We're Making Progress!

The past six months have been filled with incredible amounts of adoption paperwork. The paperwork mountain started off with gentle foothills. We sent in applications to our local home study agency and the placement agency in GA while Kolya was still visiting with us. The hills got a little steeper with the home study. Our social worker came to our home and interviewed the entire family, including Sara. The social worker was friendly, very supportive and very experienced as an adoptive mom to 8 kids. We ordered copies of all of our birth certificates and marriage certificates, the entire family had physicals at our respective doctor's offices, Nathan and I had several background checks and were fingerprinted for Ohio and the FBI. Then we applied for updated passports and assembled more documents. The passports arrived quickly and we were excited that we were making progress.

Then the home study stalled. Two personal references were missing, and it took weeks before it was sorted out and we found out which ones needed to be resubmitted. Finally, in mid October, our home study was complete and we could move on to the next big step: submitting our US Customs and Immigration application to Homeland Security. It took a few weeks and a very generous friend's mom (She had never met us us, but heard that we were adopting and just wanted to help. She didn't know that we needed the exact amount she sent!) to come up with the money for the USCIS application and fees to the placement agency. That paperwork was submitted in early November and we received our fingerprint appointment date for Homeland Security in mid December. We had a few weeks, so we began working on the rest of our required documents in earnest. We got our employer letters to prove that we do indeed have an income, we ordered extra copies of our marriage certificate, and proof of background checks, and a letter from the bank saying that we do own and live in our home.

Meanwhile, Ukr*ine closed all adoptions for several weeks while they restructured their adoptions department. When they re-opened, many of their forms had changed and they had new requirements. Some were simple changes like a new address, but others were more complicated. For example, the employer letter changed to not only require us to list our total annual income and our total income for the past 6 months, but we also needed to add an individual breakdown of how much income we made each month for the past 6 months. We dutifully had our employers re-write the letters and notarize them again. A few weeks later, we had to ask them to re-do the letters for the third time, as another month had passed and it needed to reflect our most recent income. I thought my boss and Nathan's might kill us if we asked them to do this again! :)

Nathan and I went to our doctor for physical exams, again. (This one was so complicated, that it gets its very own paragraph!) :) This time we needed to be tested for TB, AIDS, and STD's. They couldn't do the TB test at the office, so we scheduled appointments at the Health Department and promptly faxed the results to the doctors office with explicit directions for filling out the required forms. Ukr*ine requires a very detailed form to be printed on the physician's letterhead and stamped with the office stamp that includes the above blood tests complete with the date, lab test number and results; physical and mental health status, as well as any drug and substance abuse findings, and any physical or mental disabilities. Additionally, they require a copy of the physician's license and all documents must be duly notarized. When we picked up the forms at the office, absolutely nothing was correct. The HIV test results were not in our charts, all of the lab numbers were missing, the dates for the exams and tests were all wrong, and the form wasn't notarized. To make matter worse, they used the sample forms we had faxed them from my job at the veterinary hospital and it clearly said so on the top of the form. The final insult was that the office refused to give us the copy of the doctor's license, saying it was illegal to make a copy of it! After much prayer, multiple calls and emails to the office supervisors, and a letter explaining everything again from our agency to the doctor's office, they finally agreed to provide a copy of the license and filled out the forms again. When Nathan picked up the amended medical forms, they were still not close to being done correctly - still no letterhead, no lab numbers, not notarized, and then, when the notary quickly stamped them, still missing the notary's information and date, and on and on. After we and the office made several additions and changes, the forms were still not on letterhead, but were finally deemed acceptable. And we got the copy of the doctor's license that was on letterhead. Thank goodness! This was the worst battle yet, but there were still more peaks to climb...

After our fingerprint appointment for USCIS, we were told we should receive our approval letter about 7-10 days after the fingerprint appointment. Several weeks and many phone call later, we finally learned that the 7-10 days only applies to Hague countries and Ukr*ine is - you guessed it! - NOT a Hague country. That gave them 75 days to process our paperwork. Thankfully, they didn't make us wait quite that long, and on a very rainy January 17th, the mailman brought us one soaking wet USCIS approval letter!! The letter had blue stains on it from the security envelope and pink stains on it from a bright pink paper USCISapostilled by New Hampshire.

I packed up the kids and rushed out to get the final document for our dossier notarized at our local home study adoption agency. Then we headed down to the Summit County courthouse to get each one of the notary signatures county certified (at $2 per document) and then later state apostilled at the Ohio regional secretary of state's office in Cleveland (aka "certified" again with a big gold seal by the state of Ohio this time - $5 per document). The kids were so excited that we parked in the parking deck and walked across the street on the pedestrian bridge. I was excited that I found where I was going without getting ticketed, lost, or mugged and thought the worst was over.... Wrong again. :) Three of the notaries who signed our various papers (six documents total, incidentally, including both of our individual employer letters, and the medical forms) are not residents of Summit County. We had to go their resident counties to get the papers certified. That meant driving 30 minutes east to Portage County ($2 per document), and then 60 minutes northwest to Medina County ($5 per document). When we finished in Medina, it was too late to make it to Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) before the court closed at 4 for the afternoon. The kids started out very naughty, but soon settled down and were great! By the time we finished at the last courthouse, they were sporting "junior sheriff's deputy" badge stickers and carrying a sucker in each a hand. We all four made it through security at three different courthouses and no one set off any alarms or had to post bail. :) The wind was gusting (the kids LOVED being outside in the wind) but it was nearly 60 degrees and alternating between spitting rain and sun. For a day in the middle of January when we would normally have freezing temperatures and several feet of snow and ice on the ground, we could not have asked for more!

