Thursday, April 17, 2014

Mama's a Busy Bee!

Life has been a whirlwind recently and, were it not for my love of lists, I'd forget everything!  First, I finished the kitchen backsplash project I'd been s l o w l y working on for the past couple of months...



Secondly, I've made quite a bit of progress on our adoption paperwork!  Our homestudy was finished on the 11th, and in my hands on the 14th.  On the 15th, I mailed our FBI clearances to be authenticated, our I-800A paperwork to USCIS, 6 documents to be apostilled at the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and a copy of our homestudy to our stateside caseworker.

At this point, we've only got one more document to complete before we've done all we can do, and it's our agency approval letter.  I have an agency approval certificate, but the specific wording in the letter we need for our dossier includes our home study agency's commitment to performing the post-placement reports, and we need to pay for those visits prior to them filling out the paperwork.  (We're about $600 from having all we need for that.)

I'm also still working on our dossier photos, and that's the hardest thing for me.  One of my friends was joking with me that I can tackle a big stack of legal documents and get them typed up, signed, notarized, and apostilled with no issue, but I can't put 10 pictures on a page and call it done.  I tried, and I've decided it's just going to be easier to use Shutterfly to make a photo collage, where I can easily play with the pictures and layouts.

My goal is to finish these last two pieces by the end of the month, so I can get everything to our caseworker for translation.  Things are moving so quickly right now, and I keep praying this pace keeps up!  The faster we get back to Bulgaria, the better!