"the process"

I know that many of you want to know where we are in "the process," and probably even more of you want to know what the process IS. I am becoming highly educated on the international adoption process, and I'm sporting a whole new vocab to prove it, using words like "dossier" (pronounced doss-ee-ay) and "apostilled" in my everyday conversations. Below is a basic breakdown of how the process works (believe me, this is VERY basic compared to actually living it out):

1. Homestudy - this is where a social worker compiles every tid-bit of your life and puts it on paper. It takes awhile (several months) to complete and includes things like writing an autobiography, criminal background checks, physicals, written references, financial forms, information about your house, documentation from an 11 year old speeding ticket (yes, I am still bitter about that), and home visits where the social worker interviews you and looks at your house, etc.

2. Submitting paperwork to USCIS - This includes our petition to adopt, our homestudy, and some VERY costly fingerprints. Once everything is submitted and approved they will give us another form to submit to Sasha's country with our dossier.

3. Dossier - I think this is French for MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF PAPERWORK.  If the homestudy is your life on paper, the dossier is your life on notarized, apostilled paper. Here is the comedy in all of this (okay, really it is not funny at all, but all I can do is laugh) the homestudy gets included as part of the dossier paperwork, but we still have to collect the same documents over again and include them as well! For instance, I am in the process of collecting proof of home ownership. Even though the home study verifies that we do own our home and gives a detailed description, I still have to trudge downtown to the courthouse and get tossed around like a ragdoll from office to office trying to find someone who will type up a 3-sentence letter on county letterhead that says that we own our home. And then I have to get them to sign it in the presence of a notary. Once all the paperwork is filled out, following all 72 rules for each document, then we mail it off to our capital to have them apostille each of them. This is a fancy way of saying that they attach a piece of paper with one of those official-looking gold seals (read: sticker). And because we know that nothing in life is free, each one of those stickers will cost us $5. That doesn't seem like a lot until you see how many papers need stickers :)

4. Travel- Once our dossier is sent to Sasha's country, our facilitator will translate it and submit it for us. Once it's reviewed and hopefully accepted, we will receive travel dates. Things get a little fuzzy for me from this point on. I know that there are several official appointments (SDA, court, etc.) before Sasha is officially a Hagler. We will most likely have 2 trips. Each will be an estimated 2-3 weeks. In the first trip, the adoption becomes legal, but there is a 10 day wait period, which allows for the ruling to be overturned. It is in this time that we plan to come back to the States. The second trip is not as easy as pick him up and fly back. There will be a lot of legalities to take care of (obtaining a visa, medical exams, etc.), which is why the second trip is quite long as well.

Okay, so down to the nitty-gritty of where we are in all of this mess. I feel like a sprinter running a marathon! I'm doubled over with cramps and am panting heavily :) Our homestudy should be completed very soon. We are done with our parts, we are waiting on the report to be completed, signed, notarized and handed over. We have submitted our petition for adoption to USCIS, but they still need our homestudy. We are gathering all of our paperwork for the dossier as diligently as we can, but obtaining even one paper is never as easy as just asking for it and receiving it. Sasha's country will only accept dossiers this year until November 26th. We will not make that deadline, so we will have to submit when they re-open after the winter break in February. If all goes as as planned, we think our travel should come sometime in early April. 

I know that this post has gotten out-of-control-long, but I also want to address one more thing: I have been asked by many people, "why does it cost so much?" My answer: the process! We are doing our adoption independently, which means there are no agency fees. Reece's Rainbow is not an agency and the only money we have paid to them were a small application fee and a love offering. The homestudy, obtaining documents, and USCIS account for a decent chunk of change, but the biggest expenses come from travel and paying the facilitator in country (who does work hard for the money). There is no pork here. 

We are chugging along with the fundraising and should have new fundraisers up and running in the near future. Thanks for standing with us through the stress and the chaos.