Dossier Submitted!

Yesterday was quite a day! Exciting, nerve racking, and long. After we dropped the boys off at Bet Yeladim and took my car in for an oil change it was off to Bethany Christian Services (our adoption agency-will explain that in another post some other time) to submit our dossier. We were excited but nervous that everything would be in proper order.

We got to Bethany which is in Crofton, MD and sat there as our social worker painstakingly went through all of our documents. There were a couple of nervous moments as she questioned a few documents, most importantly the DC seal on my employment letter. Apparently, she wasn't sure it was the right seal and was concerned that the "authenticator" there had crossed out the word "chief" in the title but after a phone call she was assured everything was ok and that the Chinese consulate had been ok with this crossout on other documents. Finally she got through all the documents and got INS to fax over the approval so we were good to go! We had gotten a verbal aproval earlier in the week but had not received (and still have not) the actual paper saying we were approved. (BTW- our social worker was awesome! Highly recomend her and Bethany for anyone interested in adoption)

Now that our paperwork was in good order it was time to head down to Annapolis to get few more notarized documents authenticated and a bunch of authenticated documents state sealed. However, just as we're about to leave for Annapolis we get a call from Bet Yeladim. We're thinking "oh crap" one of the boys is sick and we need to go get them. As it turns out, Eli's class was having a birthday party and he was eyeing the cake. They just wanted to know if he could have a slice and we said yes and left for Annapolos.

After parking in Annapolis (an adventure of its own), we head over to the Anne Arundal Clerk of the Court to get the authentifications and then over to the Sec. of State's to get all the documents state sealed. That whole process only took about 20 minutes and it was back to Crofton (about a 20 min drive) to turn everything in.

Back at the Bethany office we got to see the end of a domestic adoption taking place which was exciting and even more exciting was turning in the remaining documents and our paperchase has finally ended, we hope. The next step is the dossier is sent to Bethany HQ in Michigan for review. If they don't find anything wrong (at this point they usually don't) it gets translated into Chinese and then back to DC to the Chinese Consulate for more authenticating. And then its finally off to China to be logged in at CCA!

So, now it was finally time for a little celebrating for us. Beth and I headed back to Annapolis for lunch at Carol's Creek which is a very nice restaurant on the waterfront and then we walked around the shops in town. After doing some browsing around, picking up some fancy cupcakes for a family treat that night and treating ourselves to some ice cream we headed back to Columbia to pickup the boys from school and return home.

It made for a very long but happy day! I'll keep posting updates to this blog as well as post about all that we've been though the last few months and such.

INS approval!

I'm going to start this blog (this is my first ever post to my first ever blog) with some good news! After calling INS yesterday, our assigned officer informed me that she approved our I-800a yesterday and that it was in the mail! This is the second major approval we needed, giving us permission to bring an adopted foreign child into the U.S. The first approval was the home study from the adoption agency (approved in January) and the final will be from CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) whenever they get to it.

The next step is tomorrow when we go to the agency and submit all of our paperwork for the dossier. Assuming they don't find anything wrong (cross your fingers) the dossier is then sent to their HQ for another check, then it gets translated into Chinese, then it goes off for authentication to the Chinese Consulate in the U.S (something like that) and finally off to China. This process will take 4-6 weeks at the end of which our dossier will be logged into CCAA and the waiting can begin. Right now the wait is 36 months but hopefully that will speed up soon.

Anyways, we are very excited to be one step closer to bringing home our daughter.

Will keep posting updates!