Lazy Boy

Man, I'm lazy updating our dossier. It just keeps getting more and more whacked. Ideally, we wouldn't see any red or yellow in the spreadsheet, but as you can see there is plenty of it. We actually do have some updated documents in hand, but I haven't sent them in for the apostilles or sent them over to Ukraine. From reading other blogs, it looks like there is time for that when we get a submit date, so we should get some warning. For now, I'm just gonna save the money. To date, since July of last year, we've spent $4,700 on these adoptions, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it yet. :-(

If you want the spreadsheet for yourself, you can get more info here and a link to download it. There have been 37 downloads so far.

Slippery Slope

Oh how fun, our dossier is beginning to expire.

Ukraine considers the documents in our dossier good for one year. When it gets submitted to the SDA by our facilitator, they must have at least 6 months of lifetime on them. Therefore, allowing for mailing to Ukraine, EVERY document will be required to be refreshed about every 5 to 5½ months.

We are just reaching our first deadline. Our homestudy will expire on June 14. I emailed our social worker today to get an updated one.

Since we started this blog after the original dossier was sent over, I never had a chance to blog about our original dossier. I'll do that now as we go on so you can see what documents there are in it.

PS: If you're also in our situation, I have a spreadsheet to help you track your dossier dates here. There have been 30 downloads to date.

DossierDates Spreadsheet v1.2

After a conversation with our facilitator, I was able to clarify how the lifetime of the dossier's Power of Attorney document works. As far as I know, this is the only document whose expiration date depends on what you and your facilitator agree on. For example, we specified in our PoA that it was good for 2 years. You may have chosen 1 or 3 years in yours.

I made an update to the DossierDates spreadsheet to include this document, and it also indicates that you should put in your own PoA lifetime.

I also decided to pull out the FBI Fingerprinting documents from the main section, because, while they are important, they are not actually part of the dossier.

I should have emphasized before that this spreadsheet is specific to the United States, due to some of the documents it refers to. If you are from another country, such as Canada or Italy, and wish to see this modified for your country's requirements, please contact me.

You can find the updated version 1.2 files here.

DossierDates Spreadsheet v1.1

Well, I already have an update to the spreadsheet I posted earlier today. It is now at version 1.1. The big thing that I should have had, but didn't, was the FBI Fingerprinting broken out between husband and wife. I also made a few cosmetic changes, including titling, document properties, coloring, version, and contact info. Follow the link in this post to get the updated spreadsheet. Hopefully that is the last update for awhile.

If you downloaded the original one (I note that there were already 15 downloads today), I recommend that you grab this one. There's enough changes that it would be worth your while.

UPDATE: There is a newer follow-up post here.

Keep Track of Your Dossier's Dates

OK, so time continues to march on since we gave our dossier to our facilitator for submission. Since the dossier hasn't been submitted to the SDA yet, we are getting to the point now where we have to start worrying about documents expiring. Most documents, with a few exceptions, have a lifetime of 1 year that Ukraine considers them valid. The kicker, though, is that there must be at least 6 months left on all of them at the time the dossier is submitted. So we families that are stuck in this limbo need to refresh the documents as time drags on. This isn't necessarily simple, however. Every document needs to be notarized and apostilled, then FedEx'd over to Ukraine. This is time consuming and expensive.

For some time now I have been meaning to put together a spreadsheet to help me track the documents in our dossier and when they expire. I am making this available to you if you use Excel.

It allows you to enter your submission date, or any date if you don't have one. Then you enter in the individual dates from your various documents. This is typically the oldest date on the document if there is more than one on it. Please note, I have some dates already entered in, but they are for illustration only. You will need to enter your own dates in.

I have the number of months until expiration for the documents set by default, but you can change them. I have two alert levels, yellow and red, which are configurable but are defaulted to 30 and 14 days.

Now, this is important. You can only use the spreadsheet if you agree to the following disclaimer. If you do not agree to it, then you may not use it.

• I am merely providing the spreadsheet as a convenience to you.
• I provide no warranty that it is suitable for any particular purpose.
• You assume all risks associated with using the spreadsheet.
• You will not hold me responsible for any loss of adoption opportunity or any other adverse condition due to any direct or indirect failure or misuse of the spreadsheet.
• The document lifetimes and 6-month SDA policy that I entered by default are believed to be correct to the best of my knowledge, but may in fact be incorrect, or may change in the future.
• The documents I have listed by default may not apply to your specific adoption situation.
• Your dossier may contain documents other than the ones I included.
• Due to the customizable nature of spreadsheets, I cannot be responsible for the accuracy or innaccuracy of any data entered therein.
• If you find a problem with the spreadsheet, I will be happy to take a look at it. However, I don't guarantee that it will be fixed, or fixed in a timely manner.

Now, if you are still interested in the spreadsheet, you can download it here:

UPDATE: These spreadsheets have been updated to version 1.2.

Excel 97-2003 Format
Excel 2007 Format (Save as .xlsm instead of .zip)

If you have a bug report, enhancement suggestion, need help, or just have a comment, please post it. I get an email when someone posts, so I will be sure to see it.

UPDATE: There is a newer follow-up post here.