Still One Document To Go...

The last couple of days I've been trying to find out the status of the agreement/contract that NCHS has to sign and apparently they've been very busy and haven't been able to call me back. So, we are still waiting on that. It is THE LAST document we need.

Dossier and CHI

We received an email from our contact at CHI today and she said that once they receive the form our caseworker has to sign, we are all ready to go! That felt SOOO GOOD to know that everything is OK and all perfect knowing how much I concentrated on getting this all done and went over everything multiple times before I sent it to DC and again before I sent it to St. Louis! Whew! I will keep checking with our caseworker to see how their approval of the agreement/contract is coming.

We also had to take and send some "family life" pictures to include with the dossier. These are pictures of us doing things at home, more casual pictures. We went out tonight and took a picture of me picking a couple of tomatoes and then a picture of Tony working on his race car (or at least pretending to). I'll get those sent tomorrow and then all we are waiting for is NCHS.

We are SOOO close to getting our dossier sent to China! I hope it can be sent by mid-September.

In another email, the China program was informed today by the Beijing office that CHI will not receive anymore multiple agency waiting children until they are Hague Accredited. This doesn't affect us but does affect those whose dossiers are in China and who were wanting to be matched with a waiting child. If they want a waiting child, they would have to start completely over with a new agency and create a brand new dossier. Any families who have already been matched to a waiting child can still proceed.

In the end for us, timing is such that transferring to Holt is our best option. We would have liked to complete our adoption through CHI but the Hague it not letting that happen.

Dossier is in St. Louis

Our package left Omaha last night at 9:52 p.m. and arrived at Children's Hope at 10:09 a.m. this morning.

Dossier to Children's Hope

I sent the entire dossier (13 "official" documents, pictures, passport pictures, copies of passports, additional forms, fees, etc.) next day air to Children's Hope in St. Louis. They have everything else except the document that our caseworker has to sign. He's waiting on more information from Holt because it is more than an "agreement", it's more a "contract". He said he didn't think there would be a problem but it has to go through administrative steps before they can sign it.

So... that's what's going to hold us up now. I hope not for very long, though.

Once CHI receives our Dossier, they will review it and make sure everything is correct. They will then forward it on to Holt. Holt will review it and send it to China and someone will call us and let us know all about Holt.

Our documents are here!

Our package arrived in Omaha at 2:51 a.m. this morning and were delivered to our house at 10:26 a.m.

What I will do now is copy EVERYTHING and I also want to scan everything into .pdf format and put it on a flash drive so we have it in several forms.

We also have all of the additional forms filled out and ready to sign.

Dossier is on its way back to us!

We received an email from the courier today that they picked up our documents on Friday and they are on their way back to us. They left Fredricksburg, VA, at 5:26 pm yesterday and are currently as I type this are in Louisville, KY. They are scheduled to arrive at our house on Monday! Wow! That took less time than I thought!

Visa Center Letter

We received a letter today from the National Visa Center letting us know that our approved petition has been forwarded to the visa-issuing post in Guangzhou, PRC. They also gave us our case number. Guangzhou is where the adoption will be finalized in China.

The thing is, we'll have to apply for an extention for this before we go due to the long wait time. As long as we apply before it expires, it is a free extension. Same with the fingerprints.

We are hoping the wait time will become shorter, although everything we hear says it will only get longer.

More Agreements

Today we received the last 2 agreements that will be needed for our transfer to Holt. One is for our homestudy caseworker to fill out and I forwarded it to him. The other one we have to read (all "legaleze") and sign in front of a notary. Wow! Does it ever stop?

Documents Delivered to Courier

Per UPS tracking, our documents were delivered to our courier at 11:08 a.m. this morning.

I am assuming that when they go to DC tomorrow, they will take our documents and anyone else's documents to the US Department of State to be authenticated. They will add a sheet on top of each of our documents with the seal of the US Department of State.

Then, I believe they will take them on over to the Chinese Embassy tomorrow afternoon and leave them there. This process will take about 4 business days. Once they pick them up, the courier will then send them all back to us in our prepaid overnight package.

All of this costs money. Each document getting certified costs a certain amount per document. Each document getting authenticated by the US Dept of State costs a certain amount per document. AND each document getting authenticated by the Chinese Embassy costs a certain amount per document. The Chinese Embassy is the most expensive of all of these. Using a courier also costs money but I think it is worth it because they do it all the time and look over the documents and make sure all is well before moving on to the next step. And, Tammy and Brad used this courier, The Assistant Stork, before and were very happy with them. Their web site tells in detail what is needed and I felt very comfortable using them.

Once the documents are authenticated by the Chinese Embassy and sent back to us, THAT'S IT! We're done! I expect that we will have our completed documents by next Wednesday or Thursday. Then we can copy them for ourselves and send them off to CHI (who will then forward them on to Holt, etc.)

