If you read our last post, you know that we've been delayed several months due to pandemic closures. The waiting is hard and it helps to be able to compartmentalize; we basically go about our days attending to immediate needs and concerns and put "adoption" in a storage closet to wait for another day. In recent weeks I have started to get a little impatient (imagine that!) and put a few phone calls in to the United States Customs and Immigration Services line. This department serves as the primary contact for anyone claiming asylum or anyone immigrating to the U.S., so as you can imagine, it was not easy to get through. When I did, I was connected to Officer Lawrence, a sweet soul who is the only person working on international adoptions at the moment. You heard that right, he is the only person in the Department of Homeland Security working on adoptions. Despite being buried with paperwork, he was extremely talkative and encouraged me to just keep waiting and trust it will all come together.
Finally, we received our notice that we needed to get fingerprinted. This meant our paperwork was on the right track and they needed to run our prints through the FBI database. This would be our third time giving fingerprints which is funny to me considering it's the one thing that cannot change about us. But, I digress (I was told it's because they go into a different database each time and cannot be shared). We had fingerprints taken last week and yesterday received our "Notice of Approval" letter from the Department of Homeland Security. It's beautiful. I want to frame it. It says we are approved to adopt a Bulgarian child anytime between now and October, 2021. I should note that our agency said it would be almost impossible to have an adoption wrapped up by next October so we will have to file an extension sometime next year, but we have to take these victories as they come in order to keep moving forward.
The next step is a few more documents notarized and apostilled (a notary friend is worth more than gold, and mine sure has made my life easier!). Then our agency will start translating all 1000 (roughly) documents into Bulgarian. Hopefully by the end of September we will be on the waiting list in Bulgaria and that will truly be something to celebrate!
We have been trying to keep busy during quarantine. We are hiking once or twice a week and the kids are doing outdoor Kindermusik classes. I am starting some professional development classes which will keep me very busy and Brad continues to manage the kids while working from home.
We hope all of you are experiencing good health (both physical and mental) as we navigate through these challenging times. Below are some pictures from our recent outdoor adventures.
Love - Kristen & Brad
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