We are registered in Krasnoyarsk!

Sorry for the lack of posts but nothing much has been going on, but that is part of the process. I emailed the agency to see if we are on 'The List' yet in Krasnoyarsk, and she let me know that we are and are waiting for a referral! Yay! Keep in mind that with us requesting siblings, and not knowing who might be 'in front' of us, the wait time is not something that we can guess at. We are hoping for something quicker, but we realize that we might be waiting for some time.

On a not so happy note, we found out last week that one of our cats (George) looks to have kidney failure. Way back in April we took George and Lily to the vet to get updated shots as part of the adoption process. George was overweight so we needed to try and cut back his food to help him lose weight. He had been losing weight gradually, but we took him in for a check-up for an non-weight thing and we also realized that he seemed thinner than he should be. The gradual weight loss hid the fact that he lost lots. The vets ran some tests including blood work as George seemed ok except for the 30% or so weight loss.

Friday we get the word that it looks like kidney failure. I was worried already and then I'm told that. Fortunately, treatment and a change in diet will allow George to be fine and live a long life which is so great. I was surprised when the vet told me that we could opt for a kidney transplant or do dialysis, I didn't realize those were things done for cats. What we are doing is giving George some fluids through an IV/needle setup to get him the fluids that he needs. He has a net loss of fluids due to the kidney issue, among other things.

So, please think some good thoughts for George. I'll get some pics of both George and Lily so you can see how pretty they both are (but don't tell George I called him pretty).

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.

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.