New Year Adoption Update

Wow, have I been negligent or what? The last update on this blog was 11/14/09 and it is now 1/2/10!!! We have made some exciting progress and let's all pretend it is December. ;)

We've received our VOE letter from the notary in California and submitted it to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. They've already authenticated it and returned it, so we're good on the dossier front! That is the last piece of paperwork we needed to gather/collect ourselves so we're 90% complete - how exciting is that?! Additionally, USCIS got back with us and Julie and I had our fingerprint appointment on Dec 10. They were very, very efficient and we were in and out in 15 minutes at the most. My dad had agreed to watch Veronica and go pickup Sydney so it was a pretty crazy schedule to coordinate dropping off the kids at school, taking Veronica to gymnastics, going to mom and dad's to drop off the van, heading downtown to USCIS, etc. Since our pals at USCIS were so efficient Julie and I had time to eat lunch together so we went to one of our favorite Indian restaurants downtown and had lunch. Mmmmmm, Indian. (Read this in Homer Simpson's voice and it is funnier.) With the fingerprinting done, we are back in a hurry up and wait game with USCIS. The next step is for them to complete our file and mail - via snail mail, a form called a 797-C. This will literally be Little Bubba's ticket to becoming a US Citizen and is like gold - we can't/don't want to lose the original. Once we get it, we need to make a notarized copy of it and walk it through the whole process again - county, state and consular authentication. The good news is that we're getting pretty good at that part. The bad news, that'll all take time, especially the Chinese consulate part so we can only hope and pray that this document will get the same speedy turnaround that the others did! Then, and only then, will we be in a position to submit our dossier to our agency. Once there, it'll be double-checked and sent to China for translation and submission to CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs). We're getting close, people!

So that's where we stand today, waiting for the letter from USCIS. As we've been waiting through December every trip to the mail box has been one of anticipation and disappointment when we see the letter isn't there. We really have no expectation of how long it will take for the letter to arrive so all we can do is hope and pray. In the mean time, we're as prepared as we can be and have all of the copies of every document, notarization, state certification and consular authentication made for the agency's file as well as the copy to take with us to China.