An Inch Closer...
Now that we have the I-171 we can move the ball closer to dossier submission. We have some vacation days starting July 9th and plan to go to Lansing for Apostille stamps on the 10th. We would have liked to drop everything and go now but work schedules, redo'ing now outdated documents and an upcoming holiday with friends coming to visit prevent us from going sooner. I will be patient and continue to plod along. Please keep us in your prayers.

One little step closer

Saturday June 21- received the 171-H -our immigration pre-approval. But also realized when looking through dossier documents that several of them need to be re-done because they are more than 4 months old. This stinks.

Hello to all. We continue to wait for our Immigration pre-approval to come through. I am hoping that it will come by the end of June. Until then- PATIENCE!!

Fingerprinting is done. Dave and I went to GR Tuesday April 29 for our 3rd fingerprinting adventure. We will probably have to wait about 2 months for our I-171h ( immigration pre-approval to adopt a child internationally) to come back. We can then get our dossier authenticated in Lansing and finally send it to the Kazakhstan embassy in Washington. Keep you fingers ( and toes) crossed.
My friend Heidi from work is also adopting from Kazakhstan and is about 2 months ahead of us. We are trying to keep each other sane.

Good Morning
Finally, a little progress. We received our fingerprinting appointment date in the mail. We go to Grand Rapids Tuesday, April 29th 9:00 am. Once done with that we wait 2-3 months for our immigration pre-approval to come in. Once that happens we can go to Lansing, get all our documents stamped with the Michigan state stamp (appostilled) then mail our dossier to the Kazakhstan embassy in Washington DC. Meanwhile...
Life continues here. I started planting this weekend. 40 Strawberry roots and 12 asparagus roots are in. Rhubarb is coming in like crazy- Dave saw them when they were just starting and wondered what "those green brains are". Anybody want some or know of some great recipes? Many seeds have been planted in peet and are doing well.
We also purchased 5 fruit trees- 3 cherry, 1 each pear and peach. They go in and out of the barn daily as they acclimate to the weather. The garage is clean, the leaves are raked, mulched and blown into the pines. The patio furniture is starting to come out and the dogs are enjoying laying around in the sun. Kaitlin brought home a baby bunny Friday, a grey and white mini lop she named Georgia. Annie loves to lay by her hutch and watch her. McGee actually demonstrated a very nice point when he took notice of her. A true bird dog at heart. Yesterday Dave cut down the Pussy-willow (sorry mom) and with the help of a friend got the massive stump out as well as another stump in the front yard. It was a good weekend and we have the sore muscles to prove it. Have a wonderful week.

hurry-up and wait

I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will receive our Homestudy in the mail today, so that I can get to the PO before they close and Priority mail our I-600a packet to Detroit so we can wait for the I-171H approval in order to finally send our dossier to the Kaz embassy-- all this hoping the embassy doesn't suspend accepting dossiers again before we can get ours in and approved.
I just read this back to myself and it makes my head spin!

Riding the roller-coaster

Well, for the second time this year (and its only March) Kazakhstan has suspended accepting new dossiers. We don't know the complete status of this situation yet and we anxiously await information from our case worker- Maeven at Adoption Ark(AA). We are pretty much done getting our dossier together and now need to figure out the next step since it will involve sending money to both agencies- Family adoption consultants (FAC) who is doing the homestudy update and AA doing the Kaz adoption. -- Hurry up and wait!!! Meanwhile I keep looking at the face of the little girl we hope to adopt and trying to draw patience and determination from her hopeful smile.