I-800A fingerprints done

We left at about 9am for the 2.5-hr drive to the USCIS Application Support Center.  Everything went smoothly.  We were in and out of there in about 10 minutes, stopping for lunch on the way home!  Now we wait for our I-800A approval.  I think I might start stalking the mailman watching for the daily mail in a week or so.  I know that is too soon but I can't help myself. :)  This is the last document we need for our dossier!

I started painting in what will become the boys' room, last weekend.  I put two coats of white on the ceiling and see that it needs a third, so I need to do that.  I also chose and bought the robot quilts from Target and the grey paint for the walls.  I am so ready to get this project finished so we can move Nathan's furniture in and the extra furniture out of the hallway, etc!

In other news, the kids had swimming lessons last week.  That kept us pretty busy, along with a couple of softball games.  This week we are finishing up the softball season, resuming piano lessons, and attending a 4th of July party.

Fingerprint appointment

I did, indeed, hear from our courier on June 12 to let us know she had FedEx'd our 12 state certified and Chinese authenticated documents back to us.  I was on "high alert status" for the FedEx man the next day.  I held back from approaching a FedEx truck that stopped at the neighbor's house that morning.  Luckily, another one (or the same one? how cruel would that be?) came that afternoon and delivered our wonderful documents!  I immediately inspected each document, taking time to appreciate the beautiful Chinese seal of authentication on each one.  I gasped as I noticed what appeared to be an extra set of staple holes in our home study and immediately emailed our adoption agency to ask if it would be a problem.  You see, removal of a state certification page voids it, even if you re-staple it to the document.  As it turns out, I believe the extra staple holes were from the home study being stapled together before the state certification page was added (it is rather thick and looks like it was difficult to staple).  The Chinese Consulate did authenticate it, so they were fine with it.  Whew!

Having received those documents gave me a task to complete- copying!  We have to send a full set of copies (including state certification and Chinese authentication pages) with our original documents to our adoption agency, so I got that done.  I also readied my next two FedEx envelopes with the exception of one air bill.  I need to pick up some more of those.

Today, we received our I-800A fingerprinting appointment!  It is on June 30th at noon.  We will have to drive about 2.5 hours to the USCIS office, so Kevin has scheduled himself to use a vacation day on the 30th.  We talked about the possibility of not waiting for our appointment and just walking in (most USCIS offices will allow this if they aren't too busy that day and you have the document that shows your scheduled appointment) but decided against it with our 2.5-hr drive and all.  Schedule wise, the 30th will be easier to manage than any day next week, and I'm not convinced walking in early saves that much time in the long run.  I guess this means I have two weeks to make sure my fingertips are adequately moisturized to produce "good" fingerprints.

Back to our timeline... as long as we don't get an RFE (request for evidence- meaning, they need more information on something), perhaps we could receive our I-800A approval 3 weeks after our fingerprint appointment, which would be July 21.  Then we would need to copy our approval, have it notarized, and send it off to our courier for state certification and Chinese authentication.  I'm going to hope to start stalking the FedEx man either August 1st or 4th for it's return.  And the moment I have that document back in my hands, I will make another copy and stick it in the FedEx envelope to our adoption agency.  I don't know if I can turn it around that same day or the next business day.  Either way, we could potentially be sending ALL dossier documents to our agency early August!  IF we don't run into any snags during this last step...

Thank goodness the kids are keeping me busy!  This week is kind of an off week- just tumbling for Nathan (which he is enjoying!), a couple softball games for Rebecca and me, and some miscellaneous appointments.  Perhaps we can squeeze in some swim time and a movie.  The girls are begging to go see the new How to Train Your Dragons 2 movie.

I-800A application received

Based off of another adoptive family's time line, I was going to start stalking the mailman for this notification, tomorrow!  What a surprise to receive it before then! :)  So, it's official- our I-800A application was received at the USCIS Lockbox in Texas on June 4.  It has been forwarded to the Hague Adoption Unit at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Missouri.  The notification suggests it will take 10-14 business days, for shipping and processing, to reach the Hague Adoption Unit.  Let's see...that would be June 18-24.  At that point they will schedule an appointment for us to have our biometrics done and send us a letter to let us know when/where this appointment will take place.  This last notification took 8 days from the time they received our application (2 days to input and print it) until it reached us, so I guess I should allow for an additional 8 days before I start stalking the mailman again.  Hm... June 26 - July 2.

