Almost done with the paperwork!

I am a woman on a mission!

We are basically done with our paperwork chase. My physical was this past Friday. I will be picking it up hopefully Wednesday from the dr. Then I'm off to CCAI to have everything notarized then county certified, then state certified, then Chinese Consulate authenicated. so within the next week or so -- everything will be off to Houston Chinese Consulate.

Our NY documents went to the NY Chinese Consulate today. It was sort of hard to let it go. I double checked everything twice.

We also got an email today that we can send out our I600A to the the USCIS (use to be INS). This is the last of the paperwork that needed to be completed. This particular process will take typically 6 weeks to get approval. So if and I say if, everything goes as planned we could be possibly be DTC'd (dossier to China) by sometime in July I hope. Then you start counting 10-12 months for a referral.

To think I was going to pay someone lots of money to do this chasing around. It wasn't really that bad as long as you are organized!

After all this paperwork is done, I will be able to concentrate on the fun stuff -- the baby!!! The baby's room etc....

I ordered some books on Amazon to help Emily out in understanding Adoption. She knows we are going to China (yep, we are taking her!) when she turns 7 (next June). I'm not sure if she completely understands what that means or how it will impact her life as she knows it. Plus the baby won't look like her -- I don't think that has even crossed her mind yet.

Jen

Birth Certificates Are Here!

Our Birth Certificates from NYS came. They were expensive. Cost us over $50 each to get one delivered. Our marriage license here in Georgia only cost us 5 bucks.

Besides getting the documents that you need (see previous post), you have get each document notarized by a notary. Then go to the county where the notary is registered and get the documents certified by the county that the notary is indeed a notary in the county. Then you go to the state and get the document sealed with the state seal which basically states that the county does exist in the the state. Then you send these documents to the Chinese Consulate to get authenticated by the Chinese Government. Phew.....

Since our documents are from both NY (birth certificates) and Georgia (everything else), I have to send our NY documents to the NYS to get certified and the Georgia documents to the State of Georgia to get certified. Then NY documents go to the Chinese Consulate in NY and GA documents go to the Chinese Consulate in Houston which covers that state of Georgia. Birth certificates don't need to be notarized so today I sent them off to NY State for the Seal!

Hope this all makes sense. We have our first homestudy appt on Thursday. This is probably one of 4. I have a physical on Friday. I hate going to the doctors so please say an extra prayer that things go well.

Jen

Update on 4/15/2006

Orientation went well. We met a couple from Grayson. It is a small world. We also briefly met with our social worker. We setup an appointment for our first meeting with her next week. She is going to meet with us at work.

We have started the paperchase. There are alot of documents we need:

1. Adoption Petition -- basically petitions the Chinese Government for adoption. We have completed this.

2. Birth Certificates -- we have ordered them from NY.

3. Marriage License -- done! yeah.

4. Financial Statement - done. We have to lists our salaries, our life insurance, our assets and liabilities.

5. Physicals -- Bill got his done. We are justing waiting on the blood test results. You have to be tested for HIV plus about 3 other things. My physical is scheduled for next Friday.

6. Police Clearance -- this is turning out to be a little bit difficult. We live in Walton County. We do have a Monroe address but live outside of the city limits so we cannot go to Monroe Police. We went to Walton County Sheriff. Paid 15 dollars each and got back something that is not acceptable. We need to have a statement of no record on letterhead. Walton County doesn't do letterhead. We have to do this step over again and go with the GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) -- downside to this is we need to get fingerprinted (need to pay for it) plus add another 30 dollars to submit the form back to the GBI. We should have just gone with the GBI to begin with. Live and learn I guess.

We have been told by the agency that the wait is more than likely 10-14 months from LID. LID means Logged In Dossier. We hope to get our Dossier into China maybe by August. So count Sept as month one. The wait doesn't bother me. I know we will have a child next year!

Orientation is tomorrow

We are going to orientation tomorrow. Mom and Dad are coming over to watch Emily.
Things seem to be falling into place. We have secured finances for the adoption -- yeah!!!!!

The paperchasing begins. So what exactly is a paperchase? The short answer is it's the gathering of all the documents China requires to be sent to them in order to adopt. This collection of documents is called your dossier and it's what you spend all your time doing for about the first four months in the process. You need birth certificates, your marriage license, paperwork from your doctor, police clearance letters, a completed homestudy, employment verification, financial statements, a letter to the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs and form 171H from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is now part of the Deparment of Homeland Security. You need to be fingerprinted! - during this process and once you have a document you then need to have it notarized, then authenticated by the Secretary of State in the state it originated in and finally certified by the Chinese Consulate that represents that state.

Bill says I'm so organized that he has no doubt that I can handle doing this. We do luck out that my law firm has notaries on staff. So I won't have to pay for notary service!

Jen