JANUARY 2009 CON'T

WEEK OF JANUARY 26 THROUGH JANUARY 31st


Dear All:

This week has been crazy..... to say the least.... A great friend of mine had warned me that when the moment came of getting "The Call", things were going to start happening super fast.... and I think you know who you are (Ms. A. G.). Well, that has turned out to be soo true. First, it was a challenge to get the travel dates from CHI. We had to wait since Friday (when we got the call) all the way until late Wednesday afternoon to finally receive confirmation from our Coordinator. I have been told that as soon as you receive a referral there should be travel dates available to the parents, in order for them to be able to start the process of ordering the Russian visas and purchase plane tickets. It took a lot of hustling around and a lot of emails, but we finally got the dates. Therefore, we will be leaving on February 7th. Mauri and I will spend a week in Russia while we get to meet our little girl. Right now the visa requests have been overnighted and have been already received, and are currently being processed. We should receive them by Wednesday of next week. Plane tickets were purchased Wednesday night.

We are leaving to Chicago first thing in the morning on the 8th. We will have a layover of about 8 hours until we take our next flight to Moscow at 5:30pm. The good thing is that we will get to see Claudia, Donnie and Buddy. In regards to paperwork, Tver sent me a new list of documents that need to be prepared for trip 1. Therefore, 18 Apostilles left to Tallahassee on Thursday and arrived there on Friday in order to be Apostilled. There was also the request of redoing some court documents (Warranty Deed) because the one we had submitted before, the notary seal expired 3 weeks ago. Therefore, 2 new certified copies had to ordered. Once we receive them, we will have to send it to Tallahassee to be re-certified. With God's help we will have to have all the paperwork ready by the time we leave, which is a great thing, because the more ready we are in terms of paperwork, the sooner our court date will be.



Ok let me walk you through some of the things we will have to do while we are in Russia in terms of our itinerary. After we formally decide to adopt our little girl, we will have to go through a series of medical examinations. We have to go thru seven different medical specialists while in Russia. We also have to go before a Notary to formally petition to adopt her. After a whole bunch of other stuff, we have to go before the judge so she could give us a court date. After we receive a court date Mauri and I will fly back to the states and then we will have to start the travel process all over again. We will have to reorder visas, yes, we have to request new visas for travel. This time instead of being a single entry tourist visa, it will a double entry business visa. We are all puzzled as to why we have to go through something like this because it will make more sense to only request a multiple entry business visa once. Unfortunately, our agency CHI do not allow us to to get a business visa from the first trip. They make us go throughout a more complicated and more expensive process. One thing that we have learned throughout this adoption is that you have to expect the unexpected.

We also have to get any paperwork ready that the Judge and/or the prosecutor decide that it might be needed for court. On the day of court, Mauri and I will go before a Russian Judge, Prosecutor, Baby house Director and Social Worker, CHI Interpreter and the CHI Coordinator. We have been told that the court hearings will take two days. On the first court date, all the mountains of paperwork that have been tuned in will be addressed, to make sure that we are not missing anything. The second court date will be dealing directly with Mauri and I. By the time we are done with our adoption, the Russian government will know absolutely everything there is to know about us!!!! We know most of this information is required in order to make sure that we are fit to be adoptive parents, but some things that they require we still do not understand why they request them, but we have to do whatever its requested from us in order to bring our baby home. Please continue to pray for us. Stay tuned....