It's on, it's off, it's on...We're approved!

I know there is a big time difference from my last post until now but I've been waiting to get the good news that we are approved with CHI and post this exciting news to everyone. Unfortunately, I was not able to do this. Approval with the agency should take two weeks and at the two week mark we had not heard anything. I called to see what was going on and found out that we qualified to be approved but we were on hold indefinitely because the Russian govt was reconfiguring some laws and policies. No surprise there, its kind of how our luck has been over the past 6 1/2 years that we've been trying to start a family.

Yesterday I received a phone call at work. I have already gone back to get my classroom set up because the district has asked me to be a district level mentor and teach a week of New Teacher Induction (NTI) to the over 500 new teachers coming to our district this school year. So I am missing out on a week of prep time for my classroom and I've had to go in early and work. Anyway, back to the phone call...it's me and the crickets up at school b/c no sane person has returned this early and the secretary calls over the loudspeaker that if I'm at school to buzz the office b/c I have a phone call. I NEVER get calls at school and I knew Randy was flying so of course my stomach sinks. I call the office and the secretary tells me, "Some lady from a Children's something or other is on the phone, do you want to take it?" Uh, YES!! I think I set a new speed record for fastest time to the office and it was Stella on the phone from CHI calling to let me know that we are no longer on hold and that she is mailing the paperwork out today for us to start our home study. She said the bad news is the Russian govt did say they will no longer adopt out any girls younger than 16 months and that the referral time might take up to a year after our dossier is submitted but the good news is they are still accepting adoptions.

Finally we can post and let everyone know that it is official, we are adopting from Russia!! It will be about 2-3 months for us to get our dossier complete and submitted mainly b/c of the sheer amount of paperwork and getting everything notarized and apostilled by the state. After that its another couple of months to get it translated into Russian and then we wait for a referral. We are requesting either a boy or girl, no special needs, under the age of two at the time of referral. We have no medical conditions or criminal backgrounds that make it harder for couples to adopt and limit the regions in Russia they can adopt from so hopefully it won't be hard for them to match us with a child. Feel free to put us on your prayer lists and pray that things will move smoothly and quickly for us.

I guess that is about it for now. I will be updating everyone through this blog so you may want to bookmark it on your favorites ;-) and check in every so often for news on our progress. We are so excited to get started and hopefully about this time next year we will be close to being a family!

I also wanted to tell you to leave us comments and questions and we'll do our best to answer them.