Due to many asking what all this Russia stuff means for us, I thought I should just fill you all in on what we know. The repurcussions have been nothing like what we expected when we first heard the news that a woman had sent her son back to Russia. We expected the whole program to shut down. However, things are still moving. Perhaps the process has been slowed, but for the most part it is progressing as normal. Vladivostok, the region that our children and the little boy who was sent back were from, has frozen all adoptions to single parents and will no longer operate with WACAP....the agency that the woman had adopted through. Most other regions are proceeding as they were. It really is up to the region as to what they do at this point. Last week the US sent some representatives to Moscow to discuss an adoption treaty and they had great success. May 12th they will be going back to meet with the Russians again. Time will tell as to what new requirements will need to be met. Dread. Guess we'll just learn to jump through the hoops all over again!!
As far as where we are in the journey, our homestudy should be finalized this week. We received the letter stating that we are not in the database for child abuse on Monday. Our fire inspection was finally completed after six weeks of waiting. I was the annoying citizen who called to our department every week....sometimes twice a week for six weeks. Finally, the end of the sixth week I called again and talked directly to the fire chief....who informed me that nobody in their department could even do the inspection. Thank you. I guess they now have to be certified to do the inspection (which is totally understandable since they have to make sure that our smoke alarms are working, make sure that we have a cleaned up staircase, make sure that we have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen or nearby....you know, tough stuff that takes about ten minutes to check) and noone at the Union City department is certified. I asked him what we were supposed to do and he said all he could tell me was to call the state fire marshall....but call right away cause it could take several weeks til he could fit us in his schedule....and it is rather expensive. Nice. Instead, I disregarded his advice and called the Greenville department and the ever-so-kind fire inspector showed up about two hours later....although he said he really wasn't supposed to venture out of his area. He was here about 15 minutes, checked the appropriate boxes on the form, signed his name, and was gone. Simple as that. And it only took six weeks. Anyone want to move to the Union City area?!

Once the homestudy is officially complete, we begin the dossier. If you would recall, the dossier is the part where we compile about 4000 documents to be sent to Russia. That is likely stretching it a just a tad, but that is what it felt like after doing it for three years. We really signed up to do that again?! Hopefully this time around we don't have to work on it for three years..... If we're really quick we can have our dossier compiled and ready to submit by the end of May. I already have much of it done. The document that we will have to wait on will be the document called the I-171H (I forget what it is for if you can believe that) which is from the government. We will have to send our homestudy to the office, wait on a fingerprint appointment, and then wait on the completed form to show up.

Addie is still very excited (and asking random people why they don't 'dopt from Russia) and Will is now declaring that he doesn't want a little brother or sister. Taking them to Russia with us on our trips could be interesting for the new little Garber.....Addie's gonna smother and Will's gonna scream. Yippee.

So that's it. This time around isn't half as stressful so far....though I must admit that I was beginning to get extremely annoyed about the fire inspection episode.

I must go. Really. Busy day today.
Blessings on your day~