We're Going to Aktobe or Aqtobe!

We just got the call that we are assigned to Aktobe! I am not sure if this is exciting news or not since I can find very little information on this region. It is nice to be able to look on a map and see where we will be headed though. I am a little disappointed that this region just became a 3 trip region. This is what our travel schedule looks like.

Trip #1 Bonding period (2 weeks)
Home for 6 weeks
Trip #2 Court (2 days)
Home for 2 week appeal process and then 1-2 weeks for her passport
Trip #3 Back to pick her up

We are thinking of taking Davis on Trip 1 so he can "help" us pick her out and feel included in the process. We might go back for Trip 2 and stay until we can take her home. We officially get custody of her after the 2 week appeal process. It will depend on a lot of factors and fortunately we don't have to decide that anytime soon.

So once again we are waiting. Waiting for the Letter of Invitation. This could come any day but realistically my agency would not be surprised if it came as late as Sept. It all depends on how many little girls they have and how many couples they have ahead of us. Once the LOI comes we are only given a week or so to be packed and on a plane.

Trip Decision

We are still torn as to what to do about travel. We can make one long trip which we could be in country 7-8 weeks. Or make 2 trips.

Prospective parents are required to have a minimum 14 days of personal contact with the child before formally submitting an adoption application. This means that we must stay in the town where our child is living and visit her on a regular basis for 2 weeks. Once the bonding time is completed, we can formally apply to the court for adoption. We then can chose to go home and come back a few weeks later, or stay the entire time. I am not sure Milon can take that much time off from work! We are of course are bringing my 2yr old son. I wouldn't be able to leave him for even 2 weeks! My problem is I know myself well enough that I am not going to want to leave her in an orphanage with no contact with me for 4-6 weeks! Kids change so fast that even in a week I could miss something new she has done! Plus, It is a great time to bond with her before taking her away from everything familiar to her! My mom has offered to go over with us and stay so that might be an option also. Or Davis and I will just stay.

Choosing to Travel Blind

The preferred method of child selection is to travel to select and meet a child and interact and have a bonding period with the child before deciding to adopt that child. You are typically shown one child at a time and from what I have heard you only have a few minutes with each child. The intimidating part of traveling blind is we won't know how many baby girls we will be shown. All we know is they at least have 1 girl that meets our age and medical criteria. We chose this method over a referral because we would like to interact with the child rather than just have one picked out for us. We could potentially have to sacrifice age (meaning she might be a little older than 1yr) but we feel being able to interact with her and having the feeling that "She's the one" out ways age.

In MFA!

I got a call today from our coordinator that our Dossier is finally in Kaz at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs! It was at the Consulate in NY exactly 4 weeks. The MFA is where we indicate our intention to adopt a Kazkhstani orphan. The estimated time in MFA is 2 months. From the MFA it goes to the Ministry of Education (MOE). Here are paper work is reviewed and we will be matched with a region. We then await a Letter of Invitation (LOI) from that particular region. Once we receive our LOI, we can then obtain visas to travel to Kazakhstan

We are starting to gather things that we will need for the trip. Wow, we will be bringing a lot!

Lessons Learned

I saw someone else post something like this and thought it was a great idea for those of you that are also adopting from Kaz. I wish everyone would do this because we all could learn from others! I will try to keep this updated as we go through this journey.

1. Get Forms Apostilled ASAP- Our agency told us to wait until we had the 171h approval before apostilling. Big Mistake. We could have saved 2 weeks of time had we not done this. We encountered big problems with apostilling. One- our notary wording was wrong (hence the next one) and a few of the forms had a mistake on it with the notary

2. Verify Notary Wording with your Secretary of States Office

3. Make sure your Salary in your Homestudy matches the Salary on your Financial Form (the Homestudy asks for your Tax Return income and the Financial Forms asks for annual income so if you receive a bonus you have to add that in a separate place on your Financial Form)

4. Start keeping a Adoption Cost spreadsheet early so you have all dates and amounts you have spent (we did do this early:>)

Off to Translate!

Got an email today saying our dossier is off to translation! We can finally sit back for a few months and let everyone else work! Of course this is the hard part because we have to sit and wait with nothing to do!

Davis keeps asking about his sister! It's so cute. He keeps saying he is going to help out with diapers and bottles! I wish he was a bit older to truly understand what is going on but I also want him to have a sister close in age. He loves babies right now! In fact, I just brought my babies that were mine home from my parents house and he is sleeping with one of them!

So we did screw up!

Well, apparently the salary of my husbands that was in the homestudy didn't match the salary on his employment sheet so we had to redo that form! Also, I apostilled the FBI fingerprint cards for Milon and I together and they should have been separate so I had to redo that also. Needless to say this post is old and I have already taken care of both.