Elvis has left the building!

Well, maybe not Elvis but a four pound (really) stack of papers left today for the agency. Heather sent off the dossier from work and they should arrive at the agency on Tuesday. Wow! The next step is for the staff there to make sure that all the documents are there and that we didn't screw anything up or forget something.

The dossier is then sent to Moscow so that the agency staff there can translate all of the papers. This is then sent to Krasnoyarsk to be registered with the Ministry of Education. This takes approximately 3-4 weeks. Once we are registered at the MOE they can then begin looking for a referral for us. This may take some time since we are asking for siblings, but our fingers are crossed.

Some countries allow you to be open to more than one child and you get a referral of however many children based on your choice. So, if we were open to siblings we might get a referral for a single child or siblings, whatever happened to come first. In Russia, you have to specify whether you are ready for a single child or siblings and you get that choice. We can always switch to a single child easily, but we don't want to.

We also don't know how many families that are already on the list are looking for siblings or only single children, so we don't know where we are in the line, so to speak.

The agency sends out country-specific email newsletters each month, here are some tidbits from this month's newsletter for Russia...
They have placed 45 children so far this year from Russia.
25 families are waiting for court or preparing to travel for the first trip.
18 families are waiting for referrals or considering the ones they have gotten.
38 families are preparing their dossiers or doing their homestudies.

I almost forgot about the other paperwork that Heather sent off today, the paperwork for the immigration approval. This approval is needed to bring the children into the country, allowing them to become citizens when the plane lands. We had to wait for the homestudy to be complete before applying for this approval, but it is not needed until the second dossier piece and second trip.

We now mostly wait. We can do a few things for the second dossier used for the second trip, but mostly just waiting for now. Think good thoughts while we wait, please.

Final set of docs are apostilled

I decided today that I would drive into Richmond (not very far) to hand deliver the papers that needed the apostille. I was hoping that it would be quicker if I went there in person plus it can be another part of the experience. Well, after navigating the sometimes confusing streets of Richmond I found a place to park. I finally made my way into the Patrick Henry building and up to the office for the authentications (Virginia uses the term authentication as opposed to apostille).

After I described what I needed, I was asked if I wanted to wait. I was kind of surprised, as I was expecting to come back another day to get them once they were done. I asked how long and was told "about twenty minutes". Wow! So I waited for them to be done and left after a little bit, happy that I had the docs in our hands.

This means that once we make copies of all the docs and a second set of pictures we can send off the dossier! Wow, that was quicker than we were thinking. Now, I don't know how long it will take for the agency to make sure we didn't miss anything and have the dossier translated, so I can't give a timeframe for when they will be sent to Russia. I believe that they will tell us once they send it over, though. Once it is sent over I'm not sure of how long until it is registered and we are officially on the list.

I am also going to send off the paperwork for the immigration approval for 2 children tomorrow. This is not needed until we work on the paperwork for the second part of the dossier, sent in before trip #2. For this immigration approval we will need more fingerprints taken, but this time in Alexandria.

So we almost have the dossier sent off. Hard to believe that we are at this point already.

We got the final set of docs from the agency

We were surprised today to get an envelope in the mail from the agency. It contained the last set of notarized documents we needed, along with the home studies. The next thing to do is on Monday get them to the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth to get authenticated. Once that is done, we make copies of all of the documents for the dossier. We send in the originals and 2 sets of copies to the agency along with all of our pictures, plus we keep one set of the copies for ourselves (we later take them to Russia).

Another thing that we can do is submit the paperwork for CIS (immigration) approval to bring in children to the country. We had to wait on this as we needed a copy of the home study, but it is not needed before trip #1 so it is fine. This will take several weeks so it shouldn't be a problem.
Hopefully this batch of authentications will take no longer than the first batch.

For those that have been seeing all the news about Russia and Georgia, we have been told by our agency that this should not affect the adoption. It is in a region that is not close to ours and we shouldn't worry about it being an issue. This is good news to hear for us. We are getting close and something like that happens, not news that we wanted to hear.

A Brief Little Update

Well, nothing real different but I wanted to post a small update. We finally got our batch of documents back from the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Unfortunately the marriage certificates we got form the county were not done exactly correct, so I need to get them fixed or re-done. Not a big deal, though. We also found out that (or I had missed it in the list of docs for the dossier) that we are waiting on a few things to come back from the agency that will also need to be notarized/apostilled/copied before sending the final dossier back to the agency.

