The Cluttered Pantry

Or are you just happy to see us? Our next step in the paper chase is to compile our “Dossier.” (This is the giant packet of documents that Russia requires be completed prior to putting us on the waiting list for children to be referred to us.

Many, many of the documents listed in the Dossier requirements are similar if not exactly the same as the ones we had to get for the Home Study…of course they are wanted in different formats, with different rules about how recent the certification or notary seal must be, but basically we are ahead of the game because we either already have the document or know where exactly to get it from

A little lesson in International certification of legal documents:

Apostille (pronounced app a steel) turns out to be a French word which means certification. It is a seal (wax and ribbon and all that) from the secretary of state office in each state that confirms for foreign countries that the notary who signed our documents and the county office that certified them as true and exact copies of originals, are actually legal entities registered with the state, so the documents can indeed be accepted for legal use in all the nations that have signed the Hague Convention.

So far the states of New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, New Jersey, New York and of course Illinois are being super helpful. The worst case scenario is a twelve day turn around from Nevada to seal our Marriage license… funny since the wedding was a drive thru affair….seems like the document taking longer than we took to plan the event is a bit ironic.

Our check of the calendar tells us that all things being equal we should be ready to submit our Dossier to the adoption agency by May 15th. They will then have all of it translated into Russian and then submitted to the several regions in Russia that we are eligible to adopt from. (That process can take anywhere from 1 to 3 months, but once it is completed we are on the LIST and ready to wait for the referrals of the children that are matched to us.)

A fair amount of waiting comes next…so we are using this time to do what we can to get the house ready, get ahead as much as possible on work and expanding the business so that we have more Kahunas to help. We are also attempting to learn at least a bit of the Russian language so we aren’t completely helpless when we get there.

So, Спасибо (Spasibo) a До свидания (Dosvi daniya) = Thank you and Goodbye…..

best wishes to you all!

Add a Comment

Popularity: 1%