been overloaded.

Vocab. lesson #2 coming soon... what words would you like to learn?

Vocabulary Lesson 1

Thought it would be fun to share some of the words we are learning. Our agency sent us a little booklet on a bunch of useful words. Would you like to learn some Russian? :)

These are the pronunciation of Russian words,
not their Russian alphabetical spelling.

Mother = Mama
Father = Papa
Grandmother = Ba-BOO-shka
Grandfather = Dye-DOO-shka
Aunt = TYAWT ya
Uncle = DYAA da

Numbers:
One = ah-DYEEN ----- Two = dva
Three = dryee --------- Four = chi-TYEER-ui
Five = pyaty ----------- Six = shehsty
Seven = syehmy ------ Eight = VOH-syimy
Nine = DYEH-byit --- Ten =DYEH-syit

pah-KAH! (bye-bye)

Update

Got to Tallahassee in great time. Took care of the documents in great time. Went to UPS store and copied papers and sent to our agency (which they've received already) and had a great time. Had Panera Bread coffee for my drive back and it was great. So, Praise God, everything worked out Grreeeat!
(Haven't seen or heard anything about the first set of documents I mailed to Tallahassee, but that's no matter now anyway.)

I've been reviewing the estimate of the remainder of our costs. Praise God, He's provided for us in wonderful ways thus far. I can't wait to see how He'll provide the rest for us! It looks like we'll need approximately $25,000 more for the costs of things such as the country fees, Visas, child's medical, paperwork misc. fees. We'll also need an estimated $11,000 for travel and meal expenses (for both trips). Sounds like a huge number, but I trust God to supply everything, whether it be through gifts and/or through work. He's trustworthy.

Thanks for checking in!

On the road again....

Thanks to our Florida Director of Social Work, we were able to get duplicates of those pages I sent to Tallahassee last week. I will be driving to Tallahassee tomorrow in order to get them apostilled. I figure it will be faster this way since the state office said things are moving slower than usual for the mailed in papers. I might not get those back until end of next week or even the following, if I get them back at all! They only take a few minutes to apostille in person, so that's why I'm just gonna go.

That's the latest!

Sudden Meltdown!

Well, it was bound to happen. I goofed. Probably not "tragically" but when there's a lot of time lost, and potentially some money lost, that's a catastrophe for me.

After we sent our Dossier to our Agency, everything looked great. Our Family Coordinator confirmed we were "expecting". :) Thanks for everyone's congrats! Then we got an email saying that we needed two more documents to clarify why there were two different "Director of Social Work" people. You see, just before we finished the dossier, our local director left and a new director stepped in. (Agency is trying to be efficient with money and can only pay for a director as needed and the previous woman needed work full-time.) So, now we have the Home Study by the original director, and other paperwork signed by the new one.

The agency thought it would prevent confusion if there was a letter stating what happened along with the copy of the previous license. It makes total sense. Hassle is that they had to be notarized and with a notary comes and an apostille. Rather than make the drive to Tallahassee again, I decided to overnight the papers, along with a cover letter that had our phone # and address on it, plus a check. They ask that you also include a Pre-paid package so they can send it back to you.

I had the bright idea to have it sent straight to our agency, rather than come back here, just for me to send it to them. So, I took everything to the courier service office and asked if I could pre-pay for an overnight letter envelope from Tallahassee to Virginia, for the apostille office to use to return our paperwork when it was finished.

Here's my first mistake. In my rush, I hadn't re-read the State's website saying it would take 5-7 workdays.

The courier service doesn't offer a pre-paid envelope (maybe if I had an account with them), but instead, offered another way of sending it. It's actually quite confusing and I'm not sure how the driver handles this, but the guy behind the counter assured me it would be fine. I put our paperwork, clipped to an empty, unlabeled courier envelope (I put a sticky-note on it saying it belonged to me) into a larger envelope that would be overnighted to Tallahassee. Then the courier has it in their system to check back to the office in Tallahassee for three days to pickup the unlabeled envelope that was supposed to hold the apostilled documents. The courier is supposed to have the overnight label for Virginia delivery ready to attach to it.

