Around the World in 80 Days

Well I hope it's not 80 days.

Actually, I UPS'd our dossier 1½ days ago and at this moment it is in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is one of Ukraine's next-door neighbors to the west, so hopefully it doesn't take long to get to Kiev and then delivery. Unless... there is the dreaded Exception.

Dossier Is Complete Again

For the first time since March, we have a complete and up-to-date dossier again. Will send it to Kiev tomorrow. Here I am holding the 20 apostilled documents. Next week I'll list out what they are.

It's Always Something

You know, just once I would like something to go smoothly with our dossier. I got a call from the Secretary of State's office this morning to tell me that one of the documents in our dossier can't be certified. Apparently, the lady that notarized it used a rubber stamp but she is only registered for embossing. Great. I'm heading down to the bank now to redo that one again and send it off today. That means that I will not be able to send the dossier to Kiev until Monday, instead of tomorrow. Grrr. Big GRRRRR.

UPDATE: I was able to get the corrected document sent off today. So far, we are on-track for Monday.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning

Today, we FINALLY got our updated homestudy in the mail. It was the last document we needed for our updated dossier. I got home from work, scanned the new documents in, triple-checked everything, then dropped the packet into the mailbox in time for it to go out today. It is off to our Secretary of State's office for apostilles. They have a same-day processing policy, which means that we should have it back on Friday, and I'll send it out to Oleg on the same day. It should be in Kiev early next week. And then? We shall see.

Ukraine Medical Outreach

I added a new link to our Other Links section for a ministry called Ukraine Medical Outreach. We had asked a Ukrainian expat whom we met about a doctor reference and she told us about Dr. James Peipon. He does do adoption assessments, see here. Anyway, I'm throwing this out there in case any of you are interested.

Happy Birthday Mark

Mark is 14 today. Just want to wish him the biggest Happy Birthday ever! We love you!

(Picture is of Mark's first steps on 9/1/95).

It's probably accurate to say that we wouldn't be doing this adoption if Mark hadn't pushed us.

Anxiously Waiting for HS

Got another email from Oleg today. He wants the dossier ASAP. Says he thinks he can get it turned in as soon as he gets it. All we are waiting for is the updated homestudy. I better press our social worker...

UPDATE: I just talked to our social worker by phone. She is out of town and will not be able to get to it until next week. Grrrr...

It's the Time of Year When...

...a grasshopper's thoughts turn to love! I was out walking Sparkle today and these grasshoppers on "dates" were all over the place. I guess I find nature interesting. Proverbs 25:2 says "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." I suppose this can mean alot of different things, one of which is it's OK and honorable to be a scientist. And I guess that makes me a king today. But I digress.

It's also the time to... send our dossier over to Kiev again. That is - IF WE CAN EVER FINISH GETTING IT UPDATED. This has been like a slow motion wheel that just keeps on turning and never stops.

I mentioned in that LifeLight post that I had news to share with you from our facilitator. On August 3 we had gotten an email from him that we should update our dossier. You may recall that we had let most of our dossier expire, as there hadn't seemed to be any reason to keep it fresh due to having no chance of getting it submitted this year. So when he sent us an email to get it updated, I set to work on it.

Unfortunately, you can't just do it overnight. For example, this was the time that Sergey was with us and we were gone alot. When I called the clinic to get another physical it was 3 weeks before I could get in. Then of course, the lab work took another 2 weeks or so to come back. Then there was a comedy of errors getting the medical reports put together correctly (like last time). We just got the completed ones yesterday.

The news I wanted to share was that Oleg told us that the SDA wants 8-9 months of life on the dossier when it gets submitted. Yikes! This means that the papers need to be updated every 3-4 months. That is terribly inconvenient.

Anyway, I was thinking we could send our dossier out for apostilles, but we had our home study and employment verification documents updated last June (but not sent over). Now with this new requirement they are already too old. I contacted our social worker to get us the third HS update. I hope to have that next week along with the employment forms. It is crazy.

On the positive side, Oleg has hopes that we can get submitted this year yet. From his email:

I have hope submit your dossier in October - November, SDA says that will accept dossiers in this time frame under general line, I think will come a lot facilitators for submit dossiers, and will be very difficult to submit, but I have hope.