The process continues....

Hey everyone. We hope you are all doing well. Things are good with us. Each week, we get one step further in the process. Right now we are trying to get a lot of stuff with our home study application complete, before we leave for our trip to Mexico with Nicole's family for Thanksgiving. Since our last entry, we have sent off our paperwork to CIS, sent in the initial application to ABC Adoption Services (our homestudy agency), sent off to have our dossier started (dossier = paperwork requested by the Russian government; we have decided to have a service do it for us - it's a lot of certified copies/authenticated forms/apostilled forms and it's one less thing we have to do - we believe it will be well worth the money spent) and we have been scheduled to go get fingerprinted this week. We received our homestudy history packet in the mail on Friday - they definitely want to know everything about us! We each have to write a 8-10 page autobiography, along with completing their full application and submitting forms (birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc). Once we send the application in, the homestudy visits will be scheduled - they have to come to our house 3-4 times for interviews, check out the neighborhood, etc. We actually got a call today from our social worker who will be completing our home study. She is contracted through our home study agency and is also a social worker for Catholic Charities in Chesapeake, VA. She was very nice and encouraging on the phone and assured us we would make it through the paperwork and she is there to help us with whatever we may need. That was reassuring! It has definitely been a learning process so far and we know we will continue to learn MUCH MUCH more. We have been reading a couple of books that have been insightful and eye opening. Nicole's sister, Lauren, works with a guy who is over in Russia now with his wife adopting a baby boy. We got the chance to talk with them before they left and they gave us some good tips. A couple of other people have shared names of individuals they know who have adopted from Russia and we look forward to talking with them about their experience. We have also been thinking about baby names....so stay tuned for what the decision will be for a name. FYI - November is ADOPTION AWARENESS MONTH...so try to learn something new about adoption :) As Thanksgiving approaches, we are thankful to have each and every one of you in our lives. We hope you all have a great thanksgiving holiday with your family. We love you all!