Lots of Paperwork

After gathering all of the necessary forms and filling out a lot of paperwork, we were able to submit our USCIS paperwork about a week and a half ago and are hoping that it moves through the system quickly. Since our I797C form expires in May and we need to update our approval to reflect our son's medical needs, we had to file the I800A Supplement 3 along with the I800 form. Before the I800 form will make it to our officer's desk, we have to wait for our USCIS fingerprint appointment and have that form updated/approved first. We are grateful that our agency in Bulgaria was able to get us a deadline extension from the MOJ to allow us time to get everything updated and approved.

Once our I800 form is approved, the USCIS will inform the US Embassy in Sofia. They will issue the Article 5 letter and will send a copy to both our agency in Bulgaria and the MOJ. We will then receive a court date. After court our agency in Bulgaria will take care of getting the new birth certificate for us. We will be able to travel to Bulgaria 4-5 weeks after court to bring Nikolas home. While in Bulgaria we will need to take him to a medical appointment, take care of his passport, and visit the US Embassy for a visa interview. We should be in Bulgaria for about a week before returning home.

While we wait for our USCIS paperwork to be processed, we are gathering our documents for court. Once everything is received, notarized and apostilled, we will FedEx it to our agency in Bulgaria. We're hoping to receive our FBI background checks this week and still need to update both of our employment letters, but it looks like we're almost finished with the paperwork stage. Every form is one step closer to bringing Nikolas home. If things go as planned, we hope to travel to Bulgaria sometime this summer.

Overview/Photos - Trip #1

We've been home from Bulgaria for about a week and we are already looking forward to our next trip. We enjoyed our trip so much and loved everything about the country. Our visits with our son, who we will be naming Nikolas, went very well. He's a great little boy and we can't wait until he is officially part of our family.

The staff at the orphanage is very friendly and it's obvious that they really care about the children. The facility is clean and organized. The orphanage houses 90 children, most of them being under the age of 5. There is a larger orphanage for older children across the street.

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We stayed at the Park Hotel Izida in Dobrich. It was very comfortable and was located in a very nice area with a park and tennis courts. We enjoyed all of our meals at the hotel restaurant. The food was wonderful and the staff was very patient with our limited language skills. Dobrich is a small city with a population of about 100,000. During our free time we felt safe exploring the area. Here are a few photos of Dobrich:

We left Dobrich a little after noon on Friday and headed back to Sofia. We spent two nights at the Radisson Blu right on Naradno Sabranie Square with a wonderful view of the Bulgarian Parliament, a monument of the Russian Tsar Alexander II, and the St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral. We took care of some adoption paperwork on Saturday and enjoyed some sight-seeing. Sofia is full of beautiful cathedrals and magnificent monuments. Here are a few photos of Sofia:

We had a very successful and enjoyable trip. We love the country and are lucky to have been able to see so much of it. The staff members who assisted with our adoption were very helpful and we never felt uncomfortable at any time. We are now spending our time preparing our home for a toddler and having fun shopping for him and getting his room ready. We're enjoying our last few months of being a family of two and are getting very excited about becoming a family of three.

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Here's a link to more photos:

http://http://www.facebook.com//album.php?aid=282702&id=588579889&l=c372449752

Update From Dobrich

Our time in Dobrich is coming to an end. We've had an amazing week and love being here. We've had many great visits with our little boy and signed his adoption papers this afternoon. He is absolutely adorable. He has the biggest brown eyes and the cutest little giggle. I can't wait to come back to Dobrich to bring him home.

We've been enjoying the gorgeous weather by taking walks each afternoon. We visited some monuments and walked to the city center to do some shopping. We feel so safe here and love the atmosphere. I'll post some pictures of the area when we get home.

We have one last visit with Ali tomorrow morning and then we'll be driving back to Sofia. We're spending two nights there to do some sightseeing before heading back to Indianapolis. I can't believe our time here is coming to an end so quickly. We love everything about Bulgaria and are so excited to come back in a few months.

First Post From Bulgaria

The last few days have been very busy. On Saturday/Sunday we flew from Indianapolis to Sofia with stops in Minneapolis and Paris. We arrived in Sofia at 2:00pm local time on Sunday afternoon. Violeta met us at the airport and introduced us to our translator, Sveta. We then had about a 6-7 hour drive through the Balkan Mountains to get to Dobrich. We checked in to our hotel just after 10:00pm.

We haven't done much sightseeing in Dobrich, but we plan on taking a walk through the park to the city center tomorrow afternoon. There are also a couple of museums that we plan to visit. We are staying at the Park Hotel Izida. It's a nice hotel with a great restaurant where we've had all of our meals so far. We had Bulgaria pizza for dinner this evening. The food is very inexpensive and tasty.

We met our little boy today and enjoyed two visits with him. He's quite the character and is always on the move. He likes to laugh and is a very curious little boy. We will be visiting the orphanage from 10:00am to noon and 4:00-6:00pm each day this week. We were able to feed him lunch today after our morning visit. The orphanage is only about a 5-10 minute taxi ride from our hotel. It is very clean and the staff members are all very nice. We can tell that they love our little boy and that he loves them in return.

We're enjoying our trip so far and are looking forward to the rest of the week. The weather has been great. Today it was fairly warm with lots of sunshine. There is a little snow on the ground, but it has mostly melted. We don't have any photos of Dobrich yet, but we'll certainly add some later.

Thanks to all of you who have been following our journey and praying for us along the way!!

Almost Time...

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments. We ended up pushing our trip back by a week and are now planning to leave for Bulgaria on Saturday the 5th. Our plane tickets have been purchased and our partner agency in Bulgaria has made our hotel reservations for us. We're working on gathering everything together this week and are very excited about our trip. It looks like we should have internet access while we are there, so we'll update when we can.