Great News for Thanksgiving
NOVEMBER 26, 2009
Great News for Thanksgiving
We've received our official referral and travel approval today. We'll be leaving for Bulgaria on December 12th and staying until the 19th. We'll be working on flights and a hotel in Sofia now.
Posted by Michael at 1:46 PM 8 comments
NOVEMBER 17, 2009
Still Waiting
We are on Day #18 of an anticipated 10-day wait to receive our official referral from the MOJ. It's looking less and less likely that we'll be able to travel in mid-December as expected. This is just one of the current frustrations that we have right now related to our adoption (though it's the biggest one). I know from experience that you need patience and flexibility when adopting internationally, but the thought of our child spending more time in the orphanage is difficult. I want him home, and I want him home as soon as possible. I don't want to have to deal with the bureaucracy anymore. For some reason, this adoption has had a completely different feel than when we adopted our daughter from Vietnam, and it's not good. I'm frustrated and grouchy, and I want to see our boy.
Posted by Michael at 12:08 PM 2 comments
NOVEMBER 05, 2009
Great News
We've been approved by the MOJ to adopt the child we had applied to bring home. We don't have our travel dates, but anticipate making the first trip in mid-December. We received the news from our agency last week, but are still waiting for the official referral.
We've heard of other families that have recently gotten the same good news. We'll be sending positive thoughts to those families, as well as the families waiting for news from Bulgaria.
Posted by Michael at 4:35 PM 3 comments
OCTOBER 16, 2009
We Will Be Restricting Information
We've just received an e-mail from our agency recommending we keep any specific discussion from being publicly posted. Unfortunately, one of the other families has apparently run into a problem by posting enough info for some petty person to cause some issues. It doesn't appear to be too serious, but I'll be keeping this blog as non-specific as possible. That means no pictures, no names, no specifics on our potential child, no timeframes, etc. I've tried to keep from posting too much already, as I know it could cause problems for families looking to adopt from Bulgaria if the officials at the Ministry of Justice find out that information was posted publicly about a child living in a Bulgarian orphanage.
Also, please note that we have only put in an application to adopt an identified child. We have not received an official referral or authorization from the MOJ.
I know everyone who follows our blog will understand (particularly those in process). I may look to make our blog private, allowing only family and close friends to have access. I will also be deleting any comments on our posts that may contain information that could cause problems, including any references to the name of our adoption agency.
Posted by Michael at 2:42 PM 3 comments
OCTOBER 13, 2009
Official Referral Coming Soon?
Just heard from our agency that the Bulgarian MOJ is expected to meet in the next week and a half. Our paperwork is in their hands, so we will hopefully be on their agenda. This will hopefully result in our being officially approved to adopt the boy we put in an application for. Travel dates for our first trip would hopefully be set-up as well.
Posted by Michael at 11:47 AM 2 comments
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009
We've (Hopefully) Found Our Son!
We have made the decision this week to pursue the adoption of a little boy from Bulgaria. We first saw him in an e-mail last month, requested his medicals (which we reviewed with our Doctor) and have decided to put in an application with the Bulgarian MOJ to bring him home. The MOJ will review our application & file at one of their scheduled meetings. If they feel we would offer him a good home, we will be allowed to proceed.
Unfortunately, we are not able to post any pictures or specific information on our boy at this time. We'll likely be providing more frequent updates to our blog now that things are in motion.
Posted by Michael at 11:35 AM 8 comments
AUGUST 05, 2009
USCIS Approval
We received our approval this afternoon! We have been officially approved by U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services to bring our son home. We can now send our dossier paperwork to our agency, who in turn forward everything to Bulgaria for translation. Then, we get registered with the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice and the wait for a referral officially begins.
Posted by Michael at 4:10 PM 7 comments
JULY 18, 2009
More Info Needed for I-800A
We received a letter on Monday from USCIS asking for more information to finalize our approval process. Apparently, since our Home Study Agency is not Hague-accredited, USCIS needed a letter from our Adoption Agency (who is Hague-accredited). So we overnighted a copy of our Home Study to our agency for them to have on file. Yesterday, we received an e-mail from our adoption agency with the letter and Hague certificate to forward on to USCIS. We sent those documents to USCIS via Express Mail for Monday delivery. Hopefully, this is all the additional information they need. It would be nice to get our approval before the end of July so we can get our dossier out of our hands.
Posted by Michael at 10:27 AM 2 comments
JUNE 02, 2009
I-800A Mailed
We've finally gotten our I-800A off to USCIS. Hopefully the approval process is fast and we can look forward to getting our dossier sent out.
Posted by Michael at 1:58 PM 5 comments
APRIL 23, 2009
Homestudy Complete
Our homestudy was delivered to our adoption agency last night. Our contact at the agency will start reviewing it today. Once she feels it is in good order, we will send it to CIS along with our I-800A. We're hoping to have our 171-H approval within a month. Once we have that, our dossier and 171-H go to our adoption agency to review. If they feel all documents are in good order, the packet goes to Bulgaria for translation. After translation, our information gets sent to the Bulgaria Ministry of Justice for registration. Then the wait for a referral begins!
