USCIS fingerprint appointment

September 2nd is the next big day in our long adoption wait. We got an updated home study this past week from our new home study agency too. Quite the hassle this time around, but it is done! After this appointment I think our adoption process will be very quiet for several months. I'm guessing we will get our 171-H in a few months after the fingerprints but other than that we won't have much going on. I guess I should be thankful that we won't hit the update everything faze for about six more months. Then the scramble will begin again.

I 600A Received by USCIS

Got a letter yesterday from homeland security stating that our I600A app was received. Now we just need to get the fingerprint appointment.
Never in my life did I think we would get mail from the department of homeland security, the FBI, and the white house. In some ways it makes me feel like my kids are so damn important the government has to celebrate their arrival with us. :) Oscar actually got his citizenship certificate on inauguration day last year. We were watching all the inauguration coverage I went to get the mail to find a huge white envelope with a return address from the white house. Very cool timing I thought. :)

One month down

Well it has been about one month since our dossier made it to Vologda, only about 11 more months to go! :)

Here is another Oscar update photo just to remind me that I am plenty busy with just one little guy running around! :) He was yelling, "Russia" for this picture and was soooo excited when I showed him his Russia shirt that we bought for him in Moscow. I can't believe we bought it a year and a half ago and that it actually fits him (well almost).

Oscar Update

Just a fun picture to show how much Oscar is enjoying the summer!

We have a region

Last week we got the call that we are registered in the region of Vologda. It was so nice just to hear that things were moving along and our dossier had landed. We are excited that the region is in between Moscow and St. Petersburg. We are hoping to get to see St. Petersburg on one of the first 2 trips. Since we have already been to Moscow 3 times we thought it would be nice to see another famous part of Russia.
Now the long wait is on. Our agency said we should just plan on 12 months and they hope they will be able to surprise us sooner. We shall see...

New homestudy agency

So a week after we got our dossier off to our agency we were informed our homestudy agency was closing. Thankfully our adoption agency doesn't think it will be a problem, but it is sad. We used this agency to adopt Oscar and they have been doing his post-placement reports too. So now the adoption agency and the homestudy agency that we started out adoption journey with are both gone. It is just sad to think how difficult it has become to adoption internationally. So many agencies have closed because people just can't do it anymore!
Hopefully our new homestudy agency will be good!

Dossier is on its way to Russia!!! - Finally

So after starting the homestudy process in December and dossier paperwork in January, it was finally all complete as of the first week of May! After lots and lots of re-notarizing and two trips downtown for apostilles everything was finally finished. There were over 160 documents when it was all done.
We started thinking we were going to Tver, Russia but after problems with IL notaries and Tver we opted to switch regions. The switch of regions caused all the re-notarizing. At least medicals didn't need to be redone!
So now we wait to find out what region will be best for us. Our agency will call coordinators around Russia in the next month and find out where our odds of a young, healthy little girl with the shortest wait would most likely be.