Post from old blog from beginning of process

It has been awhile since I have posted on our blog and many things have happened.

We finished our home study which was a breeze. Alma was wonderful and made us feel so comfortable. I felt kind of guilty because she didn’t look in our rooms, interview Luke or any of the other hard stuff others have posted about. She was thrilled with us because we had almost all of the paperwork she needed and ready for her to review. She had our home study complete and in our mailbox within 2 weeks.

After we had our home study we submitted it to BCIS to complete our I 600 form. This is what the US required adoptive parents to do. We had to submit finger prints as well as an application and our home study. I had heard that Orlando BCIS was quick and so I was at our mailbox daily hoping to get our “golden ticket”. Finally I got something from them but it wasn’t what I was hoping for. It was a letter requesting information about Drew’s arrest. Luckily when he was in Vegas the last time he got all of the paperwork we needed to prove the case had been purged. We submitted this to BCIS and within a week we had our “golden ticket”. I have been hanging on to this document (I 171H) for dear life! We will need it when we leave Ukraine.

The I 171 H was the last document we needed to complete our dossier. I sent everything by courier to the Secretary of State to be apostilled. The courier who does this for adoptive parents found one little problem with our medical release and fixed it for us before she submitted it. That same day she sent all of our documents back to us.

I sent our dossier off to Valentina in Ukraine last Thursday and it was supposed to arrive today. Last I checked on the Fed Ex site it was in Kiev waiting for customs release.

Next Valentina will translate our dossier and then wait in line at the SDA to get it submitted. The SDA is only taking 5-8 American dossiers each Monday. It seems to be taking a month and a half to get dossiers submitted right now. After it is submitted they are supposed to take 20 days to review it and schedule your appointment. This has been taking them 45 days instead. However, they have just appointed a new director so I am hoping things will start running the way it is supposed to. We anticipate we will travel in early fall. This will be perfect for us because Luke can start school and then we can leave.

I have been feeling all different things during this process. It seems when I am tired I think to myself “what are you doing?” but I know deep inside I would regret the decision to never have a daughter. I went and bought her bedding and I felt so excited. A dream come true.

I am afraid of our SDA appointment. What if they say there aren’t any girls in our age range? Drew doesn’t want to take a child that has any medical problems…not even a cleft lip/palate. I think if it is surgically correctable we should consider it. We will have Dr. Yuri evaluate the child so we know exactly what we are dealing with. Things have gone so well so far I can only anticipate things will continue this way.