Now We Wait

I drove our completed dossier to the Texas Secretary of State Office in Austin on Monday November 3 so that our I-171 H could be apostille'd. The Secretary of State office is just across the street south of the Texas state capitol. A frind of ours in Colorado suggested that it could save a couple of weeks in our timeline by hand carrying our remaining documents for apostille in case there were any docuements that had to be redone. As it turned out the I-171H was not done correctly. The requirement is to send a copy of the I-171 H that is notarized and apostille'd to Russia. The problem was that we had not signed the copy that we had notarized so a new copy had to be made and notarized before it could receive an apostille. After a brief scare I ran down the street to the UPS store to have a new copy notarized. The whole process took about two hours after which I anxiously packed up the dossier and next day'd it to Hand In Hand.

The dossier contained: an 8x10 family photo, two 5x7 family photos, 12 pictures of our house, a photo notary statement, a letter of intent to adopt, 'Form 1', 'Form 2', three marriage certificates, three copies of our passport pages, letters of committment and obligation, psychological evaluation, letter of medical approval, doctor's license, financial statement, copy of deed to our home, declaration of attorney regarding property ownership, letters of employment, FBI clearances, Power of attorney for Olga in Bryansk, I-171 H, and a check for $6500. All of these documents were notarized and apostille'd. One document had two notarizations!

One of the more amazing things we have discovered is the Russian Ministry of Education searchable orphan database. (There is a link at the right bottom of this blog.) It contains pictures and information about Russian orphans. It currently appears to contain information about 75,795 boys and 52,007 girls. It can be translated via google translate...