Waiting to Travel

On our windowsill is a photo of a darling little orphan named Ruslan. He has no last name, no mother, no father. But soon, all that will change for him. Whether he joins our family or someone else's his little face has reminded us daily of the adventure that lies ahead.

We've just passed some key milestones on our adoption journey, so thought it was time to get a blog started.

On January 12th we fedexed our dossier to our adoption agency in California. It took about four months to pull together all the documents needed with all the right notarizations and apostilles--so that was a happy day.

On Janurary 25th the dossier was completely translated into Russian and sent to the Embassy of Kazakhstan for its first approval.

We cleared the Embassy on February 1, 2007, on Ruslan's 18 month b'day.

The dossier is now at the Ministry to Education (MOE) in Kazakhstan. Now we wait 6-8 weeks for our letter of inviation (LOI) to arrive. Once we have that letter and the number on it is telexed to the Embassy, we can apply for our visas and purchase our tickets. It'll be a mad rush at the end I'm sure, but thanks to wonderful neighbors and friends, Katrina and Sophie will stay here and continue school and activities.

Justin, Isabelle, and I will spend three weeks, maybe a little longer in Kaz, meeting and getting to know our new child, and then going to court. Then we'll have to tear ourselves away and come home for the waiting period of 15-25 days. Ugh, that's the part I dread the most. Then I'll return to bring our son home. By then it will be early June most likely.

We so appreciate the community and friends that are going thru this with us, and the inspiration we've gotten from neighbors and co-workers who traveled this road before! We hope for your prayers for a smooth journey and tons of patience, but most importantly, that over the long haul our family would be an amazing blessing to this little boy, and that he would be an amazing blessing to us.