Clearances in hand!!!

Finally our FBI clearances arrived. I'm happy, but not ecstatic as I know everything still needs to get overnighted to our agency, then sent to Sacramento to get apostilled, then back to our agency, then off to Russia...THEN everything can get submitted to court. And, I know the judge could STILL come back with a list of additional documents he wants, so until we officially get a court date, there is no sigh of relief from me. Sorry, but I'm just not upbeat about this process any longer. I'm sad & frustrated.

Of course a bit of retail therapy helps some :o) I finally got the lamp I wanted for her room and just ordered this adorable this fold-out toddler sofa for the little miss. I can picture her laying down on it while we read our books.

Waiting Waiting just keep Waiting

I called the FBI again to check on our clearances and to make sure they had our Fed Ex acct # in the system to overnight them back. Yes, they have the Fed Ex acct and they will be sent out in 1 week.....sigh. I really thought we might have them in the next few days. No luck. I'm not guessing that the US side of our paperwork will be in Russia ready to go before our agency gets the Russian MOE release letter. Its looking like all my worrying about what to wear for a Russian winter was all for nothing. I never would have dreamed we'd be heading back in the spring, possibly the summer!

I got the cutest little pink baskets for the shelves in her room. Before I head out and start shopping for toys to fill them with, I am heading to the attic to finally look thru all the baby toys of Dylan's I saved. I know there are several bins and probably plenty to keep the little miss busy for a while. Of course on top you'll see the precious baby doll set I got for her that matched her room so I couldn't pass it up! I can so picture her pushing her little baby stroller thru the house.

Other than that, I just continue to keep busy. I enjoyed a nice girl's day at Disneyland with Madison and her friend. The weather was gorgeous (pretty sure Disney has a contract with the weather gods!!) and we really enjoyed Captain EO, the 3D Michael Jackson movie that they spruced up and brought back from 1986 (and I'm not even a big MJ fan)!!

A little goods news from the FBI

We are at least in the database now and our prints are being processed. So, they really did do what they said, looked thru their stack, found ours and started the process. When I called to check, they are now quoting 13 weeks to process clearances!! That is just crazy. In August it took only 4 weeks to get them. Anyway, we should only be about a week away from getting them now.

I still can't seem to be OK with the fact that we will probably have to fly through Moscow, get the 8-doctor medical done in their clinic to the tune of about $1500, plus the extra travel fees thru Moscow and the extra time it will take, not to mention all the money we've spent on our medicals we did here, which were notarized, apostilled, fed ex'd, and sent to Russia. Yes, of course we are 1000% committed to doing whatever it will take to get our little miss home, but I really feel like this process if finally getting the better of me and breaking me down.

For the moment, I will try to focus on the good news from the FBI today and buy a few of the adorable Boikido toys Amy posted on her blog.....so cute, I can't decide which ones to get!!!

Oh no.......sad news involving a boy adopted from Russia

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/adopted-boys-death-in-us-stirs-russian-anger/400923.html

This is so unthinkable and sad, yet I just keep thinking what it is going to mean for us and our little miss. I just read that Vlad will no longer be accepting medicals from our US doctors and all families will need to travel thru Moscow for medicals and their clinic. Will we be able to get a court date without these? I've updated these medicals here with our doctors for both Steve & I 3 times each! This will mean $1000's more. Could they make us get these medicals before even setting a court date....thus meaning 4 trips for us?? OK, deap breaths, I'm panicking.

Why does good news always come with bad news?

OK, so the citizenship is now 100% complete. What we are waiting on is the release letter from the ministry (yes Lisa, you were right, we didn't have that yet). This could not be processed until her citizenship was finished. Thankfully, the estimated wait for this letter is only 2-3 weeks. Of course 2-3 days wait would have been even better, but hey, its not terrible.

Now for the bad news.....our FBI clearances that we sent in Jan 4th still haven't even been logged into their system. So its been 8 weeks. I talked to someone today and he basically asked me what kind of Fed Ex envelope I mailed them in so someone could look thru a huge pile to try and find them!! Nice. He said "hopefully" someone would contact by the end of the week to let me know if they found them. I have confirmation from Fed Ex that they received them and were signed for, but that didn't seem to matter. I also contacted our congressman's office as I heard they could possibly help move the FBI along a little faster, but the person I spoke to didn't give me much hope. I'll still give it a try.

Other than that, we need to send our agency updated medicals (third set!!) which are already done and we need to sign an updated medical report on our little miss.....so, basically its only the FBI clearances for now that are the problem. Hopefully papers can still be submitted to the courts without having current FBI clearances so we can get the ball rolling and we'll just be sure to get them before we go to court.