Last Tuesday, Nov. 27, we were able to review the first draft of our HS. Other than a few typo's it looked great. That, plus we're still waiting for 2 clearances to come back: CPS (Child Protective Services) and fingerprints. Both of these items were mailed to their respective agencies on Oct. 31 and we were told that typically it takes a month to get the reports back. Please join us in our prayer request that the SW receives these reports in the next few days, along with Judy's criminal history that we had to resubmit a few weeks ago. I don't know if the Thanksgiving holiday will cause any delays...
Once the missing reports are received, our SW will bring the HS to her committee for review and final approval. After that approval, our HS will be DONE!!!! Normally the committee meets on Tuesdays but I'm hoping they can (and will!) call a special meeting as soon as the SW plugs the missing info in. I am really hoping we can have our copies of the HS in our hands by Friday, Dec. 14 at the latest.
As soon as the HS is complete, we can finally submit our I600A - the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition - to the US Immigration office. Unfortunately our state will not begin processing the I600A without the finalized HS attached. Some states will begin processing the I600A while waiting for the HS. We're not that lucky.
When I first heard about the delay with filing our I600A I was super discouraged. I was even more discouraged when our immigration field office told my husband that it would take them 4-5 months to process our form once it was submitted. Now, however, it appears that they have shortened that time to 3 months. Still a long time, but I can deal with 3 months better than 5 months!
I didn't realize that we could travel on our first trip without having submitted our I600A but we can!! After my agency explained this to us, they also told us that our current timeline could mean that we make our first trip as early as February. Woo-Hoo!! I never imagined traveling to Russia, much less smack in the middle of winter. So my CHRISTmas list this year definitely includes hand warmers!
Before we get our travel dates, though, we need to complete our Dossier...
Okay, take a deep breath with me & we'll continue on -
I've mentioned the Dossier briefly in another post but I don't believe I went into much detail. I know you're all sitting on pins & needles to see (1) what the heck a dossier is if you don't know already and (2) where we are in THAT process! I'll leave the specifics of our Dossier for tomorrow. Just know for now that at this point, we are responsible for cutting down a small rain forest... Bad as a closet tree hugger but VERY GOOD as a mom to be!
Prayers for our Children
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7 comments:
I'm glad to hear your home study is almost finished. We got our rough draft this weekend and it had a lot of errors on it. I know y'all are going to be traveling with us in a month or so, you watch!
Susan - I so hope we travel together! There is another CSS couple, Beth & Nick from CT, that are on about the same timeline as us. It would be great if ALL of us meet in Moscow. Any idea how long it will take to correct the errors on your HS?
Susan/Randy adn Karyn/Norm -
Congrats to you on getting rough drafts of the home study - you are almost there. We got our final copy last Friday and I am waitign to pick up my medical today and then Fed Ex everything for apostille! I will be so glad to get all this paperwork out of the house before the holiday. Here's to us all traveling togther in the middle of Russia winter - brrrr!
I don't know when we'll get the final copy. They assurred us we would have it by Dec 1st and well...we see where that ended up. Our errors were major, like they had me graduating from high school in 1988 and getting my bachelors in 1988. They had names spelled wrong, dates wrong, ages wrong, Randy's mother changes ages 3 times throughout the study. The recommendation wasn't filled in and some other stuff. Pretty frustrating. Our SW is in a trial jury Mon, Tues, Wed so who knows when we'll get it. We will hand carry it to Austin the next day to get our dossier apostilled and we'll Fed Ex it from there.
It would be neat to travel together allthough not fair b/c ya'll are from VA and Beth's family is CT and then you'll have the two icesicles (I don't even know how to spell that word) from TX! :)
I just found your blog. Congratulations on your home study almost being finished! We are with CSS too, and we're turning in the corrected draft of our home study tomorrow. I'll keep checking your blog now that I've found it, because maybe we'll be traveling around the same time.
Thanks for the comment you left on my blog. I just saw it!
We'll be keeping you in our prayers as well. :)
Yey! You've almost hit a milestone!! So exciting! I think it's great you can travel without your CIS approval - it will definitely help speed things up. After doing all of the homestudy paperwork, the dossier will be cake! :-) Have a great weekend!
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