We've been very fortunate to have great contacts at both our adoption agency and our homestudy agency. Both contacts seem very familiar with what our homestudy needs to say both for Hague approval and approval in Bulgaria.
Posted by Michael at 7:57 AM 3 comments
APRIL 20, 2009
Classes Done!
We were able to complete all of our online adoption classes this weekend. We've requested the certificate from the company that offers the classes. Once we have that, we'll forward it to our HomeStudy agency. Assuming all our reference letters have been received, we should have everything needed for our Homestudy.
I've realized that I "jumped the gun" of a couple items for the dossier. The FBI Clearance Letter and Doctor's Letters are going to be too old to submit with our dossier. About a month after our I-800A is sent out, I'll request them again. Apparently, they need to be done every 6 months. That means we'll probably end up getting these items at least twice more. I'm not sure if we need a brand new fingerprint card for the FBI Clearance or if we can send in the one we originally sent in. If anyone has first-hand knowledge, please feel free to let us know!
Posted by Michael at 9:57 AM 3 comments
APRIL 16, 2009
Adoption Classes
We've started our Hague-required Adoption Classes. For the first adoption, we had to spend two days in a classroom. This time, we get to do the courses online. We're expecting to have all the courses completed by this weekend. Once done, we'll get the certificate to our HomeStudy agency. Assuming all our other paperwork has been received (we were still waiting for clearance letter from Colorado and one of our letters of recommendation) they should be able to complete our homestudy. We then apply for our I-800A, which should take approximately 3-4 months for approval. Once we have that, we can send our dossier to our adoption agency who then forwards it on to Bulgaria. Hopefully we'll be "in the books" by Fall.
Posted by Michael at 11:16 AM 1 comments
APRIL 06, 2009
Second Visit
We had our second and (we assume) final homestudy visit on Friday evening. We need to find out from our adoption agency what adoption classes we're required to complete. Hopefully, it will be an online training that we can do in our spare time.
Posted by Michael at 3:59 PM 2 comments
MARCH 24, 2009
2nd Homestudy Visit
Our second visit from Nancy will be on April 3rd. Hopefully our finalized homestudy will be complete soon thereafter. Once we have that (assuming all other paperwork is completed, which I expect to be the case) we can apply for our I-800A. This provides a "thumbs-up" from USCIS to adopt. The approval process takes 2-4 months, which is tough since it's basically the last step before our dossier gets sent to Bulgaria to be translated and registered with the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice. We expect 1 week for the dossier to get from our agency to Bulgaria, another 2-4 weeks for translation and 2 months to get registered with the MOJ. Once registered, we wait for our referral, which is estimated at 10-18 months (shorter if we accept a referral for a Special Needs son). We would travel almost immediately after referral with our first trip being 5-7 days. There will be 3-4 months before our second trip, which should also be about a week in length.
Posted by Michael at 11:36 AM 0 comments
FEBRUARY 27, 2009
Progress
We finalized the initial paperwork with our agency. We also sent our initial fee with the paperwork. We've almost completed our checklist with the homestudy agency. The last part of the checklist is to have our fingerprints done. That will be on 3/7/09.
Our first homestudy visit is this Sunday. We have the same social worker that we had for our first adoption, which we are very happy about. Nancy (the social worker) is awesome and super nice. We can't wait to see her again. I'm sure she'll be surprised at how big our daughter has gotten.
Posted by Michael at 3:06 PM 0 comments
FEBRUARY 17, 2009
Homestudy
We've started our homestudy requirements. Our CPS form is going out in the mail tomorrow. The real work starts now as we get the dossier checklist completed.
Posted by Michael at 8:29 PM 0 comments
FEBRUARY 10, 2009
Application Sent
Today, we faxed in our agency application. We'll be following it up with a hard copy, which we'll have sent out later this week. Just trying to locate a Notary Public (oh.....and finding time when we can both get away from work).
We've officially begun the adoption process!
Posted by Michael at 12:30 PM 0 comments
FEBRUARY 06, 2009
Here We Go Again!
Well, after much discussion, we are proud to announce that we have decided to begin the process for a second international adoption.
We will be soon be submitting our application to adopt a boy from Bulgaria!
We will be requesting a healthy boy age 3 or younger, though we indicated we would be open to a special needs child, sibling group or two unrelated children aged 0-3. We're not sure how long it will take to complete the adoption process, but it could likely be a year and a half or more. We will also be making two trips to Bulgaria. The two trips will probably be about 3-4 months apart, and our son will come home with us on the second trip.
The section of the application dealing with special needs was the most difficult for us. Of the 22 choices for special needs, we selected only 5 that we would consider. Every box we didn't check was incredibly difficult, and I kept picturing the children in the orphanages that we were passing over. I'll admit that it was especially emotional when we decided not to check the box next to cerebral palsy.
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