I called Dana today to let her know about our finger-print date and she was very happy for us and could not believe how fast it came. Dana told me that she mailed our Dossier to Russia last week so hopefully we will hear something about a referral soon. She said it should take about 4 to 6 weeks to get our final approval.
I am praying that everything will be smooth this time around.

I wish I would have checked the mail yesterday, our fingerprint date came from the INS, WOOHOO!! It is for Wednesday March 1st at 9:00am, only 2 weeks away. I hope this is the beginning of good things to come. That was a really nice surprise.

We thought that our Dossier would have been sent to Russia by now and it still has not, I am sooooooo disappointed in that. Jeff and I thought we had found the right person to help us and as the days go on I am starting to feel like we may have made a mistake. It has been 3 weeks since our home-study was ready to go and our mini Dossier was in Dana's hands and she still has not sent it to Russia. After the first horror agency I will not deal with to much and I will jump ship at any time.

I got copies of all of our documents from Dana just in case, I was reading our home-study and found many mistakes and hopefully Dana will fix them fast and we can move forward, this week after week of waiting to send our Dossier because something might change is getting really old. If there was 1 thing we learned from our Kazakh experience is that anything can change at any time. The laws changed 4 different times in the middle of our adoption from there and we just rolled with the punches but at least we were still moving forward because our Dossier was over there. I guess I can keep going on and on about this, I am just so upset I raced around driving to her house a half hour away 3 times to get her those documents so she could mail out our Dossier the first week of February and she still has done nothing. I told Jeff I was getting upset and I wanted to change to Adoption Ark and he said what ever I thought was best, I decided to give her until the end of next week and if it is still not on it's way to Russia I am going to switch to a different agency. That will be a month of her having it and not sending it out. Waiting to see if something changes is not a good excuse to me, with IA anything can happen at any time.

I did get a receipt from our INS, they cashed our check for $685 but still have not gave us an appointment for our fingerprints. They say it should all be wrapped up within 3 months, so by the end of April we should have our I-171H. I do have our whole Dossier together besides our medical and local police clearance, they are only good for 6 months so I was told to wait as long as possible for them. I plan on doing them in the beginning of March.

I hope by the end of next week our Dossier will be sent and we will get a finger print date. It took us 7 months to decide on adopting Internationally again I do not want to keep waiting and wasting time.

I never thought trying to have a baby would be the most difficult or saddest thing I would ever go through in my life. The past 4 years have been very heart-breaking.

We got a call Monday night from a social worker in Nevada about Cory, they informed us we were 1 of 5 families that they have narrowed it down too. Jeff and I spent about 30 minutes on a phone interview. They asked us all kinds of questions like how we felt about a special needs, mental health questions, about our failed adoption and many more. Jeff and I thought it went well and were pretty hopeful. We got a call on Tuesday from them but we weren't home so we had to wait until Weds to find out if they would choose us or not. Well I talked to Becky Weds morning and unfortunately they did not choose us, she told me she really liked what our home-study said and she liked us on the phone and wanted to know if it was OK to keep our home-study for a future placement, I told her of course and thanks for considering us(I really wanted to scream). Once again the disappointment stinks. I know that it was just not meant to be and Cory is going to be with the right family for him.

I hope something happens with a referral from Russia soon and we hear about our fingerprints.

Well it's been a crazy week, I tried to put our mini-Dossier and our INS papers together in a day so I ended up forgetting to mail some of the documents. I am so disorganized this time around, I ended up driving to Dana's house 3 times to drop documents off, LOL. I wanted her to have everything to send our I600A in on Monday, January 30th and to get our Dossier Apostilled. I think she sent our Dossier over-seas on Friday, February 3rd if not I hope it goes out on Monday the 6th.

It was an interesting week. I got an email from a social worker (Melodie) in Nevada about a 2 yr old little boy that I inquired about back in September "05" it seems as if they are going to review more people to adopt him. I was told back then that they had stopped taking home-studies for him because of the overwhelming response. His name is Cory and he is just adorable. It is torture not knowing how many other families they are contacting about this little guy, how they will narrow it down and when they will pick a couple for him. I hope they do it fast, he is free for adoption and needs to get with his forever family, he will be 3 in November. I do not like the way this has made me feel, I cannot stop thinking about this boy and it has caused some very long days and nights. I hate that we are ready and he is ready and we can't just go get him, this little man deserves a Mommy and Daddy. I do not like that we have this glimmer of hope and he may not be placed with us. Dana faxed our home-study to Melodie on Feb. 2nd and she told Melodie she thought Jeff and I would be a great match for Cory. I wonder how many others said the same thing about their clients.

Any ways, I'll post again next week. Hopefully we will get a finger-print date soon and we will learn more about Cory. I have been told our INS is moving very slow, it has changed since last time we filed our I-600A, they transferred the office to Detroit, they have 3 people working on orphan petitions and they are moving 10 times slower than they where with just 1 person. It took us 6 weeks to get our approval to adopt last time, we'll see about this time.

Have a great week! I hope I have good news to post soon.