Homestudy Part 1

The homestudy packet came in the mail Saturday!! Whoop whoop...finally something to do! Can I just say WOW! We worked for about 8+ hours on Sunday to get as much done as possible. Let me give you a sample of what they want:

individual autobiographies

financial statement form

photocopy of federal tax return

marriage certificate

birth certificates

color photo of each of us

color photo of exterior of front and back of house

proof of life insurance

proof of health insurance

proof of health insurance for adopted child

guardianship letter

sworn statement

background check release

Also, they give you about fifteen questions to answer. About a paragraph for each answer. For example just to name a few:

What is your parenting philosophy?

How are you preparing for this adoption?

What are your hobbies/interest?

The list goes on...

We also set up a fedex account. Which allows our agency to send documents to Russia and back. Don't even want to see those shipping charges!!

Lastly, they asked for several references.

The GOOD news is it is done!!!! We can mail it back to our agency tomorrow!! Scott gets most of the credit! He has worked sooo hard on making sure we have all the documents we need and stayed on the phone until it was done!

Once the agency receives this information we will be assigned a social worker. They will do 4-6 interviews with us. At least one of those will be completed in our home.

While we are waiting for those interviews we will also be working on getting complete physicals and 10 hours of education online.

Whew...so much information!!! We are making great progress, lets hope it continues!

We have a much anticipated trip planned to Cedar Island this weekend for our anniversary. We hope to get as much accomplished as we can before we leave!

So next up appointments for physicals!

Oh quick note, after we finish the homestudy we file our I-600A. The I-600A is the application for advance processing of orphan petition. But we dont want to get ahead of ourselves, there are many hurdles to jump before we get there. Then up next is the completion of our dossier(this post is already too long for me to explain that so we will save it for later!).

Fun facts: current population in Russia is 138,739,892.

This puts Russia 9th on the list for population even though it is the largest country.(China is 1...duh!)

Moscow population is 10,500,000.

The Rileys