So ... where are we at...

So here's what has happened, what's going on, and what's on the horizon...
- As I haven't mentioned it before, we are planning to adopt a little boy from Russia.  We are hoping for an age range between 8-14m(ish).  I / we learned that the process for adopting a boy typically goes much quicker than adopting a girl.  Not 100% sure exactly why that is, but the stats are that the wait time is quite a bit longer for those requesting to adopt a girl internationally.
- We have completed our physical home study and all the supporting documents / letters for that, and we are now waiting for the report to be completed... hopefully next week.  Then, that has to go to the State of IL for approval (~2-4week wait)
- We have applied for and been accepted by an agency in PA that will actually handle the Russian adoption.
- We have our passports
- We have collected almost all of our documents that will be part of our Russian dossier.  We still have to get a bunch of them apostilled.  For those familiar with adoption, you will know exactly what that means; for those who are not, it is basically an official certification of a notarized document acknowledging that it is legitimate and allows it to be used internationally.  Most all of our documents have to be Apostilled on the State level (in Chicago), but one of them (our FBI Criminal Clearances) actually has to be Apostilled on the federal level and that has to go to Washington, D.C.  We submitted our fingerprints near the beginning of January and the current wait time is 8-weeks.  The Apostille process with take another 4-weeks after that...

So, that's where we are now ... we are in "hurry up and wait" phase.  Waiting to get documents from one place to send to another to continue to wait a little longer.  We did learn the other day that as soon as our approved home study is received by our agency in PA, we will be able to be placed on the waiting list for adoption.  A referral should come rather quickly after that point.
- Leslie passes a fair amount of time following several different blogs from people that are in the same process or have recently completed the process, etc.  She has found a lot of information ... most of it is helpful, some great resources.

And, what's on the horizon ... we are already starting to think about travel arrangements, at least generally. We will have to travel 3x to Russia.  We recently purchased 2 eReaders so that we will have something to  help keep us occupied on the 10-hr(+) flight (not to mention the 10-hr time difference).

So, we are moving forward one-day at a time.  I'm almost afraid to say that things have been moving forward rather smoothly, but lately everything seems to be falling into place rather nicely.  Hopefully ... prayerfully, they will continue that way.