10 days or 10 years?

Counting down the days until we get to meet the kids. They are passing so slowly. It's getting more exciting, though, as we talk more to the ladies at the agency, being prepared about what to bring and what to expect. It makes it seem more real.

We got our dossier finished, with the exception of our approval form (I-171H) from the USCIS. It still hasn't come. Any day now! We had to go to Harrisburg, after having all of our forms notarized, to get them all apostilled (which is, again, a state seal that verifies that legitimacy of the notary). That was pretty easy, actually. Took like 5 minutes once we got there. We made a day of it last Friday while it was raining and we couldn't take dogs for walks. We stopped at Cracker Barrel and had lunch, which I haven't done in awhile (I think the last time was with mom, on the way to SC from Atlanta?). Jason was skeptical about eating there but gave in. He said the menu is confusing. Which it is. But he agreed the food was worth it. He said the atmosphere in there is so different than most restaurants it made him a little uncomfortable. I told him the atmosphere in there made me happy because I used to eat in there so often as a kid. I always think about that $50 stuffed cat (the one that looked real) that my parents bought me when I was little. I think that was the day that I started thinking that if you "just put it on the credit card", it's not really costing you anything. Fortunately I learned the TRUTH about that before I grew up. ;)

Anyway! We sent the dossier to the agency, they received it Monday and sent it to Estonia yesterday. I had to send our marriage license to Columbia, SC to be apostilled since it was a SC document, and they sent it to the agency directly. They received that yesterday but had already sent everything else to Estonia, so they will send me the apostilled marriage license and we'll hand carry it over to Estonia.

The ladies are also sending us a box of clothes to take to the orphanage as a gift. We also need to bring gifts for the orphanage, and for the caretakers. And of course for Katya & Roman. We're bringing them each a photo album of us, the house, and the animals. We took pictures of us the day of Rachel's wedding a couple weeks ago. I think we ought to do some casual ones too, but we'll see. We sent those same pictures with our dossier (required 6-10 pics of us and house), and the lady at the agency said the pictures were perfect. The pics were taken with Jay's good Nikon D80 digital SLR camera with a 60mm 1:2.8 micro auto focus lens (<-- Dad, FYI ;) ). 10-point-something megapixels!

As far as prepping us for the trip, Barbara (one of the agency ladies) warned me again that the kids may test us a lot at first (by being a little wild and not listening). One reason is because, unless they've figured it out already, they will be just finding out before we get there that the previous family who had come to preview them last year is not adopting them. Igor is going to explain to them that they failed the approval process, but that this new family (us) has already been approved, and it's not that they were rejected. Even so, they will still feel rejected and doubt the certainty of us adopting them. They won't trust us at first. In addition to that, they have to wait until the last minute to tell them because recently (for the first time in Estonia) a US family was a no-show to their court date. They just didn't come. So these kids - who happen to be in the same orphanage as K&R, thought they were going home on a certain day and the family ditched them. So they have to make sure we're actually coming before they tell them we are. Then when we're there and once we've decided for sure to adopt them, we have to make sure we assure them with promises that everything will work out.

Jason got worried recently that we'd go through all this and get there for our court date in a few months and the judge will reject us for no good reason. Theoretically they could, they can do whatever they want. Even though the court hearing is really a formality. So I asked the agency how many times that's happened, and as I suspected it was only once. It was this past February, and a judge who's never done an adoption before rejected a single man adopting a 7yo special needs boy. That is totally allowed by Estonia, but this judge was stupid so she rejected him. He has to redo his dossier and submit it to a new court. We already knew about that situation from the Estonia adoption yahoo group message board, and we were comforted to know that that was the only time that ever happened.

It really seems like, from everyone's experiences, the Estonian adoption is relatively VERY easy. So far it has been bump free, relatively speaking!

I think that's all the news for now. More soon probably!

Love,
Molly