Biometrics Appointment

We got our biometrics appointment in the mail today for our I-600a (immigration application to adopt). Our appointment is for June 16th.

Naturally, Donald left yesterday for training in Oregon. He's scheduled to return on the 17th, I believe.
Of course.

That's military life for you, lol.

I'm sure it won't be an issue though. I'll call and explain. If they have a problem with it... well, let's just hope they won't. :-)

Hopefully we'll have immigration approval by the month's end!

Paperwork and Pink Things

Oh my heck,

We are almost there.

Hoping for immigration approval soon. We submitted our 1600a on April 26th, and our homestudy was received nearly 2 weeks ago, yet we STILL have not received fingerprinting appointments. We're hoping to get the letter Tuesday, walk in on Wednesday, and have approval by next week.

Oh, and we just might be doing what's called a "married single" adoption. This essentially means that I would be traveling to Ukraine alone. Why? Because Donald has training in August that he CAN NOT get out of. On our current timeline, we would most likely get a travel date in late July or early August. Yes, we could petition for a new date, but Donald's training won't be complete until mid-September... do we really want to wait THAT much longer? Nope, so we're looking into me flying solo. Literally. Heh.

On a lighter note, I'm having fun filling my online shopping carts full of frilly things. Once we have an SDA appointment we'll actually purchase, but for now I'm contently window-shopping my heart out.

Oh, and I reeally love matching them, a lot. If I they can cutely coordinate, I'm sold.

(the colors look slightly off, but they match in person)

I could get myself into a lot of trouble shopping for little girls. Good thing my husband's a financial grinch. We balance each other out.

Chugging Along

I "fixed" our unruly scanner this morning! No more sending expensive faxes to get our documents approved before apostilling (? Please, can someone verify the correct spelling? I've read it 7 different ways and the dictionary has no opinion).

So this morning I'm scanning $80 worth of dossier documents (our CSPs and POAs) to our state-side facilitator (Nancy! She's wonderful!), and hopefully this afternoon I will be sending all our documents obtained in Washington off to be apostilled.

We still have a few simpler documents to notarize and aposstile, but we'll be doing them on Fort Lewis, for FREE (we love free!) and thus will be sending them of to Washington DC for aposstiling instead of Washington state.

"Healthy Children" Under 5 No Longer Adoptable

We got word that today, in the nation we're adopting from, a law was passed which prohibits any children under the age of 5 without special needs from being adopted by foreigners.

Whether to count HIV as a special need seems obvious from my perspective, but the jury is still out in Eastern Europe.

Adoption Paperwork Update

Here's where we're at:

After reading and re-reading through our homestudy draft (including a read-over and edit by our facilitator), we just submitted the final revised copy to our social worker. Hopefully, we'll now receive a notarized hard copy of that final draft by Friday, and on Monday we will have it over-nighted to immigration to be added to our 1-600a application (which we have already submitted)!

All of the following dossier documents have already been completed:

1. My medical form
2. Criminal clearances
3. Proof of home ownership
4. Proof of mortgage
5. Marriage certificates
6. Employment verification
(er... it's filled out appropriately, but still requires notarization)

What remains:

1. Donald's medical form
(Which is a pain in the butt, for reasons I'll blog about later).
2. CSPs (Child Specific Petitions?)
Our requests for specific children we submit to the SDA.
- We can't fill our a CSP until we know who we're adopting, now can we? (more news on that later!)
3. Power of Attorney
Donald will be flying home after court, and I'll finish the remainder of the process alone. This requires appropriate powers of attorney.
4. Notarized copies of our passports.
5. Notarized copies of our tax returns.
6. Notarized Interpol form
(Giving them permission to obtain information about us).

Numbers 2-6 of our remaining items are extremely simple. They're forms we print out and take down to be notarized. We'll most likely complete them this Saturday.


So here's what I'm hoping our remaining timeline will look like:

Friday, 5/13:
Receive our final homestudy draft
Saturday, 5/14:
Get remaining items 2-6 notarized
Monday, 5/16:
Overnight completed homestudy to immigration for I-600a
*Wait and pray that immigration expedites this process and grants us approval - our 171h - quickly. That completes our dossier and allows us to submit to our kiddo(s) country!*
Monday, 5/16:
Mail out mortgage document to Iowa to be apostilled.

Late May:
(...after Donald's medical form is complete) - Mail all notarized documents obtained in Washington to be apostilled.
Late May:
If we don't receive confirmation that our 1-600a is being expedited, I write my congressional representative, and promise all but my soul to intervene and speed up the process for us.

Early June:
(and this is where hopeful speculation comes in:)
Receive our golden ticket from immigration: our 171h!
Early/Mid-June:
Submit our dossier to be translated and submitted to the SDA in-country!
*wait for a travel date*
1-3 weeks later:
receive a travel date

And *hopefully* be traveling in July!

....and land back on American soul with my babies in August!

Everything past next week is pure speculation, but it's optimistically realistic speculation.

Pray, pray, pray!

I-600a Check Cashed

Here's a TINY but exciting (for me!) update:

The Department of Homeland Security cashed our check for our immigration paperwork! We mailed it off over a week ago, and I've been anxiously waiting for it to post!
The transaction date is for Monday (retroactive), but it just showed up. Yay!

An odd thing to be thrilled about, but it means we're another day closer to bringing our chubby-cheeked little boy home!

Mortgage Document Drama

Just a boring adoption paperwork update today.

We received our "proof of mortgage" document in the mail today.
The one that I emailed a SPECIFIC form for... to be signed and notarized. The super simple one.


That they didn't send me.
They sent us a cruddy photocopy of some random mortgage document that had nothing even remotely to do with what we requested.


Not surprised... but still upset.

I kinda understand if they wrongly believed they couldn't complete it, but why not just TELL me that or ask me for further details, instead of doing something so OBVIOUSLY different from what I requested? Our mortgage company is making tens of thousands of dollars off of us... but they can't sign a form, or at least have the guts to tell us they can't and/or won't?

Did they think I wouldn't know the difference between the signed form I requested and the random pieces of paper they carelessly mailed me? lol.

Sorry. A little irritable over here today. :-(

Dossier Documents

Not an interesting update, but we're starting to gather documents for our dossier.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is exciting.


A bit frustrating at times though, because we've already gathered most of these same documents for our home study... but everything for the dossier needs to be issued and notarized within 6 months from the day it's submitted. So the mountains of paperwork begin again.

I don't think I've ever been happier to do something so boring and tedious though.

And happiness is paramount. :-)