It's 2012 - We're getting closer!

We were excited to see the turn of the new year as we believe this will be the year we finally get to be parents!  So where are we at in the whole process?  Well, in the Fall we updated our paperwork that was turning about a year old (because once it's a year old it's considered expired by Russia).  Then in October our coordinator told us we could start gathering new paperwork that will be required for court.  If we can get most of this together before we get a referral and make our first trip to Russia, then we will be able to get a court date faster.  So over the past few months we've gathered, notarized, apostilled, and fowarded 90% of the paperwork that we are able to prepare before court. And the most recent update from our coordinator is that we are now at the top of the waiting list with a few other families from our agency (YAY!), so basically at this point we are just waiting for 2 little ones to be matched up to us.  We are being told that we should receive a referral somewhere around February to April.  We're so excited!!!  We are just trying to keep ourselves busy as we continue to wait.  We hope for a referral soon, as we are ready to meet the little ones that we'll have the blessing of being parents to!

I have to also say that we are very excited to have a majority of the paperwork done.  Adoption requires A LOT of paperwork!!!  But don't take my comment as complaining...I know every bit of it is totally worth it to give 2 little ones a forever family.  We're just glad to get most of it done and be ready for the fun part - being parents!!

So, I have to add....if we only knew that we would have this much paperwork, we would not have started off with this to hold our papers....

...which we quickly filled up to the max and had to switch to this pink file box....

....(oh and yes, that is a stack of approximately 50 documents needed for court sitting next to it!) The pink file box reached it's maximum a month ago so we bought this to hold it all....

We're anticipating that this file box will be large enough to contain all the paperwork here on out. 

Welcome 2012!!!