Good Fortune

We went out to dinner last night, and guess what my fortune cookie said:(Sorry- I couldn't resist!)

And They're Off!

Our dossier is FINALLY on it's way to our agency and out of my hands! After 8 months of working on it, this feels so GOOD!!!!!

Philip will take care of the rest of the embassy authentications for me (since I didn't have any luck with the embassy in Houston, and I don't have time to deal with D.C. since we are moving to California on Monday), then send it to China where it will be translated, then passed on to the CCAA (the agency in China that handles all adoptions). Then the CCAA will give us our LID!

So this is what our dossier looks like; 8 months of work boils down to this:Included in the dossier is the following:
*Our 8-page homestudy
*A certified copy of our USCIS I-800A approval
*A "cover letter" to China
*Proof of Employment for Paul
*A "Letter of Marketplace Unemployment" for me
*A Certificate of Property
*Physicals for Paul and me
*Criminal Record Checks for both of us from each State/place we've lived in for the past 5 years
*A certified copy of our Marriage Certificate
*Certified copies of our Birth Certificates
*Copies of our passports
*2 passport photos for each of us
*6 candid photos

It's actually a weird feeling letting all of those precious papers out of my hands after working so hard on them for so long, but I know they're a whole lot safer in Philip's hands right now than here in this house with the move going on next week!

So farewell dossier, and good luck!!

They're Here!

Our 3 missing documents just arrived from the Department of State!(Check out the signature):Now I can put our entire dossier together and send it all out!

Finishing Touches

In preparation for the arrival of our MIA documents (the 3 on the way from the State Dept.), I got the rest of our dossier ready to go today. Paul brought home a utility-style paper cutter from work so that I could matt the pictures we have to send with our paperwork:We have to send a total of 6 photos: an individual shot of each of us, a close-up of us as a couple, and one of our house. The last 2 can be of us doing activities we enjoy or something that shows a little about our lives.

I keep checking on our 3 missing documents, but FedEx.com still says they are in Memphis. I'm not sure why they had to go all the way to Memphis; we are only about a 3 hour drive from D.C., but as long as they're here by the promised time of "no later than 4:30 PM Friday" (tomorrow), we'll be OK. That will still give me time to run the entire dossier up to the FedEx store and mail it out to Philip before 5 PM. That way he can get them Monday morning, and hopefully get started on getting the final authentication (by the Chinese Embassies).

I'm still holding on to my hope of being LID before the end of February. It is still possible, IF the stars align just right...

Whew!

After seriously panicking today, I finally received an e-mail from the State Department saying that our documents are finally being sent back (no explanation as to what took twice as long as it should have, of course). I just checked FedEx.com and they have indeed been picked up. They should arrive by Friday afternoon. I will not completely relax until they are in my hands (and I can see that they are done correctly!), but I feel SO much better now!

Nothing like playing it to the last minute... Never a dull moment around here!!

Getting Worried!

Surprise of all surprises, no one replied to the e-mail that I sent to the Dept. of State yesterday morning. So I got the bright idea to try to track the envelope (I had to send a return FedEx envelope in with the papers so I have the tracking number on my receipt), but FedEx.com said that the envelope has not even left yet. Then I really started to panic! I called the State Dept. yet again (3rd time), but unfortunately the only person you can talk to when you call is the operator. She took my information and submitted it to the Authentications Department and said that "hopefully" someone will call me. That doesn't sound very promising. They had said that it would only take 5 business days to authenticate these documents; we're now on day 10.

Now I've gone from worrying that these papers may be returned after we move (by next Wednesday, one week from today, this house will be empty and we will be gone), to worrying that the papers are lost completely! One of the papers was only Paul's Proof of Employment, which he can easily have redone, but the other 2 were our police clearances from Italy. They took MONTHS to get!

Still Waiting... Again!

No news on the 3 papers that we are waiting to be returned from the Department of State (the ones signed by the Navy so they have to have different authentication). I called on Friday and again today and was only told to send an e-mail, which I did but of course there has been no reply as of yet.

I had thought the USCIS would be the agency to hold us up; I was losing sleep worrying about that paperwork getting back to us before we moved. Now it would seem that it may be the Dept. of State that messes us up instead! We are exactly 1 week away from our move...

Hopefully it will come today!

Celebration Time

Paul and I decided that we had enough good news on the adoption front this week to warrant a celebratory dinner. We have been saving a gift certificate to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse that my parents gave us so that we could celebrate big when we got our LID, but then we realized that it looks like that time may come right in the middle of our move when we will be on opposite ends of the country. So we decided that instead we would go ahead and celebrate now, since everything is pretty much done (I hope!) and it should only be a matter of time until we get that precious LID. Besides, as Paul keeps saying, it feels like everything is finally starting to come together!

The meal was outstanding! I chose the crab cakes, which were amazing, while Paul opted for the "surf and turf": lobster tail and fillet mignon. We both agreed that the meal as a whole was simply perfect! Of course we toasted Caitlin, and when our hostess discovered our reason for celebrating she took a personal interest; adoption is very near and dear to her heart since her sister had just adopted 2 babies from Russia, and she and her siblings were all adopted by her parents as well. It was a very special evening!

Ladybugs from Japan

A surprise package arrived today from Japan! My brother and sister-in-law live in Sasebo, Japan, and apparently ladybugs are very popular over there; ladybug and shamrock (if that's not good luck I don't know what is!) paraphernalia is all over the place! They sent us some very cool and unique gifts: the package contained glasses with ladybugs and shamrocks (they say "Happy Day!", although they are Japanese glasses!), these very cool ladybug/shamrock page markers, and a ladybug/shamrock waterbottle sock. Very fun!

Success!

I just got back from Richmond with all of our Virginia documents, authenticated and ready for the Chinese Embassy!
Now all we need is to get our military documents back from the Dept. of State, then I forward everything to Philip and he takes care of the rest! Yay!!