This still leaves the FedEx man for me to *ahem* patiently wait for.  I expect to hear from our courier tonight regarding our (hopefully) authenticated documents.  Perhaps they will arrive tomorrow or Monday.

I am going to start preparing for our next steps.  I've already written myself some notes covering what we have left to do.  I can go ahead and fill out another Chinese authentication application form (for the I-800A approval, once it comes) and FedEx package.  I can also copy and organize our authenticated documents when they arrive, copy our passports, and fill out a FedEx package for everything to be sent to our adoption agency.  Oh yes, and it's time to *remind* Kevin to go get his extra passport style photos done.

Yep...coming into the home stretch of the dossier...

Moving along, yet waiting

I received an email from our courier to let us know that she submitted our documents to the Consulate on June 5th.  She will let us know after she has FedEx'd our documents back to us on June 12th.  I guess this means she already had them state certified with no issues?  This would make me very happy!  I won't get too excited until the documents are back in my hands and I see those nifty certifications and authentications for myself!  I may be a little jumpy come Friday!

Meanwhile, we have not heard anything on our I-800A, which is to be expected.  I have noticed, however, that the USCIS has cashed our check!  I monitor our bank accounts online on a regular basis, and the USCIS check transaction showed up on June 9th.  Not that I'm obsessing...

We have decided to start preparing the boys' bedroom this summer.  It should keep me busy and provide a good distraction while we wait for our I-800A.  Right now, the room has Rebecca's old furniture in it.  (You may remember we moved her in with Caetlyn several months ago.)  We need to remove a few things from the walls and patch any holes.  I have not quite decided whether we will just retouch the original khaki paint or choose a new color.  I would at least like to paint the ceiling white.  (Yes, the walls and ceilings were all painted khaki before we bought the house.)  Nathan has chosen robots for the theme, and I think that will work well for a number of years.

Who is this child we have been praying for?  How old is he?  What are his likes/dislikes?

Sent off I-800A

I sent off our I-800A, otherwise known as the Application for Determination of Suitability of a Child from a Convention Country, yesterday!  This is a 9-page application (plus two separate 1-page Supplement 2 forms, in our case) asking the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services to determine our qualifications as adopters (approval to adopt internationally).  Now, we will wait impatiently patiently for our fingerprint appointment to be mailed to us.  This may take 30 days or  more.  We will be told when and where to show up for our fingerprints (biometrics).  Once that is done, we wait for them to process our application.  They will read our Home Study, review our application, and check state child abuse registries, which can take another 30 days or more but has been running a little less, lately.  This is the last document we need for our dossier!

In the meantime, I sent our first 12 documents to a courier to be taken to the IL Secretary of State for certification and then to the Chinese Consulate for authentication- all in Chicago.  So, basically, all documents have to take the following steps:
     1) notarized to verify our signatures (except for our certified birth and marriage certificates)
     2) certified by the Secretary of State in which they were notarized to verify that the Notary whose name is on the document is a true and current Notary
     3) authenticated by the Chinese Consulate to verify the authenticity of the Secretary of State's signature and seal

Some states and regions also have other steps to this process.  And all of this, of course, requires fees.  Once we get our I-800A approval, that will also have to be sent for certification and authentication.  The reason I have decided to do it in 2 batches is so I have time to fix any little issues that come up in this process.  Sometimes a notary doesn't word things quite right or whatever.  I might as well deal with these issues while we are awaiting our I-800A approval.  Plus, the Chinese Consulate will not authenticate any document that was notarized more than 6 months ago, so we are working on a time table here.

Our pictures are here, and the only other thing we need is for Kevin to go get 6 copies of a passport style picture of himself.

That's it!  We are coming into the home stretch of having our dossier finished!