Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Happy Holidays!
Wow, what a crazy week! I was off from work Friday-Tuesday. I will be working from home tomorrow and Thursday and then take another long weekend. We had a full house Christmas weekend. My brother is in town from Wisconsin, and my sister Kristin who lives in San Diego came up to stay with us. On Sunday we went to Christmas eve mass with Kristin, and our friends E & T (who happen to also be adopting two from Russia with our agency). Afterwards we came back to our home for a big pot of chili, cornbread muffins, stuffed mushrooms & salad. And yummy cupcakes and homemade ice cream.
Christmas day was beautiful! 70F and sunny. Thani and I went for a long walk. In the evening we had a traditional dinner (turkey et al) and opened presents. And today, besides meeting with our adoption agency director, and checking out a local pet resort for Thani & our future travels, I spent a lazy afternoon on the sofa!!!
OK, so for this week's adoption news...
1. Agency and accrediation
Our agency director confirmed that there was news last week about the accrediation requirements and his expectation is that our placement agency is hoping for a January accrediation. But he is being cautious (he's heard dates before), but didn't think it would drag out ninety days and into the Spring.
2. Homestudy and dossier
We are finishing up the homestudy. He suggested that we continue to move forward and get the dossier documents completed. He said this could take us anywhere from two to eight weeks depending on how long it takes to collect the materials. He said we should aim to be done by the end of March. We'll also go over our referral preferences and will be put on the official wait list when we are in the final stages of the dossier prep.
3. Next steps
Our dossier will be sent over to Moscow for translation. Our referral preferences will be considered by all of the regional coordinators and prospective referrals will be presented to us. When we decide to move forward, our dossier will be sent to that particular region. So at this point we have no idea which region we will be traveling to. We may also have to decide whether we want to go blind (speeds up the referral process), or have more information about the children before we travel. One reason why we chose Russia is the information you can receive before traveling, so we are would prefer to choose the latter option.
4. Timeframe
Apparently some regions will not have an issue with our length of marriage, so potentially we could be traveling as soon as April. But the cautious most realistic timeframe is that we will receive a referral by June & make the first trip around then. The agency director says that Russia is pretty much shuts down in August, so we will probably be making the second trip in September, which is preferred by our agency because we'll hit our two year anniversary mark in August.
So we didn't come away with any real news, but it was interesting to know about how our referrals will come about. Our agency director is also having us consider what is most important to us: siblings, gender or age. If it's siblings, then we'll have to be alot more flexible with gender and age preferences. In any case, we will ask our social worker to put an age range of 2-8 years old in our homestudy so we have alot of flexibility.
Christmas day was beautiful! 70F and sunny. Thani and I went for a long walk. In the evening we had a traditional dinner (turkey et al) and opened presents. And today, besides meeting with our adoption agency director, and checking out a local pet resort for Thani & our future travels, I spent a lazy afternoon on the sofa!!!
OK, so for this week's adoption news...
1. Agency and accrediation
Our agency director confirmed that there was news last week about the accrediation requirements and his expectation is that our placement agency is hoping for a January accrediation. But he is being cautious (he's heard dates before), but didn't think it would drag out ninety days and into the Spring.
2. Homestudy and dossier
We are finishing up the homestudy. He suggested that we continue to move forward and get the dossier documents completed. He said this could take us anywhere from two to eight weeks depending on how long it takes to collect the materials. He said we should aim to be done by the end of March. We'll also go over our referral preferences and will be put on the official wait list when we are in the final stages of the dossier prep.
3. Next steps
Our dossier will be sent over to Moscow for translation. Our referral preferences will be considered by all of the regional coordinators and prospective referrals will be presented to us. When we decide to move forward, our dossier will be sent to that particular region. So at this point we have no idea which region we will be traveling to. We may also have to decide whether we want to go blind (speeds up the referral process), or have more information about the children before we travel. One reason why we chose Russia is the information you can receive before traveling, so we are would prefer to choose the latter option.
4. Timeframe
Apparently some regions will not have an issue with our length of marriage, so potentially we could be traveling as soon as April. But the cautious most realistic timeframe is that we will receive a referral by June & make the first trip around then. The agency director says that Russia is pretty much shuts down in August, so we will probably be making the second trip in September, which is preferred by our agency because we'll hit our two year anniversary mark in August.
So we didn't come away with any real news, but it was interesting to know about how our referrals will come about. Our agency director is also having us consider what is most important to us: siblings, gender or age. If it's siblings, then we'll have to be alot more flexible with gender and age preferences. In any case, we will ask our social worker to put an age range of 2-8 years old in our homestudy so we have alot of flexibility.
2 Comments:
Adopt A Child.orgAdopting from Russia
Eastern European Adoption Coalition, Inc
Embassy of the Russian Federation
Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption
Karen's Adoption Links
Older Child Adoption
Russia Adoption Blog
Russian Adoption Medical Services
Russian Family Search
Russian Toys
Vernissage Press
Glad you had a good Christmas!
Our Christmas was great. Lucas loves his train set the best, he is really into trains right now. I will continue to put up posts each day this week so check them out. Tim is off all week so we are having good times together.