We got the CIS approval today!

We got the approval, really a pre-approval, for the CIS paperwork that we sent in. It is more of a pre-approval to say that we can bring in the children, as long as other conditions are met. These conditions will surely be met, so we shouldn't have any issues with that. The next step in the immigration part is that this info is sent to Moscow for when we travel there after leaving Krasnoyarsk with the children. At that time we fill a form out to request that the children are to be made our immediate family, something along those lines.

The fingerprinting that we had actually went very smooth. The building was just off of I-64 and there weren't many people in there. We each got fingerprinted quickly and we out in about 15 minutes. The fingerprinting went much better than when we had it done at the local police station for the early paperwork. Locally, they had the familiar steps of putting the ink on your fingers and rolling them on a piece of paper. The USCIS process was computerized and your fingers were placed onto a glass scanner type of equipment. You could see the lines of the fingerprints on the monitor as the finger w as rolled around to get a good 'print'. The best part was no ink on the hands to clean off.

So, hopefully we will be registered in Krasnoyarsk soon and the countdown will really begin. Keep your fingers crossed!

Say Hello To My Lil' Friend

Ok, so Tony isn't here but I wanted to give a quick update. I had emailed the agency asking if we would be told when we were at each stage of the process. Well, one of the responses I got informed us that our dossier was on it's way to Russia!!! It will be processed/translated by the agency staff there, then sent to the agency staff in Krasnoyarsk. They will then register it with the Ministry of Education and we will get on the list, supposedly happening in 2-3 weeks. Yay!

So, now that we have a few moments of free time while waiting, I will post a few wildlife pics that I have to hold you over until we get more information.
The first pic is of my friend Tony, hence the reference to Scarface. He was sitting outside in the yard, of course far from the house. He is a black racer a little over 3' in length. Heather made fun of me because I took after my father when I got on the ground close to the snake to get this shot (not that close, though). I need to see if I can post some of his pics here, better than mine are.


Ok, now a nice friend. I have a bird feeder pole behind the house. There are several types of feeders that hang on it, along with hummingbird feeders outside the screen porch. They attract lots of birds, too many to name (but I will if you ask). Here is a shot of a pine warbler, sitting on a basic plastic feeder (not a good shot of it) that can hold various types of food. A good generic feeder (the same one stolen by the bear!).

Scheduled to get fingerprints for CIS Approval

A little late in posting this, but we recently got a letter giving us the appointment times for the fingerprinting needed for CIS approval. We weren't expecting this so soon, relatively speaking. I guess it is good to not have much in the way of timeline expectations so everything can be sooner than expected. We get our fingerprints done next week in Norfolk, although we had thought we would need to go to Alexandria for them.
Once they are done, we don't know how long the rest of the CIS process takes but hopefully not too much longer. We aren't in a rush with it as we don't need the approval letter until we are preparing for dossier #2.
Not much else other than waiting, but we will update as soon as we hear anything about the dossier progress.