Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take,
but by the moments that take your breath away.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Lightening Fast!

Wow! This has been a crazy but very GOOD week. We dropped off the completed dossier on Friday to the agency and were told it would be 5-10 days for them to review, approve, and send off to Russia. Well I got the call today that it was reviewed and approved and being sent off to Russia and it's only been 1 business day! With all the problems we've had with paperwork so far I am thrilled this last big step in the dossier went so easily. I hope the rest goes this fast and smooth ;)

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I600A approved!!!

After only 2.5 weeks we got our immagration approval today! They told us 4-6 weeks so I was shocked when I got the email today from my agency that we were approved. And then I got home and it was in the mail waiting for us. We will be getting it notarized tomorrow and dropping it off in Boston to be aposilled. We should have the completed dossier into our agency by the begining of November and should definately be on the waiting list for Russia by Thanksgiving. We are so excited!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Starting a little late...

I've been meaning to start this blog for months now and here it is October and I am just starting. Life has been calm for the moment on the adoption front. We are fully approved for domestic adoption in the U.S. and our profile is with the agency waiting to be shown to birthparents. Now we are just hoping and praying that we get chosen.

The Russian adoption is a little more complicated. The dossier paperwork has been MUCH harder than I imagined. But after spending almost 2 months running back and forth from 3 different doctors, our accountant, town halls, DSS, police station, and many other places I finally have all the paperwork needed and it has been notarized. Now we are just waiting to get our I600A fingerprints back which were taken on 10/4. They say it will take about 4-6 weeks until we get them in the mail. Once we have those we can get them notarized too and then send all the paperwork to get aposilled by the state. That should take another week and then we will be able to submit the dossier to our agency. We are hoping to have that done before Thanksgiving and hopefully be a waiting family in Russia too soon after that.

I get asked a lot why we are applying in both Russia and the U.S. Basically we were planning to only apply to Russia and do an international adoption. During the end stages of our homestudy we were made aware of some delays and issues with adoptions in Russia right now. We are hoping for everyone that adoptions start going smoother again in Russia soon but in case they don't we wanted to have another plan. We will just wait and see and take whichever referral comes to us first. So we could end up going half way across the world to meet our child or somewhere nearby. We may end up with a newborn (if U.S.) or a toddler (if Russian). We are up for anything and can't wait until our child finds us!