Russia Update

It has been a while since we have updated everyone but there hasn't been any news to report until this past Friday.

After talking with our facilitator, Andrea, we have decided to make some changes.

Our agency is waiting accreditation from the Russian government to continue adoptions. After waiting for a few months, it appears that the government is 'dragging its feet' in reissuing accreditations. Our agency feels that this is something that will continue through the holidays and into to the new year. We have become frustrated with this wait and so has our agency. They have suggested that we consider changing countries. Michael and I talked about it and decided the best thing for us is to change countries. We are changing all of our paperwork over to Kazakhstan! This is a lot of paperwork to complete but no more than we would have to complete for Russia. The good news is that we only have to do one set of paperwork. In Russia you have to do 2 sets for each child! The bad news is that Kazakhastan only allows one child at a time but their ages are lower than Russia. The children are on the national database for only 6 months as opposed to 9 months in Russia. The child will most likely be a boy. Kazakhstan moves quickly so we could have our child very quickly! We will have to spend several weeks in Kaz but at least we won't have to leave our child behind.

This was a very hard decision but we feel that it was the right one. We are ready to have our child home and want to do it the best and fastest way!

We will keep you up-to-date as things start to move.

Signed,

Michael & Kirsten