What do you mean we have to paperchase again!? This is some kind of sick joke isn't it? There's really a hidden camera in here right?

Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? If you haven't, it's basically a movie where a man keeps waking up and re-living the same day until he finally gets it right. I think this movie is a perfect metaphor for adopting from Russia. You see, in Russia you have to do TWO dossiers. That's right, two wonderful, frustrating, exhausting, can't believe they actually want this level of minutiae - dossiers. It's sort of like a buy one get one free sale (the signs for these in stores in Russia say "1 + 1 = 1")... except you don't get anything free with these. Come to think of it, YOU don't actually get anything in them. Hmmm... I guess it's not a buy one get one free sale after all.

Our original dossier had just about everything one could imagine... unless the one happens to be a Russian court official. It's rather amazing what they can imagine. A certified, notarized, verified, apostilled copy of the deed to your home only shows that you own a parcel of land... not a house. A recent post on Our Little Russian Peanut describes how fun this can be. Therefore, we have to include a letter from a Realtor (Thanks Andy!!!!) documenting that we actually have a house on our parcel of land that has so many square feet and so many rooms. We have to have a CPA write a letter verifying that our financial statement is correct. We need a letter from the benefits office at work verifying that the children will have medical insurance. We need a letter from the State Medical Board that says licensed physicians are allowed to make diagnoses. There are lots of thing like that. Ah, I love a good paperchase in the evening. It's so personally fulfilling :-/

Here's the fun part. If we can get it all done by the end of July (i.e. 2 weeks from when we got home from Russia), then there is a CHANCE that we MIGHT POSSIBLY, get a court date in August... maybe. At first I didn't think we could do it, but, as of tonight, we only have 5 documents left! We MIGHT actually make it... maybe. If we don't, we won't get a court date until October. This was a HUGE concern for me because the program that I run at Ohio State is up for re-accreditation and we were scheduled to have our on-campus site visit, you guessed it, this October. Being in Russia for 3 weeks was going to be an interesting juggling act.

Fortunately for us, the Lord provides once again. Just today I received a call asking me (telling me) that the accrediting body would move my site visit to the spring cycle so that I wouldn't have to do it at the same time as the adoption. Praise God! Oh, and just for a little icing on the cake the Lord is providing, out of the blue I was offered an opportunity to review a textbook and make suggestions on improvements and it comes with a $500 honorarium. $500 won't go far for the second trip... but it goes a lot farther than $0 does. God is good. Keep us (and several governmental agencies) in your prayers that we might get these documents quickly.