The Move Forward . . . with Adoption Ark

Whew - what a busy, stressful couple of weeks! I have pulled together a DOE Dossier in 1.5 weeks. 11 different documents, 23 total apostilles. The documents were completed in the wee hours of the morning Friday, 2/22/08, with 2 Catholic Charities (HS agency) docs having to be redone late Friday morning before I took off for the SOS office. I took a 1/2 day of vacation Friday afternoon & drove a 3-hour round trip to the Secretary of State's office (SOS) in Oklahoma City to get them all apostilled. Finished up on the 2 sets of copies late Friday evening. Then Nicky & I went to Fed Ex Saturday morning, 2/23/08, & overnighted them to Adoption Ark. AA received them bright & early Monday morning, 2/25/08.

Alina's (case manager) comments were "You did a good job!"

I have to say, once I made the decision to switch agencies, I hit the ground running preparing a new DOE Dossier. Back in 2006 when I completed the 1st dossier, CHI required a complete dossier (registration & court docs combined together & took 6 months to compile). Today, due to the extended delays, most agencies (Adoption Ark & CHI included) split the documents into 2 different dossiers. (1.) Department of Education, DOE (or Ministry of Ed, MOE) Dossier (2.) Court Dossier.

The DOE Dossier consists of regional docs necessary to receive a referral. There are around 10-15 docs, depending on single or married status. Step 1 to all of this is the Home Study & Homeland Security, USCIS approval (I-171H). Since I had a current home study & I-171H, I was able to immediately move into the Step 2 of preparing the DOE Dossier. It was a mad dash to get everything pulled together as quickly as possible. About 1/2 of the docs are PAP required & the other 1/2 are Catholic Charities (HS agency) docs. There was a minor change to the home study. But, CC did a great job of pulling all the HS agency docs together quickly. Thanks, MaryLee!

The Court Dossier consists of all the other required documents needed for court. For me it will be medicals, financials, employment verification, psych evaluations, legal residence affidavit, police reports, birth certificates, passport affidavits, etc, etc. I will begin working on these next. I need them completed & ready to hand carry with me to Russia on Trip #1.

The DOE Dossier is now ready to be translated & sent to the Kemerovo region to be registered for a referral (baby). I am hopeful for a region registration date in a couple of weeks.

AA still thinks Trip #1 can be within 6 months.

It has all happened very quickly & even though it has been a whirlwind of a couple of weeks (throw in having the flu along with everything else), the movement forward has lifted my spirits. It did take me a few days to process through the grief of "Did I make the right decision to change to another agency?" I laid awake 2-3 nights with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, "Am I crazy to do this?". But, I have finally moved past that feeling & I'm doing much better now. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive & encouraging. I have appreciated it so much!

Region Registration is next . . .