We found out the the regional Sec. of State office in Cleveland is no longer open, so Nathan took the remaining document to the Cuyahoga County courthouse yesterday morning and got the appropriate certification ($1 per document this time!). In the process, he took a spill on the now icy sidewalk and ended up at the wrong building - turns out the "courthouse" and the "justice building" are not the same place in this county, although across the street from one another. Once he got home, we assembled our precious stack of documents representing our work over the past 6 months and triumphantly sent it overnight by FedEx to the Secretary of State's office in Columbus for apostilles ($5 per document) where it will then be forwarded directly to our agency. We also sent the remaining NH marriage certificates along with a huge chunk of our adoption fees to our adoption agency in GA. Phew! What a long climb it has been and there are a few more mountains in view.

We have been told that the worst is over now as far as the great paper chase. Now we know why they call this phase of the adoption the "paper pregnancy". Assembling the documents for our dossier has been a stretching process, but we are beyond thrilled that our dossier is complete and on it's way to our agency in Atlanta. From this point, our dossier will be sent to Ukr*ine where it will be translated and then submitted to the SDA - State Department of Adoptions in Ukr*ine. Once they receive it, they will add it to the bottom of the stack of other dossiers and process it when they get to it - most likely a month or two at the very least. Assuming all of our documents are in order, they will issue us travel dates to go to Ky*v for our official SDA appointment. It's hard to even guess what the travel dates will be, but we are hoping for a travel date in late March or April. There's a good possibility it will be even much later in the year as other families are being rescheduled to allow only one foreign family visiting this orphanage at a time.

Thank you for your prayers along the way! Our prayer requests now are that God will continue to provide financially for this adoption - specifically for the remaining agency fees and travel expenses and that we will be approved for the grants and loans we are requesting. Also please pray for patience as we anxiously wait to go get Kolya and he waits for us - many of his friends are already here in the USA and he wants to be here, too! We're looking forward to the next steps in the process, but for now we're content to linger on this mountain top for a moment and enjoy the view.

Lows and Highs (and a "Signature Sara" Bonus Feature)

(Sara and her Thursday apple sauce disaster is being featured in this post, since it was incredibly gross and since I really don't have any other related pictures - enjoy!)
 
For the past few weeks, we've been living in a holding pattern while waiting to hear if Kolya is officially available for adoption. Our agency in GA told us we may hear news on Monday, which became Tuesday, and then, well, you get the picture. We would stay up late each night hoping for any bit of news from our agency, finally fall into bed exhausted, sleep poorly (if at all), and then get up early to see if there was any news about Kolya yet. I have always been pretty diligent about checking my email, Facebook, and phone messages, but this past week, I was beyond obsessed. The days ticked slowly by with no word. Wait, wait, wait. Apparently, God knows I need to work on patience, because we still have a lot more waiting ahead of us. By Thursday, I was resigned that we were not going to get our news that week. Then on Thursday afternoon, our hosting family group on Facebook started buzzing. Someone had received news about their child, then another and then another. By the time we went to bed that night, the old worry germ was attacking again. Other families knew and we didn't. It was another long night with little sleep. One thing is for sure, with all the wakefulness, I had LOTS of time alone with God to pray. And I think I prayed for just about everyone I knew (especially my Aunt Margaret who just lost her husband, Uncle Donnie, to cancer Wednesday morning - the funeral is today, and we are with the family in spirit today).
 
Finally, around 10 on Friday morning, we got the news that we were hoping for! Kolya is on the official orphan listing and is adoptable! However, he is on the "closed" list. This means that the children are available for adoption only within their own country for a 12 month period before they become available for adoption internationally. We were told it will still be "a few more weeks" (read: probably much longer than a few more weeks) before we find out when he is free for international adoption. What this does mean, however, is that, at some point in the next 12 months, if he is willing, we will be able to adopt Kolya!! We are so relieved and excited and still nervous all at the same time. It's a strange mix of emotions. Some time "in the next few weeks" (here we go again!), we have also been told that someone will talk to Kolya to see if he wants our family to adopt him. Then it's a matter of LOTS more paperwork, pulling LOTS of funds together, and waiting again until everything goes through and we are ready to bring our boy home for good. So exciting!!!

A few hours after we found out Kolya's status on Friday, our social worker from our Ohio agency called to schedule her home visit. She had a cancellation and could she come over at 3 on Saturday? YES, please! So, today we had our home study visit. Unlike our social worker for our foster care home study two years ago, our new social worker is so nice and we both found her very easy to talk to. She has eight children who are all adopted and was incredibly encouraging. She stayed for three hours! Libby gave her the tour of the house before she left and was seemed so grown up. All of the kids actually acted civilized and even Sara was on pretty good behavior. That's a miracle in itself, considering how she usually is - applesauce photos are my case-in-point!

We're off to eat pizza for dinner now and relax in front of the TV for the Cleveland Brown's pre-season opener game. Football season means that fall is nearly hear and that we are one season closer to bringing our family all together. I'm excited to see how it all works out!

*Sara Update: I just rescued a tube of ChapStick from Sara - she was literally biting off pieces and eating it!!!*