That means that the new versions of the marriage certificates can go along with the second batch of papers to get authenticated. This won't really slow us down, no worries here.

We watched a presentation from the agency about the travel portion of the process, although it did get some into the referral. There were some very interesting things to find out about cultural differences between here and Russia, along with lots of good tips on what to bring or how to act or dress. It will definitely be a case of acting like the locals when we go.

Hopefully we will get the docs from the agency soon and then we can get to the Secretary of the Commonwealth again.

One other thing that I finished up was the batch of pictures to send off. We needed pics of various rooms in the house, front/back of the house, schools, church, etc. so you can get an idea of where the children will be growing up. I put together a nice little packet with each page having 2 pictures neatly taped (with the tape hidden behind the picture, good gift wrapping trick) and captions for each. I felt like I was in school again working on a project. I was going to put on a cover page, but I felt it was enough. Now that we were delayed some I might end up putting one on, but I don't want to go overboard.

Hopefully another update soon.

Docs are off to the Secretary of the Commonwealth

We were able to get our documents notarized yesterday and also got copies of the marriage certificate quickly. I was able to send them off today to the Secretary of the Commonwealth for the apostille portion. Hopefully they can be done quickly, but I don't know how involved the process is.

We are going to work on taking pictures of the house and the community to send also. Once the documents come back from the gov we need to make 3 copies of each, then send off 2 sets of copies and the originals to the agency. Hopefully I didn't screw anything up in sending them off.
(fingers crossed)

Dossier Instructions have arrived.

Today we got an email with the instructions for both parts of the dossier. The dossier is just a collection of official documents that are translated and sent over to Russia. The exact contents vary by region, so we had to wait until we were assigned a region to begin. Part 1 of the dossier is done and sent to Russia to get us registered over there in order to get a referral. Part 2 is used for the process after trip 1.
Part 1 is mostly getting some forms notarized and apostilled, which is a fancy word for a process in which the Secretary of the Commonwealth authenticates the notary stamps. We will hopefully be able to send this to the agency very soon so that they can have it processed, translated and sent to Russia. Wow!


I want to take a brief moment to give a basic rundown of the process from here on out. Once part 1 of the dossier is sent and we are registered with the Ministry of Education, we wait for a referral. With Russia you have to specify that you are requesting a referral for a single child or siblings as opposed to either, so we put in a request for siblings. Once we get a referral and accept it, we will wait for a call about trip 1. This trip is primarily to meet the children and officially accept the referral and is about 1 week. After trip 1, we send in part 1 of the dossier and await the call for trip 2. Trip 2 is a little longer, a few weeks, and hopefully we will not have to wait very long between trips. It will be hard to have to leave someone you just met for a few weeks until you can go back.

Trip 2 will start off in Krasnoyarsk where we spend more time with the children each day, experience the city and culture, then finally go before a judge to officially be given custody. There is then a waiting period to make sure that there is no random family member of the children to take custody. We then travel to Moscow for a few days, mainly to get visa for the children to enter the US and finalize the adoption. Once we land back in the US they will become citizens.


So, it sounds a little simple with all the steps, but there are lots of little things to think about. We will have a tough time figuring out what to pack, but with trip 1 being shorter we can hopefully use that as a way to find out what we should bring for trip 2. We have found that in Krasnoyarsk there is a Subway, a California Pizza Kitchen and a Baskin Robbins within walking distance from the hotel that we will be very possibly staying in. Even if we stay somewhere else, it is nice to know that there are these and other places that we are used to seeing. It's kind of funny to think that we will be halfway around the world and about 12 times zones away and we can go into a subway.

Welcome to Krasnoyarsk!

We have been assigned the region of Krasnoyarsk for our adoption. We will soon get detailed information on what documents we need to provide for the dossier. Once we get the documents together, we send it off and it makes it's way to Russia.
Now for a little info about Krasnoyarsk ...
The region itself is a rather large area in Eastern Siberia, and the city of Krasnoyarsk is the third largest in Siberia.
Here is a map of both the city and the region within the country, along with the flag.

You can find out more information using Wikipedia (or other online sources) here.
For those who follow the NHL, Alexander Semin of the Washington Capitals was born in Krasnoyarsk. More information to come as we research our new region.