Dossier Completed

So, we finally got all the paperwork together for the dossier. This includes:1.the homestudy2.state police clearance3.INS approval4.letters of employment for us both5.specific medical forms for each of us from our doctors6.letter of obligation (to reigster our kid with the Ukrainian embassy and file reports)7.petition to adopt/request to be registered as adoptive parents in ukraine (this also lists the info on the girls we are requesting8.power of attorney for our translator to act on our behalf in ukraineThe power of attorney was the last thing we were working on - we needed our translator's passport number, date of birth, address etc. and it took him awhile to get that to us as he was "in the field" helping another family. So, now I am waiting for Dani to fax the dossier to us, so I can scan it into pdf and then I will email it to our translator to check for errors. Once he gives us the ok, Dani will get the apostilles from the US government (verifies the notary stamps - basically an extra layer of legalization). Sasha, our translator, will start translating the dossier into Ukrainian and we will mail him the completed, stamped hard copy of the dossier in english - I think we send the original directly to the Ukrainian government and then he submits the ukrainian translation to them.The ukrainian government then has 10 or 20 days to register the dossier and assign us a number. They send us a letter with our registration number and a range of dates for an appointment. We have Sasha contact them and schedule the specific date for the appointment. Normally you want the earliest date possible and the first appointment of the morning, but in our case, we are hoping to adopt Oksana first and her "file" doesn't become available until August sometime, so we won't be able to "get" her until then, so our appointment will be in August hopefully. My friend Dima is talking to Oksana's orphanage director tomorrow about us adopting Oksana - hopefully she will be helpful and supporitive of us adopting her. I met Lidia while I was there in January, so she should remember me. I have also since January, arranged for her kids to get DVD players and movies, and I paid for a oven thermometer for their kitchen. Hopefully she will agree to write a letter of recommendation to the Ukrainian government and send us a copy for our dossier. We'd also like it if she told us the exact date Oksana becomes available and/or if she would reserve Oksana for us in the event that we can't get there on the exact date. An agency can't do this according to Ukrainian law, but the orphanage can, so there is no law being broke by doing this. My friend Gayle is back in Ukraine right now, completing the adoption of her second Ukrainian son, and she is planning on visiting Marina's orphanage in Kirovograd on Saturday. Her first Ukie son is from Marina's class/groupa, and she is trying to adopt another one of the kids from that class. While she is there she takes photos for me of Marina, and will deliver some gifts I sent for her. The hardest thing about getting gifts to Marina is that I don't have anyone I can trust to deliver the packages to her and no consistent way to verify if she gets the gifts. Oksana gets her gifts through the Big Family Adopt an Angel program that my friend Dima owns/runs. Since it is an organized charity trip, I get verification of my package arriving and photos of Oksana opening her gifts. Since Gayle is delivering my gifts to Marina this time, I will probably get photos of Marina getting her gifts. Gayle said she will also talk to Marina about the previous packages I sent, and about this illusive sister her caretakers say she has. As for the money - by adopting Oksana first, it will cut back on our costs - Marina's region has some unusual legal fees that they require that are not required anywhere else in Ukraine, so that was going to add $2000 on to the usual costs. Also, Marina's orphanage is 4 hours outside of Kyiv, while Oksana's is only 1.5 hours away. This affects travel expenses. Andrew has gotten an offer for some side work - scoring sleep studies for a local sleep medicine lab. It will pay $35 per study he scores, and he can do one report in about an hour - so he says he wants to try and do about 25 studies per week (3 per week night, and 5 each weekend day). All this will be untaxed (we pay taxes on it at the end of the year) so it will bring in an estimated $3500 per month towards to adoption....so if all goes well this will pay for it all. I am a pessimist, so I am still holding on to our other options - my wonderful aunt and uncle who agree to give us a 2K loan, our social worker, Dani, who agreed to give us a loan, and Andrew could probably get some money from the doctors he works for. We also plan on having a "money shower" - instead of bringing baby gifts, people donate $20 or so. A girl I work with also wants to collect money from people in the office. Every little bit will help. I want to have 10K in our pocket (literally) when we go - well, maybe 6K since we will need 1K for airline tickets to get there, and we can wire the 3K for our translator's salary ahead of time. So, the baby shower. I'm hoping to have it Memorial Day weekend. I've got the invites already. Just need to send them out and then start planning the party.