A cold blustery end to 2008

Today we made what we hope is the last trip to be fingerprinted. Our USCIS prints don't actually expire until May 2nd but our caseworker didn't want us having to worry about getting reprinted while we were traveling in 2009. Hopefully we will be completed or close to it by the time they were to expire. We battled the brisk winds, which almost knocked me down, and walked through downtown Baltimore to the Support Center to get our fingerprints updated. I think it took all of about 15 minutest to sign-in, fill out the one page form and get our prints made.

Hopefully we will be getting our LOI to travel within a couple of weeks of the new year. New Year's Day is the big celebration day in Kazakhstan as opposed to Christmas Day. A group called Two Hearts for Hope, started in Jan 2008 by two families who adopted from Kaz in late 2007, collected monetary donations that were sent to one of the orphanages in Kaz so the children could go shopping. They received their gifts today. If you go to this link you can see the results:
http://twoheartsforhope.blogspot.com/2009/01/now-this-is-what-christmas-is-all-about.html

Here's to a blessed and happy 2009 to all our family and friends.

Saturday trip to USCIS in Baltimore

We received our letter notifying us that we could report to the USCIS fingerprinting office in Baltimore City anytime to have our clearance for our I600A Petition for Foreign Adoption. This will be the second set of fingerprints to date. We had to do them at the state level for our Homestudy. The process this time went much quicker. We signed in and were done in probably 30 mins. It took longer to drive in than it did to get printed. Now all we need is for our homestudy to be sent in to USCIS to complete the application. One item down....lots more to go.