What next?

Just a quick update to let you know that we are continuing with business as usual. “Go until you get a no.” That is one of our mottos. We still don’t know how things will turn out in the end with the U.S. and Russian relations on the adoption front, but that is always going to be the case. We just have to believe that things will all work out.


We have completed our homestudy visits and have all of our paperwork filled out for that part of the process. Our fantastic caseworker is working on getting the report compiled. It can’t be sent off to Springfield for approval until we have our FBI fingerprint clearances back. We sent our prints off on 3/12/10 and I was told today we were in the process of being processed (gotta love that) and that I should check back in two weeks if we haven’t received the clearances. The last time we went through this process we were able to get our biometric fingerprint appointment in Naperville before our homestudy was completed. We were told today that now they won’t assign the appointment until they have received the homestudy. At least I can stop watching the mail like a mad woman for the appointment notice!

So what we have really is a chain of events that needs to take place - most of which is out of our control. From my understanding it goes like this… Receive FBI clearance (maybe 2-8 more weeks??) – homestudy sent to Springfield for approval (don’t know the average turnaround time) – homestudy sent to Immigration Services – Biometric fingerprint appointment assigned – wait for appointment and the approval from Immigration Services – Finally documents can be sent to Russia. Sooo our documents will be in Russia… ummmmm…. wellllllll… sometime!! :o)

I know for those that have not been through this process none of this makes a bit of sense. I can barely make sense of it myself. But it helps me to type it out and get it out of my head for a bit!