Our Inspiration

As we talked about before, we had to wait a long time before we could start the adoption. One day we discovered these videos of a couple who adopted a beautiful little boy from Russia. We fell in love with their story. Every time we needed a boost of inspiration we would watch it. We watched it so many times, we practically had it memorized and felt like they were close personal friends.

Please enjoy. We’ll probably be watching it a few more times in the next few months also.

Steve and Kate’s Russian Adoption Story

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The Adoption Process

Adopting from Russia is about a 1 year process. Here is how it works, so you all have an idea what we will be doing in order to bring the children home.

• Apply to an adoption agency and sign a contract.
• Home Study – this is a report written by a social worker that recommends us as qualified parents. The social worker visits our home, asks MANY questions about our background, family, reason for adopting, how we will parent the children, etc. For the Home Study we had to have 3 letters of recommendation, local and state background check, employment verification letters, medical clearance, financial statement, marriage certificate, and probably something else that I forgot. We are currently waiting for our Home Study to be completed.
• Apply to USCIS for adoption approval and get fingerprinted.
• Prepare our dossier. This is a collection of paperwork containing detailed information about us which will be translated into Russian and sent to Russia. The dossier includes: our Home Study report, medical clearance, employment verification, financial statement, references, passport copies, notarized marriage certificate, about 10 pictures of us and our home, lots of petitions and signed papers for the Russian court, USCIS approval, police clearance, and many other documents and things we need to sign. Most of this needs to be notarized and appostilled.
• When our dossier gets to Russia, we wait. The average waiting time is 6-9 months. The agency workers in Russia will match us with the available children.

We will be adopting from Krasnoyarsk and will be getting a boy and a girl, 1 year - 4 years old.

• They send us a referral, which includes some basic information about the child, a picture and possible a video.
• At this point, we travel to Russia the first time and meet the children. If we agree to adopt them, we sign more paprework and petition to adopt the children.
• We wait for a court date.  When we have a court date set up, we travel to Russia the second time and go to court. When we are appoved to adopt, there is a 30 day waiting period, during which we will once again fly back home.
•  We fly to Russia for the 3rd time, and this time, we are bringing the children home with us! During this time, we wait for the children’s visas to be processed, get their passports and go through  a medical exam.

If you have any questions, we would be happy to answer them.

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Our BIG Goal For 2012

This year, we have started a very exciting journey. We’ve been preparing for the last few years, and especially all of last year. We are delighted to share this journey with you, so welcome!

We will keep everyone updated on our adoption on this blog.

Here is a video with Russian subtitles.

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Hello!

We are Sergey and Olga, a happily married young couple from sunny Florida.

Here are a few fun facts about us:

• We were both born in Belarus, a small country in Eastern Europe, nestled in the midst of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, more commonly know to have been a part of the former Soviet Union. Sergi was born in the city of Pinsk and Olga was born in the city of Minsk. Yes, it’s cute and a little bit corny.
• Olga is the oldest of six children. Sergi is the sixth of 12 children, 11 of them boys:)
• Olga’s family moved to America in 1992 and Sergi’s family in 2000.
• Both of our families immigrated to a small town in upstate New York, Utica, where we met and fell in love.
• To earn a living, Sergi inspects fire systems. Olga is a nurse.
• We love to read, especially Olga:), although Sergi has discovered the art in the past few years also.
• One of our favorite places to hang out is Barnes and Noble.
• “Never go to bed mad” is one of our mottoes. Sometimes, that means some really long nights, but it always works.
• Speaking is fun and we especially like doing it together, speaking to teenagers, young adults and newly married couples.
• We like to cook together. Olga reads cookbooks like novels and even started a cooking blog, olgasflavorfactory.com. Sergi completed pastry school in Belarus and sometimes brings out that talent to play with.
• We live about ten minutes away from some gorgeous beaches and enjoy evening strolls and sunny picnics, even though we don’t swim very often.
• Olga has never been able to beat Sergi at checkers.
• We are currently in the process of adopting two children from Russia.
• Our faith is a very important part of our life and we are so thankful to be children of God.

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