Waiting on some stuff, now waiting on us

I really suck at keeping this blog up to date, so I apologize. Part of the reason is there is either nothing to report as we are waiting, or we're in a very stressful situation at the moment that we're trying to solve. Our I-600A was approved. We got a copy of the I-171H and one was sent straight to Ukraine. We are gathering the last few things we need for our dossier. We are also waiting to gather the rest of the money we need at this moment. Once we get all that, we will be sending all of our  stuff to Ukraine. It's very excited, but boy is everything so stressful. I keep thinking of the end result of having a child and a child having us. It will totally be worth it at the end and I just keep reminding myself this when it gets to be too much. We're really hoping to be able to go to Ukraine in the summer when Tim doesn't have as much work, but with the occasional delay, it makes me worried. I'm still hoping we can do it in June. Plus, with Tim's birthday and our 10 year anniversary, I think June would be perfect. The other benefit of a summer trip would be when our child would go to school, they would probably still start after everyone, but at least towards the beginning of the school year. AZ schools start between the end of July and beginning of August, depending on the district and if they are year round or not. Back to the adoption stuff though. I have a goal of Easter to have our dossier sent. Here's hoping we can do that!!! Crossing our fingers everything will work out. But I am confident it will work out all in a time that is meant to be.

In the meantime, when we aren't able to do things, I have been decorating the room, working on the Shutterfly photo book so they can get to know all the rooms of the house before they come home, and thinking of Americanized middle names we can give them. We will be keeping their first name so they don't feel we are taking their identity away. We will give them a middle name that we chose just for them, and we will obviously give them the last name as their family name.

It's late, and I'm sure I've just talked in circles, but just know we are still working at this and we are hopeful everything will work out shortly.

USCIS Fingerprinting

I checked the mail today and was shocked to see we already received our fingerprinting appointment! They scheduled us for next Thursday!!! I'm so excited things are moving along, and as of now, quicker than I expected. I did start over estimating time so that I wouldn't be as impatient. I guess we better get our butts in gear and find ourselves a facilitator and find the rest of our money!!!

Happy 2013

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year. December has been exciting. While we didn't do a whole lot with gathering information, we did get some good news and things are still moving along. We sent our federal forms in and received confirmation already that they received them. Now we are waiting for them to process our information and send us an appointment date and time for us to go in and have more fingerprints done. We also just received a letter from our county stating we are acceptable to adopt. I'm not a fan of that word "acceptable" but I was estactic with the news. Even though we can't think of any reasons why they wouldn't approve us, it's always worry for each stage that we need to be approved. We are very excited to see what 2013 brings. I can't believe that there's a good chance, by the end of the year, we might be parents! We are still trying to gather funds so we don't have to stop at any time. I also don't want to stop and have things delayed because we have documents that expire after 12, 15, and 18 months that I would hate to have to pay to renew.

This month I plan on continuing to decorate our child's room. I want everything to be just right when they finally come home. I also plan on getting documents gathered for our dossier. That way, once we are able to send it we only need the notarization and apostiled stamps and don't have to waste time realizing we need more stuff.

The other thing we really need to get accomplished this month is to find a facilitator and translator. That seems to be our hardest part. It's practically impossible. We have no idea where to go. We're going to try contacting some people who previously adopted and see what they did. The faciliator and translator will be our lifelines while in Ukraine. Not only that, but they will also translate our dossier and all that other good stuff. They are probably the most important people in our process. Hopefully we can figure that out soon.

Happy New Year to everyone again. We need all the good thoughts you can sent our way to help us out. It will be an interesting year. I'm expecting a roller coaster ride with the best ending. I'm anxious to know around when we will be able to get out there, but in reality, we need to wait on people throughout this whole thing, so we couldn't even estimate a month. We are just hoping it will be this year. I would love summer time so we can escape the heat here though! :) (not to mention it will be easier with Tim's job to be during the summer). Take care! More to come.