Did you see my first mistake? Website said it would take 5-7 workdays and my courier is supposed to check for 3 days.....

What's my second mistake? Again, after re-reading the state's website, I remembered that I was supposed to indicate which country the apostilles were for... I hadn't mentioned that in the cover letter.

Could it BE any worse. Well, there's one more.... I didn't put the Virginia office address anywhere in the cover letter, so IF they decide to mail back our paperwork, they will probably send it regular mail (so slow), and it will have to come back to me, if it gets back to me.

So, I was checking the Courier's tracking page and noticed (no surprise) that it's been 2 days of trying, and no getting my package. It would be a miracle if the office did finish it and got it to the courier for Virginia. The lady over the phone said they get hundreds of apostille requests a day.

Ever slap your palm to your forehead and say "stupid, stupid, stupid". Well, let's just say my forehead is pretty red...

It's Official

WE'RE EXPECTING!
Paper Pregnant (adoption in progress)

We're BA-Ack...

Warning: Lots of text...

Sunday night, as I was going through the list of what we needed to get apostilled and sent to our Agency, I noticed I missed 2 duplicate pages we needed... notarized. Ugh. But, thanks to the graciousness of David's co-worker, I was able to stop by first thing Monday morning and get the pages notarized before heading up to Tallahassee. Whew!

THANK YOU GINA!  I cannot say thanks enough to my wonderful sister who took a day off work to drive up with me. She was a tremendous help with directions and with the copy and packaging process. Not to mention all the laughs on the drive there and back. THANKS GINA!!!

We left home about 7:45 but didn't actually get on the road 'til around 9 am. Armed with our Starbucks coffee we finally arrived at the apostille office about 1:30. The person behind the counter looked over the notaries, said they looked good (whew!) and took everything to start attaching the apostilles to every item with a notary signature. (23 total) They charge per apostille....  

We were pretty hungry and I had mapped out where a Panera Bread was and so we stopped there for lunch. I brought my laptop so I could check on work stuff, but it wouldn't let me get online even though it said I was linked to Panera's WiFi.... oh well.

Once we were full we headed to the Kinko's store that I had mapped out so we could make the 4 copies of the whole 69 page Dossier. (picture above is one set) Turns out, what I had found was just a DROP BOX! LOL. Gina called her friend who was near a computer who found us a Kinkos and then David called and was able to walk us through the directions (since we didn't have a large map of the area--shame, shame). We finally made it there and it was basically a FedEx counter store with one copier. That's all we really needed so we began the process. After a few copies, the sort tray fell off! Hmm, I tried to attach it because the guy didn't seem to care very much. It fell off again. Ugh. So, as I was making the copies I just caught every page by hand, gave the copies to Gina and she sorted everything into the 4 piles. We also were not allowed to take any staples out so it was fun trying to lift up every page and get a decent scan. Took a whole lot longer than I thought. We finally got everything stapled and packaged and brought the box to the counter to set up overnight delivery. I mentioned how this box was like Gold to me even though it was just paper to everyone else. We brought up that it was for adoption and he said his sister had adopted too! How nice!  Then he told me how much it was.... $13.15... What??? That's got to be a mistake. Surely it was supposed to be more than 3 times that amount... He said it was correct and that he gave me his discount! How AWESOME! God is so Awesome!

So, we found our way back to the highway and headed home. We were both ready to get back. I pulled into our driveway about 10 pm. It was a long day but a good day and now our Dossier is out of our hands.  I just checked and the box has been delivered!!! I hope everything is right! 

AHHH.  Someone just told me we were now "Paper Pregnant". WooHoo!

Fingerprints & More

David and I went to the immigration office for our fingerprint appointment on Saturday and it was pretty easy. It took about an hour because of the amount of people there.  All digital, no messy ink to deal with. Check!