Documents are in Virginia

Per UPS tracking, our documents are in Richmond, VA, as of 8:28 a.m. this morning. They will be delivered to Stafford, VA, on Monday.

Documents off to DC

I took the documents to work today and UPS picked them up from there. Tracking them tonight they are ON THEIR WAY! They are scheduled to arrive at the courier on Monday.

I watched the Olympics Opening Ceremonies tonight. I was very impressed with the precision and perfection that they displayed.

13 Documents State Certified!

Today I picked up my mom and we went to Lincoln to get all 13 of the documents that need certification State Certified. All that means is that they verify that the notary that notarized each one was authorized to do so. They put a paper on top of each document that officially makes that known. We arrived at about 10:30 a.m. and were completely done by 11:00 a.m.

The documents that had to be certified were:

Our Letter of Petition
Notarized copy of the I-171H form
Our Marriage Certificate
Tony's Birth Certificate
Sue's Birth Certificate
Tony's Medical Report
Sue's Medical Report
Our Financial Declaration for Adoption
Tony's letter of self-employment
Sue's letter of employment
Tony's Police Report
Sue's Police Report
Our Home Study

We then went up the stairs and walked around in the rotunda of the capitol and looked at all the paintings, tiled pictures and sculptures since neither one of us had been there for quite some time. We then walked back to the car and the business for the day was done!

We did a little shopping at Gateway Mall (that's what I still call it anyway!), I dropped off a picture to be framed at Deck the Walls (owned by some relatives and they do VERY GOOD work if you ever need anything framed!) (that's your plug Patty and Bob!), we ate lunch, stopped and got some groceries and went back to Murdock. I stopped at the post office there and got the 3 money orders that we need to send everything to DC to get everything authenticated--more on authentication later.

I dropped Mom and the groceries off and came back home. One more step completed!

CHI to Holt Transfer

I got the I-171H form copied and notarized today. We have to take the original to China with us.

We also received an email from CHI today explaining the details of our tranfer to Holt International. When our dossier is ready to be submitted, we will send it along with the fees required plus the small additional amount for the transfer to Holt. We also have to fill out a Holt application and a release for CHI. We will also receive next week a form for our caseworker to fill out and another agreement for Holt that we have to sign.

Otherwise, that's it. Our fees that we have to pay won't increase (unless the CCAA increases their in-China fees which would obviously be passed on to us).

Once our dossier is submitted to China by Holt, we will be a Holt family and complete our adoption through Holt. Holt International is a well-established international agency and I have no qualms about completing our adoption through them. It will be nice to get acquainted with them as we wait for our referral.

I also had a talk with another CHI person today and she explained in detail all they are going through. They are frustrated and disappointed in the whole thing as much as the families are. They are getting very little information from the Hague and the US government so they are trying to figure things out on their own and get them corrected. CHI is not giving up on trying to get Hague accredited. They will even try in a few weeks to request another review and see if they get one or have to wait a year to request again. I asked about possibly waiting till then to see if they might get approved but she said that we are SO CLOSE that waiting might not be in our best interest. We might be waiting for nothing if they don't get the review and would have to tranfer anyway.

More tomorrow...

I-171H Form RECEIVED!

We received our I-171H form today--the last form we need before we get everything certified and authenticated! Interesting thing about it -- it has Holt International as our agency on it. They are the ones that will be submitting dossiers for CHI until CHI gets accredited. But interesting that it happened kind of automatically.

So, I will go to the State Capitol on Thursday after getting this copied/notarized tomorrow.

Another interesting thing -- The I-600A approval expires 1/30/2010 (18 months from now) and the Fingerprints expire 10/1/09 (14 months from now). They can't possibly make them expire at the same time....but that's the government for you! We can (and will) apply for a free extension on each before they each expire so it's not a big deal.

More later...

No Form Yet

Well, we didn't receive our form on Saturday or today so I guess that's OK. We'll get it when we get it. I've actually heard that it takes a week to get it.

I did receive a call today from Tina at CHI. They do have an agreement worked out with Holt and it sounds like it will be fairly simple. We'll have to sign a couple forms for Holt, our caseworker will have to sign and notarize a form for Holt and we will send our dossier to CHI along with the dossier fee, the CCAA fee, as well as a tranfer fee for Holt. The transfer fee is extra over what we would have had to pay if CHI was able to submit dossiers but it's not much in the grand scheme of things and we have it already. So, it sounds like God's perfect timing is working for us right now.

All along I was thinking that if everything worked out, our dossier should be in China sometime in August and as long as everything KEEPS working out, that can still happen. Once we get our Log In Date (LID), that officially begins our wait. People who are getting their referrals now have waited 30 months -- just to give you an idea.....