More documents are on their way to Ukraine tonight. Though it is a royal pain to have to redo docs, I am grateful that the Secretary of State is only 35 minutes away. I hate to think how painful it would be if we lived hours away from the place that gives our paperwork their magical appeal. What is so special about that golden apostille seal anyway?
I watched our agency coordinator seal the envelope that has our completed dossier. It is officially on its way to Kiev. I can't believe how good it feels to finally be done with this stage. Now I can take a deep breath and relax for a bit.
Today we got fingerprinted. I sure hope our I-600A approval letter comes soon.
Meanwhile, I am going to finish up three more documents that we need for our dossier. Thankfully, I can apostille the remaining documents locally.
One of the forms that I need to do is the "application to adopt." I am still stumped on how to word this particular sentence. For families that have filled out this form, I would love to hear how you finished this sentence.
We would like to adopt ___________.
Remember, this sentence is where you describe the type of child(ren) that you would like to adopt.
This came in the mail today! And yes, I am smiling. 
(I thought this was appropriate since we just got back from Caleb's orthodontist appointment.)
Well for those of you that are following along, remember how I mailed off our documents for apostilling back on Dec 17th? Well, I hadn't' seen a check clear and had no idea whether or not they even got my documents, so I spent the day (off and on) calling the Sacramento Notary Office to check on things.
After my 20th call or so late in the afternoon, I finally got through to someone who nearly scared the dickens out of me by saying that only one of my documents had been apostilled and they were mailing everything back to me. I was really nervous and asked her to please find the person who actually handled my documents to see if they could verify this. This just didn't make sense. Why would I send a check for $220 if I only wanted one apostille?
After what seemed like forever, the woman came back on the phone and calmed my nerves. Her mistake, she had read the computer info wrong, and all 11 of our apostilled docs were mailed back to us on the 31st. We should be getting them back any day.
I must have thanked her 10 times before I got off the phone with her.
Has anyone ever told you how stressful international adoptions can be?
Hi Everyone. Just our marriage certificate came in the mail yesterday. Still progress though. But, I was feeling pretty daring and emailed USCIS asking them, "What's up?"
No really, it was quite polite. I asked them if I should have gotten a receipt for the check they cashed almost two weeks ago. They supposedly have two business days to respond. We'll see.
Oh, and thank you for all of of your coments. They have been so encouraging.
We just got our fingerprints done last Friday and I got the official police clearance letters in the mail today. Unbelievable.
I hope USCIS is just as fast.
We just got back from having our 1st set of fingerprints done for our police clearance letter. Check.
Color photocopy of passports. Check.
Mailed off for marriage certificate. Check. BTW, did you know that you have to have the request notarized?
Employment verification letter on company letterhead. Check.
And now I am working on our proof of home ownership and letter of guarantee to register our child.
It feels good to know that we are half way done with the paperwork. Compared to Russia this is a breeze.
Our homestudy is in the mail. 
We are getting fingerprinted for our police clearance this Thursday.
Things are moving right along.
When John and I went in to get our skin test, the nurse filled out new medical forms for five of the kids. I was there to help her, to make sure no mistakes were made. Yeah, they are done! I've already faxed them to our homestudy agency.
While we were there, Jonny went ahead and got the rest of his shots since he is now four. Jonny was much braver than John, and didn't cry until his third shot which is the painful MMR. But now he is done with shots, and he got a cool prize for being so brave. More yeahing!
Now for the biggest part, the medical form for the dossier which will be done on Thursday. Even though we only need 2 forms on their letterhead, I have 10 just in case. :)
When I called to talk to our home study agency I was surprised to find out that the Hague Convention requires parenting classes, even for parents that have already successfully adopted, like in our case. Thankfully, we only need five hours versus the ten hours required for new families just starting out. I have even heard that some agencies require up to 25 hours. Yikes!
Anyways, we are using http://www.thinkingofadopting.com/ to complete our five hours of training. What is really cool is that, it is all online. After looking at other sites, I found this one to be the easiest, most accommodating, and most affordable.
A couple of other online course are:
http://www.adoptionlearningpartners.org/
http://www.adopteducation.com/
http://www.heartofthematterseminars.com/
We are almost done with the classes and need only one more certificate. This has not held up the paperwork stage of the homestudy, and I am happy to report that we are almost done with all of it as well. All we need to do is the employment verification, and medicals.
I am meeting with the office manager at our doctor's office in the morning to discuss with her exactly what we need them to do. Since they were more than happy to help us last time, I am hopeful that things will go well tomorrow and I will be in and out of there in no time.
The agency we are using to complete our adoption gave me the exact medical form needed for our dossier, and a sample of how it should be filled out. How much more simpler could it get?
