Our Adoption Time Line

• October, 2008 - Discussed with our girls the possibility of adopting. 
• November, 2008 - Announced to our families that we were planning to adopt.
• November, 2008 - April, 2009   Endless hours of reading and research about domestic vs international adoption and adoption agencies.
• April, 2009 - Signed contract with Adoption Ark, Chicago, IL.
• April, 2009 - Completed home study with Harmony Adoptions, Maryville, TN
• May, 2009 - U.S. Citizensip and Immigration Services receives our Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition (I-600A).
• July, 2009 - Traveled to Atlanta, GA to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration for more fingerprinting.  (We actually had a date at the end of May but had to reschedule due to our cruise to Alaska with my grandmother).
• July, 2009 - Received USCIS approval for adoption of 2 children ages 6 months to 4 years of age.
• August, 2009 - Completed dossier.  Received by Adoption Ark and sent to be translated to Russian.
• October, 2009 - Translation is complete and dossier is forwarded to the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
• October, 2009 - Agreed to pursue adoption of Alina. 
• December, 2009 - Due to Alina's age, we have to get an amendment to our home study to adopt a child up to age 8 years old.
• January, 2010 - Home study amendment is sent to USCIS for approval.  It gets returned with a request for additional information. 
• February, 2010 - Home study amendment is resent to USCIS and approval is received. 
• February, 2010 - Find out we are unable to adopt Alina.  We get information on Kristina and Vladamir and agree to pursue adoption. 
• February, 2010 - Dossier has now been forwarded to the Ministry of Education in Kazakhstan.  Waiting on region assignment and letter of invitation to travel.  Told only about 3-4 months until we travel.   We'll see...
• March, 2010 - We heard from our case worker that our dossier is probably out of the first ministry, headed to the second ministry and to the region in late April!   No official word however  :(
• March 30,2010 - We have successfully passed through both Ministries and our case worker has received our Letter of Invitation (LOI) to travel.  Makin travel arrangements for next week.   We get to meet our babies on March 12th!