We have travel dates! Our caseworker is out of the office today, tomorrow and Wednesday, but assured us that another member of the Russia team would call us if travel dates came through, and about noon today-they did! Unfortunately they have asked us to travel the exact week that we told them we would be unavailable to travel, April 21st! The Russian offices will be closed the first two weeks of May, so if we didn't accept these dates we would have to wait until sometime after May 14th to go!!! So, I was a little stressed out after talking to Wade who made it sound like he really couldn't get out of this work trip he's to go on that week. After school my principal, who had heard the whole dilema at lunch, told me he was sure that we would come to a decision that would work out that we would both be comfortable with. I really didn't agree at that moment, but.... by the end of the day, he was right! Here's what we've decided on:
All along my dad had been hoping to get to go on one of the trips. We all know that sometimes these adoption journeys end up taking three trips, so way back when he went ahead and got a passport, bought a Russian language book (that I borrowed and still have-guess I'd better return it!) and even told the doctor he works for that he may be taking a trip to Russia in about a year or so. Since only one parent has to travel for the first trip and Wade can't get out of his work thing, I asked him what he thought about my dad going instead. At first he didn't like the idea because he does want to be there, but we both want her home as soon as possible and waiting until the middle to end of May for the first trip will put the second trip way into the summer. So, he called my dad who was still willing and able to go, and we decided this would be the best decission for our family.
So, look up this blog the week of April 21st-26th to read all about our first trip to Astrakhan to meet sister!
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Paperwork
After accepting the referral in Astrakhan on Tuesday, our social worker e-mailed us the list of paperwork we needed to prepare, have notarized and apostilled to send to Russia before they would "invite" us to travel. I quickly prepared everything we needed and had it ready on Wednesday (yesterday) to have notarized. Since someone at Wade's work is a notary, T, J and I all drove to his work yesterday afternoon to have it all notarized. But, while she was stamping everything I noticed her notary commission expires the 28th of May. I thought I remembered a stipulation with all the adoption paperwork that the notary seal cannot be close to expiring, so when we got home I called our social worker to check on this. I was right, the document expires when the notary stamp expires, so since we probably won't have 'sister' before May 28th, we would have to re-do all these documents! So, I printed them all out again and made arrangements to be at the adoption agency by 8:15 this morning to have someone there notarize them.
Another thing we needed were photos; 2 of the two of us, 1 of the family, 1 of the boys, 1 front of the house, 1 back of the house, and four different rooms in the house. I found them all on the computer and put them in a folder hoping that Wade would arrange them nicely in Photoshop and print them out when he got home from bowling. He did, then when he went to print them at 11:00pm we found our color ink cartridge was out! So, I ran to Walgreens at 11pm last night to get a new one so we could print the pictures.
Anyway, it all worked out as planned today. We left the house about 7:45am, went to the agency, got everything notarized, went downtown to the Secretary of State office and turned the papers over to them to be apostilled, went to have breakfast, read a lot of books in the library while we waited for them to call and tell us they were ready, then...about 11am everything was good to go! We went back to the agency to turn it all in so they can mail everything to Russia tomorrow (they only mail to Russia on Fridays), then Wade went on to work and the boys and I went home. Whewww, it was a long morning. Tonight or tomorrow I'll take a look at all the documents we have to have ready to take with us on our first trip.
Another thing we needed were photos; 2 of the two of us, 1 of the family, 1 of the boys, 1 front of the house, 1 back of the house, and four different rooms in the house. I found them all on the computer and put them in a folder hoping that Wade would arrange them nicely in Photoshop and print them out when he got home from bowling. He did, then when he went to print them at 11:00pm we found our color ink cartridge was out! So, I ran to Walgreens at 11pm last night to get a new one so we could print the pictures.
Anyway, it all worked out as planned today. We left the house about 7:45am, went to the agency, got everything notarized, went downtown to the Secretary of State office and turned the papers over to them to be apostilled, went to have breakfast, read a lot of books in the library while we waited for them to call and tell us they were ready, then...about 11am everything was good to go! We went back to the agency to turn it all in so they can mail everything to Russia tomorrow (they only mail to Russia on Fridays), then Wade went on to work and the boys and I went home. Whewww, it was a long morning. Tonight or tomorrow I'll take a look at all the documents we have to have ready to take with us on our first trip.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
It's Official
We officially accepted a referral in the region of Astrakhan yesterday! For those of you who don't know us here's a little background info...
We are Wade and Amy Williams. We have two biological boys ages 6 and 8 who we'll call T and J while we're here, and we're adopting a three and a half year old daughter from Astrakhan, Russia.
We decided in January 2007 to adopt, we had our home study in May, 2007 and submitted our dossier to Tver, Russia in July 2007. The dossier was never registered in Tver though, and this turned out to be a good thing as Tver has been quite picky about paperwork lately and things have not been moving quickly or smoothly there for quite some time now. We were considering a special needs girl in another region, then were called last week about this girl in Astrakhan. We decided that another couple may be better equipped to deal with the first girl's needs and called our social worker yesterday to tell her, yes, we're ready to go to Astrakhan!
We are now working on getting a few more documents put together, notarized and apostilled. We hope to have this all finished by tomorrow to be mailed to Russia on Friday. Once they're received and translated we should learn our travel dates! We'll let you all know the travel dates as soon as we are called with them!
We are Wade and Amy Williams. We have two biological boys ages 6 and 8 who we'll call T and J while we're here, and we're adopting a three and a half year old daughter from Astrakhan, Russia.
We decided in January 2007 to adopt, we had our home study in May, 2007 and submitted our dossier to Tver, Russia in July 2007. The dossier was never registered in Tver though, and this turned out to be a good thing as Tver has been quite picky about paperwork lately and things have not been moving quickly or smoothly there for quite some time now. We were considering a special needs girl in another region, then were called last week about this girl in Astrakhan. We decided that another couple may be better equipped to deal with the first girl's needs and called our social worker yesterday to tell her, yes, we're ready to go to Astrakhan!
We are now working on getting a few more documents put together, notarized and apostilled. We hope to have this all finished by tomorrow to be mailed to Russia on Friday. Once they're received and translated we should learn our travel dates! We'll let you all know the travel dates as soon as we are called with them!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
