More determined than ever!

Now that we've had a few days to digest the news.. we have had time to regroup and are more determined than ever to see this through. We are preparing our homestudy update and therefore will address their concern. Our agency will be in position to let us know in early August the new region to whichl we'll be assigned. We really have no preference...we just want our dossier to be accepted in order to travel to meet our child/children. We've therefore decided to try again. In the meantime, we are treating ourselves to extra vacation time with Yannik. He too deserves a break! I'll always remember what he told me when I told him we would have to wait a little bit longer for his sister. He said.. that"s ok.. we can wait...in the meantime... I'll play with you!" It's a good lesson to hear... so... we' re off on vacation to play together ;0))

A major "Bump in the Road"

This is a very difficult post to write. We were pretty shocked to find out today that the officials in Uralsk rejected our dossier and that we would have to re-submit our application to another region. We are told that it will delay our travel by 6-8 months as we prepare udpated documents. We're still hanging on to the hope that our daughter/sibling is out there waiting for us... we'll just have to be a tad more patient.

A BIG step closer!!!!!!!!!

We received news today that our Dossier has been released from both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Ministry of Education!!! It was a wonderful surprise... we were preparing for a longer wait at MFA...Our dossier has also officially been assigned to the region of Uralsk!!! That was the last big hurdle... now we simply have to wait for the regional authorities to send us an invitation to travel. No clue as to the timing of yet... We do know that most of the gov office close during July and resume activity in August....We're so excited...it's now really hitting us...soon our family will be expanding...we can't wait.

Update

We contacted our agency this week. It appears that our file is still with MFA. We had to send a new letter to Astana based on a new adoption policy... so hopefully this will speed things up. In the agency's opinion, we are still likely going to Uralsk.

On the homefront, we have begun buying girl clothes ages 12-18 months....and girl's toys. Yannik is getting really excited as well. Seeying him with younger kids, we know that he is going to make such a great big brother ;0)

Some of the preparations have begun !

We can't wait to bring these new friends to Kaz!

Uralsk!

More progress!!! Our agency just contacted us to let us know that our dossier would be most likely sent to Uralsk (pronounced "Oral") in north-west Kazakhstan, near the Russian border and close to the Caspian Sea. It is actually situated in Europe, but a bridge dividing the city takes you into Asia. We're pretty excited... sounds like things are moving along. We'll post additional information once we received it.

If you want to learn more about the city, check it out on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral,_Kazakhstan