Where it all started ... in the beginning

I decided to move my blog over from the Yahoo site, since I had to personally invite everyone to view it. I really wanted a site where i could just send folks the link and they could just pull it up and look. I had several friends that couldn't get in even with the invite. Since we are going to be leaving in about 3 weeks, I needed to get a few things taken care of, like a good blog.

I will just do a quick history for those folks that are just joining us.

We started this process in February to March, 2006. We knew we couldn't have any other children and decided to look into international adoption. We started our home study about this time and I started compiling paperwork.

We mailed off our INS application in mid-April, 2006. We were going to China and using Children's Hope International, which I only have good things to say about. I just loved Vonda Hunter with CHI. But due to the long wait, I became discouraged. I heard about a website called Rainbow Kids International and started looking online at all the children. Well, we absolutely fell for a little girl that was 4 named Luba who was in an orphange in Kazakhstan. In order to go after her we needed to change countries and agencies. We decided to switch to Focus on Children on Utah mainly because we were told this was our only hope of getting Luba. More on that later ...

We changed course and headed for Kazakhstan and more paperwork. We waited it seemed like forever and I finally made an appointment in New Orleans to get fingerprinted on July 5th. Our entire dossier was ready to go, except our INS approval. I went ahead and submitted our entire dossier to FOC and it was translated and was waiting on INS approval. That did not come until September 11, 2006.

By the end of September our dossier was headed for the Kazakhstan embassay in New York. Very shortly after that, by mid-October I heard it was in Kazakhstan at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

By mid-December we were told it was at the MOE - Ministry of Education. I won't re-hash that nightmare but we were told every Saturday in January and February that it was coming out. Only when we inquired about Almira did our dossier finally move. So, he we are about 1 year after we started and plan on travelling April 8th to get our girl.

Kathy