Our adoption coordinator got back from vacation and we have heard from her a couple of times since then...the first portion of our paperwork has been sent to Russia to be translated and prepared!! That is very good news because now we will be able to make the first trip which is to hand-deliver the paperwork to the Russian Department of Education. The second portion will be for when we go to court on our second or third trips...yes, that's right, we have to make three trips.

We have been told that we are next in line to travel because the other family that is preparing to travel to Kaliningrad does not have all their paperwork in yet. We were told by our coordinator here in the states, that..."Once the coordinator (Yuri) has the documents prepared or even prior to their being finished he will let us know a travel time. He is waiting and ready for a family to come so he will move things along as quickly as he can."

We will be getting a packet of travel information within a week...woo hoo!!

I got an email from a woman that I met through our adoption agency. She and her husband adopted a little boy from Kazakhstan last year. It was really great to hear from her...she helped alleviate some of my anxieties and it was nice to hear that she has all the same ones. She told me today that they were thinking of adopting again after the first of 2005, but then she found out she was pregnant...they are now 6 months along after many years of trying :)

I think I need to find more people to connect with who are going through or have been through the same process. For the support and the friendships :)

Oh well...time to go to bed...early for a Friday night, but I am beat. Hopefully we will hear something on Monday...some good news !!

Our adoption coordinator is supposed to be back in town tomorrow...so, hopefully we will hear from her tomorrow or at least by Monday. I hope that she has gotten the FedEx'd forms and that everything is just as we need it to be. I would like to know when we might be travelling as I will have to adjust my work schedule and deadlines accordingly.

Other than the lack of adoption news, our softball team is 4-0 this season...we have a really good team and we play well together. We have been having a lot of fun.

This article came out in the Washington Post this morning...it left me feeling very discouraged and frustrated... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/18/AR2005061801219.html

I FedEx'd our paperwork off to our adoption coordinator on Wednesday...then I emailed her to tell her that they were coming. I get an email back saying that she is on vacation until June 24th...it sure would have been nice to know that beforehand. Now I will worry that she won't get our paperwork. This is such a long process and lack of communication just make it all the more stressful.

We got the rest of our paperwork notarized. Now, we are just waiting for the Secretary of the Commonwealth to send back our apostilled immigration approval letter. As soon as that comes in, we will be FedExing the papers to our Adoption Coordinator...she is impossible to reach by phone. We are constantly playing phone tag...yesterday, I had tons of questions for her about the paperwork, but alas, I had to figure it out on my own.

Hi everyone. I wanted to start this to keep everyone up-to-date on our adoption process. Our friends and family have been so supportive, understanding and helpful throughout all of this. We started our adoption process in November 2004 when we started researching and interviewing different adoption agencies. After considering many different countries as well as domestic adoption, we decided to adopt from Russia.

We have completed all of our paperwork, our homestudy and just recently received immigration approval...then, we decided to change our adoption region from Tula to Kaliningrad. This meant re-doing many of our papers and having them re-notarized. Thankfully, we have a wonderful friend (Katie) who is a notary and has been wonderful helping us out. We will be sending those final papers off to our adoption agency in the next couple of days. They will then have them translated and then we just wait for a referral.

A referral is what you get when a baby has been found for you :) We don't know if we will receive a referral for a boy or a girl. We have decided to leave that up to fate. We have asked for the youngest child possible, but it will be at least 9 months old by the time we receive the referral. So, our baby will be somewhere between 9 and 18 months old by the time we bring he or she home. Our coordinator predicts the age will be around a year old.

We just got back from a family wedding and reunion in Oklahoma...and as usual, I was immediately drawn to all the children there. I could not get enough of my little cousins...it was so great knowing that we would have a child of our own at the next reunion :)