We finally got the last piece of paper that we needed to complete our Dossier. After waiting for a week and a half, we finally got it in the mail on Thursday. That's what we were expecting. What we weren't expecting was that it had an error. So, rather than wait a whole week more, David was able to drive over to Kissimmee to meet the Social Worker and get a fresh, correct copy. Whew!

Gina offered to ride with me (thanks!), and we'll be leaving really early tomorrow (Monday) morning to get to Tallahassee and back by a little after lunch. Then, if all goes as planned, I'll be sending everything overnight to our Agency headquarters. Woohoo!

I Can't See!

Have you ever walked into a pitch black room and didn't know where the light switch was? Sort of goes like this: You fumble around, hugging the walls, fingers poking at the height you think that silly switch might be. Right inside the door... nope, not there. How about the wall on the other side of the door... not there either. Hmm, maybe it's on the other side of the room? You cautiously shuffle your feet to make sure your big toe doesn't get the brunt of any furniture resting comfortably in your path. You finally reach the other wall and start over, fingertips lightly feeling around, swooshing against the flat surface... nothing! How do you feel now? Lost, secretly freaked, ready to turn around and almost run out into the safety of a light-flooded room?

Well, that's kind of how I feel right now. We're on the verge of turning over the paperwork that we've gathered over the last several months. I feel lost. I've never been here before, nothing to fall back on, only other peoples' experiences. It's scary, I don't really know what to expect or even when to expect it. Hmm.

Some would say this is adventure. Some would say it will be worth it in the end. Some would say this is just the beginning and that there is always that "unknown" in life with children. I have no doubt. In the meantime, it's unnerving and I don't like not knowing where the light switch is!

Word on the street...

Looks like this Thursday-ish I'll be getting the last piece of paper I need. Finally. Then I can decide whether I need to go to Tallahassee to get everything taken care of, or if I want to overnight the package and wait for it's return. (Which do you think I'll do?)

Either way, God willing, it is most probable that our Dossier will be in the hands of our agency next week. Then, if everything is correct, they send it to Russia to be translated! woohoo! I wonder if it could even get to Russia next week! Pray, pray, pray please!

A little bit more... little bit more

Just waiting for 2 documents from our agency and then I'll be able to get everything to the state for their apostille. I was hoping to be able to have it done by the end of this week, but it doesn't look likely. Oh well. It's taken this much time, what's a little bit more....

More than ever, it's time to Pray!

Warning: this post is longer than usual

It's always a great time to pray. We need God's help and direction with so much. God is so gracious and faithful. We are asking for your heartfelt prayers to join ours for at least the two following things:

First is prayer for Russia and it's authorities.
Following you will read part of an email from our agency:
"...another child adopted from Russia to the United States was recently killed by his parents. Russia takes the death of one of their children very seriously, and as this now makes 14 children in total who have been killed in the United States, we have been concerned as to what ramifications this latest case may have on the process. In the past, we have seen increased document requirements, greater scrutiny on parents, a further restriction on mental health diagnosis and treatment in prospective adoptive parents, and requests for documents from US governmental authorities as a result of children's deaths."
The email also says that one of the regions has decided to halt adoption activities for one month, citing this incident as the cause.
Here's the link for the news article on this case:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2008/03/17/020.html
Please pray that God works in the hearts of the authorities in Russia.

The second need is prayer for our child. You read that right! As we're coming to the end of gathering our Dossier documents, according to the estimated time frame it takes to get a referral, I've calculated that our child has most likely been born, or at the least, has been conceived. This is very exciting for us! Please join with us in prayer, as often as you can, that our baby will be healthy, safe and his/her caretakers will be wonderful with our child. Also, please pray for the biological parents/families of this child, as we don't know what kind of circumstance brought them to the undoubtedly hard decision to give up their child.

Thank you all, you are very much appreciated!