En route to Russia

We are in Moscow.  I somehow picked horrible seats on the trans-Atlantic flight and we didn't get much sleep.  We were pretty much passed out coming to Moscow so that was good.  We ordered kosher meals and there was so much food served we hoarded some of it for later, which was a nice bonus.  Getting through the passport check, finding our luggage and the hotel was somewhat of a comedy of errors. Everything took way longer than we expected and we didn't expect our luggage was already taken off the belts and moved off to the side.   I carried some documents for Frank Adoption Center's people here in Moscow but somehow the person in my office was vague and I thought she meant Stavropol.  The poor man waiting hours for us to show up at the hotel and I was so surprised when he asked me for the documents.  That's it for tonight.  We now have a much better sense of the airport and shouldn't have a problem finding our way to our flight tomorrow.  It's all a learning experience and since we will be back, it's all good to have learned this on the first trip. We got a cheapie room with two twin beds and no window.  It's fine for a few hours' sleep and a shower.  We look forward to getting in to Stavropol tomorrow and seeing the city since I don't think anything is scheduled.

And we're off

Thanks for the comment on my old posts!  I have been meaning to write an update but I've been so very busy but this was a good reminder to write.

A few weeks ago we received another referral for twins.  This one looked really good.  The medicals looked decent too. Basically no reason to turn this one down and I can't believe how quickly this all happened.  I think I turned in the dossier toward the end of July.

So we're not really off just yet but we are getting ready to travel. We are leaving in just under two weeks to meet the kids! I looked at the top of my blog and it says we have been married for ten years.  The day we leave Russia to come home is our eleventh anniversary.  I love that and it feels so symbolic. We are feeling cautiously optimistic about the whole trip.  We don't want to get ahead of ourselves so that we can evaluate as impartially as we can manage. That said, we are obviously excited.  I was hoping our referral would come from Western Russia and the kids are in Stavropol.  I don't know much about this region except that Gorbachov was born and raised there.  It is a wine producing region and I think it is fairly agrarian.

Several possibilities, no dice

It has been busy this last month.  As soon as I mailed in my dossier documents to the agency I started hearing about domestic possibilities.  I mean the same day. Right - that was completely unexpected.  We even met a young woman and her mother through a video call. All in all, there were two domestic situations and two Russian and none of them were right or worked out. Not much news in the last two weeks so what do we do while we wait? We were hoping that we would be traveling to Russia soon. If no news this week maybe we'll go away for a couple of days.  

The news of the day is that I completed the first part of the dossier that I needed for the registration and it is in the mail back to the agency. Somehow each step feels like I have overcome a huge hurdle and yet we are really still inching our way toward our goal. At least we are moving forward.  Yehudah is now really encouraging and pushing me to get everything accomplished as soon as possible.  I think he's now so excited and it is really amazing.

I was so busy planning my conference that I haven't had a chance to post.  Yehudah has to redo his fingerprints for immigration but we pretty much expected that to happen. I'm hoping these fingerprints take or we will have to run a name search just like we did with the FBI clearance for the home study.

I was really confused about the documents I needed to complete for the registration part of the home study.  Now I have all the documents completed and the pictures of the house all prepared.  Yehudah repaired my mom's chair that her father made for her nearly 75 years ago.  I am so happy to see it in the house and ready to be used. But we managed to find all the furniture we needed and wall decorations and all the pictures were approved by my agency.  What a relief! Now that we have all this done we will notarize and apostille everything. Then maybe we will start to look at referrals?

A little bit of good news for today. We received our notices for fingerprinting from the Department of Homeland Security.  Let's hope our fingerprints actually read.  I don't remember if I wrote about what happened with fingerprinting for the home study, but it took months. This weekend I'm planning to do a little shopping to dress up the cribs and room and we are about ready to start taking pictures of this house for the dossier.  I feel like it's all coming together a bit and I'm getting more excited and optimistic about this actually happening.

My friends have really come through for us.  So far I have a crib and a convertible crib waiting for us to pick up.  I think we will be able to furnish the room at least for pictures.  What a tremendous relief this is!  In other really good news, I put all the paperwork together for the I-600a immigration papers and they are on their way to Dallas. Now I can actually start on the dossier.