Here's an Update

I have been told (mostly by my brother who apparently hasn't even read the last post) that I need to update my blog. Things have been moving in the adoption world for us. We sent off our I-600A form to the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in order to receive permission to adopt an orphan internationally and bring him/her back to the United States. We are waiting for them to send us an appointment to get fingerprinted. We also were given the information needed to start putting our dossier together! This is the paperwork that we will be sending to Russia. The dossier is done in two parts. We are almost finished getting dossier part 1 put together. The only piece we are waiting on at this time is our home study paper. We should be getting the rough draft in the mail on Monday. Then we need to get everything notarized and then send it off the the Secretary of State to get apostilled (so first we have to get original documents of everything, then we need somebody to notarize them to say they are official, then we need a state seal to say the notarization is official.) This process is really thorough! Once the first part is sent to Russia we can start working on dossier part 2, which we will take with us on our first trip to Russia. As part of dossier part 1, we needed to take our picture in every room of our house, outside our house, and certain places within our community. Here we are at the neighborhood park. Looks fun doesn't it?

In other news, my Grandma Werth celebrated her 85th birthday this weekend with an open house. I had a great time seeing uncles, aunts and cousins. Here is my family from left to right: my brother Paul, me, dad, mom, grandma, my brother Brad and his wife Angie (and baby.) Poor Aaron had to stay home while recovering from pneumonia!