Merry Christmas!!

Hopefully by this time next year, we'll have a new addition to our family! :)

We got our psych report back...and passed! We're sane enough to be parents I guess?!?

We're just waiting on the completition of the home study report. Once that's done, it's time to get everything notarized and apostilled! After that, we turn it in to our agency and they send it to Russia!! We're actually ahead of schedule on a lot of things, so that's positive.

Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year!! We're leaving tomorrow to visit Mike's side of the family in Galesburg, and then headed to my side Christmas Eve.

Home Study Visit

Our home study visit went great!! She asked tons of questions about our life, growing up, etc...and then spent about 5 minutes looking around the house. So much for obsessively cleaning it!

Goonie behaved...however, towards the end she got an energy burst and starting running circles around the living room. Crazy dog! At least the home study lady had dogs, so she understood.

She said it'll be about 3-4 weeks for her to compile all the info and then she'll send us the rough draft before she finalizes it. I guess there is no 2nd visit?! Works for us!

1st Home Study Visit

Eeeek! Our 1st home study visit is this coming Sat. I'm a litle freaked out! It's at 2:30, and I have basketball games at 11 & 12, so hopefully I'll have enough time to get ready. Mike's in Virginia this week, so I'll get the luxury of cleaning the house.

Keep us in your thoughts that things will go smoothly! :)

Visit with the Psychologist

It was interesting. We were interviewed separately, and she asked questions about our families and adoption info. We had to take a personality test - omg it was 560 questions!!! They were all true/false and a lot of the questions were repeated, but worded differently. We'll meet with her again in a few weeks to discuss the results.

Right now, we're just waiting....waiting......that's the theme of this process! We've done our part, now it's time to wait for others.

We're hoping we can get the homestudy done soon. Our case worker will come to our house 2 separate times to interview us and check that our home is ok. I hope Goonie behaves! :)

Psychologist Visit

On Thursday, we get to meet with a psychologist. Part of the contract requires us to get a consult with a psychologist and take a personality test. I hope we pass it! I'm a little worried about Mike...lol just kidding.

Both of our primary doc physicals will be done this week. Yea!

We've completed pretty much everything we can at this point! We're just waiting for our home study to be done. Once that's done, we'll have to get everything notarized & apostilled. Then things will get sent to Russia!

Adoption Classes

Our adoption online classes are DONE! :) Part of the contract requires us to do 10 hours of classes pertaining to international adoption. Luckily, since our agency is out of state, we were able to do them online.

One thing to check off the neverending list!

Kemerovo, Russia

Here is the region where the orphanage is located.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemerovo

How we started!

After numerous failed fertility treatments, we decided to pursue adoption. We've found a wonderful agency and have decided on Russia!! We signed with the agency on 11/5/08. Right now it's just a huge pile of overwhelming paperwork, but we know it'll be worth it all in the end.

Here's a *brief* timeline of what's going to happen.

1. Get a home study (in process) - This is where a social worker compiles info about us and deems whether or not we are fit to be adoptive parents.

2. Start Immigration process. This is an easy form, but takes about 2-3 months to be processed.

3. Dossier - this is the time consuming part! We're working on this right now. Basically, it's a bunch of paperwork that will need to be notarized and apostilled (a step above notary, done by the Secretary of State). We will also have to get physicals and get a psychologist report done. This Dossier is our ticket to Russia. We will have to make 2 trips there.

4. Get a referral of a child! We have decided on adopting a BOY. Once we receive some info, we will travel to Russia for trip #1 (5-7 days in length). In this trip we'll meet the child and go to the court to petition for adoption.

5. About 2 months later - trip #2 (10-21 days in length). This is when we'll go to Court to finalize the adoption and take OUR child home! :)


Obviously, there's a lot 'in between', but this is the jist of it. We're so excited!!

My 1st Blog entry!

My 1st blog!

I thought it would be appropriate to blog about our journey to adopt from Russia.

Feel free to check in anytime for updates!!