Thursday, January 8, 2009
Still nothing...
As expected, there has been no new news from St. Petersburg. We anticipate some more information next week.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Adoption update
Shelly and I are always getting asked, "so what the status," so I thought this would be a good forum to update our progress in pursuit to growing the Gottschalk family...
As of now, we have completed all of our paperwork and are awaiting a call from our adoption agency for a "referral."
A "referral" is a profile of a child that meets the criteria that we set during our application process. It contains information regarding age, sex, health, etc.
As soon as we receive the referral, we have the option to traveling to meet that child, or wait for another referral, depending on the information presented.
My first question was, 'do we need to have our bags packed to jump on a plane to Russia the second we get the call?' I guess I thought it was much akin to once someone's water breaks, it is a rush to get to the hospital. Kinda foolish thinking now that someone has set me clear. Actually, it could be a few weeks or more before we would hop a flight to Russia to potentially meet our new addition.
Once we accept the referral and travel to meet the little one, we anticipate spending a week abroad to officially accept the referral. At that point, we would return home to start the official "in-country" paperwork to bring the child home. About 8 weeks later (more like 10-12 weeks lately), we would return to Russia to officially bring home our new addition.
So, to answer the million dollar question, let's assume we get a referral in January of 2009, here's how I would anticipate things would go....
So, what do we actually know? We know that:
As of now, we have completed all of our paperwork and are awaiting a call from our adoption agency for a "referral."
A "referral" is a profile of a child that meets the criteria that we set during our application process. It contains information regarding age, sex, health, etc.
As soon as we receive the referral, we have the option to traveling to meet that child, or wait for another referral, depending on the information presented.
My first question was, 'do we need to have our bags packed to jump on a plane to Russia the second we get the call?' I guess I thought it was much akin to once someone's water breaks, it is a rush to get to the hospital. Kinda foolish thinking now that someone has set me clear. Actually, it could be a few weeks or more before we would hop a flight to Russia to potentially meet our new addition.
Once we accept the referral and travel to meet the little one, we anticipate spending a week abroad to officially accept the referral. At that point, we would return home to start the official "in-country" paperwork to bring the child home. About 8 weeks later (more like 10-12 weeks lately), we would return to Russia to officially bring home our new addition.
So, to answer the million dollar question, let's assume we get a referral in January of 2009, here's how I would anticipate things would go....
- Travel for 1st meeting in mid-February
- Return trip, mid-April or May.
So, what do we actually know? We know that:
- We submitted to two different regions in Russia (Perm and St. Petersburg)
- We requested either a male or female, 8 to 24 mos in age
- We are currently 3rd in-line in St. Petersburg
- The two people in front of us in St. Petersburg have requested girls
- Our agency anticipated receiving two referrals in December of 08, one boy and one girl.
- If either of the couples in front of us turn down a referral, we could be presented a referral pretty soon
That is where we stand. Due to the holiday, the lines of communication have slowed, so we anticipate an update sometime the first week of January.
Stay tuned for more details!
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