Saturday, September 25, 2010

Passed DSS!!!

Hello again everyone! I hope that you are all enjoying your first few days of fall! I know we are!! This week has been a long one, however, we received both our FBI Background Checks and our Citizenship information. So, now all we do is wait! It could be 2-4 months before the Russian Ministry matches us with our son! As soon as they do, they will invite us to Russia for our preview visit which will last about 5 days. We are hoping to head over on our first trip around Thanksgiving. Our documents are currently being translated to Russian and will soon be sent over to the Ministry. I have been learning some Russian and Andy has been studying the history of Russia. We are also debating on whether to stay with a host family or in a hotel on our first trip! It would definitely be an experiment to live with a Russian family! Bottoms up.....(get it, because all they do is drink!)

Love y'all,
Cassidy

Monday, September 20, 2010

Update from the Dad


Hello to all,


Cassidy said that I should update the blog. I am very proud and happy of the work that my wife has put into this thing so far. We have finally gotten the big stack of papers off to the adoption agency and now the waiting starts. I know my boy is over there in Russia secretly giving a tomahawk chop, hunker down dawgs, and dreaming bout the day he can run down the hill. To say that I am excited would be an understatement. I bought my first onesy last week all on my own (its a cool ACDC Angus Young looking thing with a drawn on tie). I want to say a big thank you to the the Grandmothers, both of you have already helped out tremendously!! I know that the next few months are going to be crazy but this whole thing is happening at a level far beyond our control. We will just turn it over and pray it all works out then sit back and let it happen. If anybody sees one of those cool looking furry hats people wear in Russia pick it up for me. Love you all lots!!
Andy

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Moscow Dossier Complete

Hello folks! I apologize for not blogging as often as I should, but we have been so busy pulling together all of our Moscow Dossier documents! This week, we traveled to Columbia where we visited the Secretary of State's Office. Due to the Hague Convention, all documents sent to Russia must apostilled (ap-o-steeled) by the Secretary of State. This is really just a fancy word for notarizing the notary! We ran into one hiccup but were able to work it out! We sent our final documents to the agency where they will check them out and send them to Russia! In Russia, the documents will be translated and we will be registered. They will begin to look for a boy for us! This process is called the "referral." The referral process can take 2-5 months. After we are matched, we will take our first trip to Russia to meet our little boy! While we do have a couple of documents that we are waiting on, for the most part we are just waiting on our referral. We are hoping to visit Russia by the end of the year! I know we will have many things come up while we wait, but we are happy to have our documents in someone else's hands! I was so nervous to let them out of my sight that I eyed the UPS woman the entire time she was getting them ready to mail. She probably thought I was a stalker!

As I mentioned in our last blog, we have decided on a name! We are happy to announce that our son's name will be Hagen Garrett Ethridge. Both names honor friends who have died too soon. Hagen: Joshua Ferguson Hagen
Garrett: Jeremy Garrett Deyton

Love y'all!