And we continue to wait...

I left a message a couple days ago with the person at Holt who reviews the CHI dossiers. She hadn't called back yet today so I called again. She said she had "just" received it and hadn't gotten a chance to review it yet and probably won't this week. She expected to be able to review it next week and then would call me at that time.

Dossier to Holt

I emailed CHI today and asked them to let me know when they receive the agreement from NCHS. We got a reply tonight saying that they received it today and sent it to Holt in Eugene, OR, today. She also said that they will call us when the dossier is being sent to China and that will probably be late next week. I hope they call our cell phones as we will be out of town next week.

Woohoo!

Paperwork is DONE!

I called NCHS again today to check the status of their contract. Dick called me back this afternoon and said they finally got the kink worked through in the contract and that he was going to send it to CHI today. Yippee!

We also received an email from our contact at CHI that she received our pictures that I had sent off last week.

Another email from her today said that CHI received 22 referrals today! Ages ranged from 5 months to 4 years 1 month and all were within what the families requested or were within the parents' age guidelines for toddlers.

The next post will probably be when we are notified that the dossier was sent to Holt.

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 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.

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.....