Now Arizona?

So when our court date got moved back two weeks it was because the judge wanted a little more information on our employment letters. Mine was no issue. I emailed the school district's HR secretary and she had it done in a day. Joe's on the other hand was a whole different story. Joe's company has a form letter for employment letters so adding additional info is not allowed. Joe typed up the form letter and added the one line of additional information and his boss could not sign it because it did not come from HR. So thankfully his boss got involved and called the corporate HR department to request this new letter. The really entertaining part is that the letter is now coming from Arizona. We live in IL. So naturally we had a day of panicking trying to figure out how we are going to get an apostille from Arizona and get the document to our agency in Indiana by this Thursday. So here is the crazy luck that we have- one of my good friend's in-laws live in Phoenix. Her sister-in-law is going to get the apostille for us and fedex the letter to our agency. So in the end we are getting the letter today, overnighting it to AZ, and it should be in IN by Tuesday or Wednesday. Please pray that this all works out! Two weeks from today we will be heading back to Russia. :)

Confirmation

Well our court date is April 12th. We were tentatively scheduled for March 31st but the judge wanted two more documents. Thankfully, they shouldn't be anything too difficult to get together. We will be leaving on the 9th, so we have 3 more weeks of waiting. Looks like baby sister will be coming home around Mother's Day. :)

Hoping for Confirmation Soon!!!

We got a message on Monday that our agency is trying to confirm our court date. I was hoping I would hear today, but no luck. Maybe tomorrow, but I'm just hoping we hear this week. Tomorrow I will be shopping for gifts and trying not to buy too much cute little girl stuff when I hit the outlet malls!

Court Date...Maybe

So yesterday we got the call that our "tentative" court date is March 31st!!! Not sure what the "tentative" is all about, but at this point I will take it! This is just great news all around because it is in March, as they said it would be, and it is the week of my spring break at school. I won't lose time with my students and I won't lose any of my days for my maternity leave. The couple that we traveled with have a "tentative" date for the week after us, so we are hoping we can all make the final trip together. We shall see!

In the end it is a miracle

I just wanted to post the insanity of this past week regarding our paperwork. A friend of mine who also adopted her children from Russia perfectly stated what this process is like: "Just remember this is your equivalent to labor. Only you don't get the benefit of an epidural." Now I have never given birth and we may be talking about different kinds of labor, but this week was quite the painful experience.

Monday: Our agency wrote an email apologizing that they just realized we needed to update 39 documents that had expired in our dossier. They needed them notarized, apostilled, and in their office by Thursday so they could send them to NY to a family that would hand carry our docs this weekend. For some this isn't a huge deal, however we are a 1.5 hour train ride from Chicago so I had to take a day off of work. Luckily I had Monday off and their was an open bank that notarized for us that night.

Wednesday: I took the 9am train to Chicago with all the documents. I stopped at Starbucks to get a hot chocolate for the train ride and I should have seen the signs then. They gave me a caramel machiato (sp?) and it was terrible. So got downtown at 10:30 and walked the 6 or so blocks to the apostille office. Handed everything in and then all hell broke loose. The women at the counter informed me that our notary did not stamp one of the docs. I wanted to scream I was so mad at myself. I checked every document, or so I thought, as the guy signed them. Then she tells me they can't apostille copies of our marriage certificates and that I will have to call MN (that is where we got married). I now am really sweating and freaking out. Original marriage certificates from MN can take up to 4 weeks to get plus I would have to send them back for the apostilles. Then she goes on to say that she can't apostille copies of the deed to our home because they are signed by a state official. We will have to go to our county court house and get a certified copy. So now I am beyond freaking out. I walk away and call my adoption agency. The main problem is that they are in IN and we are in IL therefore different apostille rules. IL is so much more difficult and strict about everything when it comes to adoption. Of course my agency is also freaking out and they ask me to beg them one more time and if they say no to get them to write down that they would not do it. I guess they thought that the judge would maybe be more considerate if she saw we were working on things? Well of course they said no and wouldn't write anything for me, they just gave me a flier about their office. So at this point I luckily went into thinking mode. I called my mom in MN and in under 3 hours she had 6 marriage certificates picked up, apostilled, and fedexed to our agency. I took the train back home and went back to the bank. Of course the notary that we used had called in sick that day and they would not stamp the doc with his stamp. So I went home and printed a new one and headed to the county court house. I picked up the certified copies of our deed and went to fedex. I sent everything other than the deed and the one unnotarized document to our agency. I then met my husband at the bank where we got the document notarized. At this point it was 5:45 and we headed home. The next morning Joe got up at 4:45 and got on a train to head downtown to apostille the deed and the other doc. He then fedexed the docs to the family in NY that is hand carrying our documents tomorrow to Russia.

So in the end it is an absolute miracle that all 39 of these documents are heading to Russia tomorrow!!!! Our coordinator is taking them to the judge on Tuesday so hopeful we will hear something soon!

More paperwork

Well here we go...more paperwork. Nothing really terrible, but still...more paperwork. Our agency and translator realized that some of our original dossier documents needed to be updated, of course a week after we got everything else done. So frustrating, but what can we do other than just get them done. Plus the letter we need from DCFS was in our social worker's hands last Wednesday and she noticed they got the license number wrong! How does that happen??? Don't you think you would check the agency license number!!! All they have to get right is the name and license number of the agency. Our social worker is hopeful they will get a new one tomorrow and she will fedex it overnight to me for Wednesday morning delivery. The moral of the story is I'm working on things as soon as I finish my complaining here, taking a day off on Wednesday to go get the apostilles (hopefully with the DCFS letter), and everything will be on a plane to Russia with another family on Saturday. So in the end we will be one week behind our original plan. The other nerve wracking news is that our documents the agency sent to Russia on Friday are now sitting in Moscow but "cannot be delivered due to uncontrolable circumstances" according to UPS. Now based on my excperience shipping to Russia this is pretty normal so I'm not freaking out too much yet. Our agency said the coordinator had planned to deliver our documents to the region on Thursday, but now she may just wait for everything to come and go next week. I know it could be worse, but I just had to complain! Here is to hoping I get everything done on Wednesday, things are on their way to Russia on Saturday, and our other documents get delivered!

Trying to believe in the optimism

So all of our documents went to Russia today and our agency and coordinator are saying they are planning for a court date in mid-March. Now I would love to believe that this is true, but really? Less than two months? It is just so hard for me to believe that it could happen that fast. Every time I am in a store I hear voices - one tells me to shop for Olivia since she may be home in 6 weeks and the other voice says what the *&#$%% are you thinking- don't you dare get your hopes up. After waiting for over 6 months to bring Oscar home and a few months of therapy to help me through that I just hate that I am getting my hopes up. I am desperately trying to just let it go since I have NO control of this what so ever.
Now just to clarify-I don't actually hear voices- at least not yet. However, if this adoption takes 6 more months you never know.