handsful

Today we received our 8 Florida-originated documents back from the Chinese consulate in Houston.  That means that 11 out of 13 needed Dossier documents are ready to be sent to our adoption agency and then on to China!  Our home study report should be sent to us, our agency, and the US immigration office next week.  Then, we should get our clearance letter from US immigration, saying we are allowed to bring a foreign child into the US.  We’ll get the clearance letter and home study report certified by the state and then authenticated by the Chinese consulate in Houston, and then we’ll be ready to send the completed Dossier to our agency!  Even though I’ve had a monster cold for 2 days, I’m happy as can be!

I’m trying to get an idea of when our dossier might be ready to send to CCAI.  The dossier is the group of paperwork that is eventually sent to China, which they will use to match us with a baby.  It’s hard to “guesstimate”, but here’s my ideas.  We have our last visit with the social worker tomorrow, 5/12.  He told us at our last visit that he should have us “rolling” by the following week.  I assume that means he’ll have the report for us to review and make any changes.  Let’s assume it might take 3 weeks from tomorrow before our final report is sent to USCIS (US immigration).  An online friend who is ahead of me in the process helped with my time frame ideas!).  That would be 6/2.  The Jacksonville USCIS office has been quick lately, so we should be able to be fingerprinted a week later and would hopefully receive the I-171H form a week later on 6/16.  This form means that the US immigration office is allowing you to bring a foreign child into the US.  At this point, I’ll send our home study report and I-171H form on to be certified in Tallahassee (Randy can hand deliver this) and then on to the courier in Houston for authentication.  I’ll allow 2 weeks for that, to be cautious.  Making it 6/30 that I hope we can send our completed dossier to our agency, CCAI.  If we can do this, it will have taken us a little less than 4 months for dossier preparation.
Any gamblers out there?  I wonder how well I guessed!?

Our NC and NJ documents, that is!  On 5/5, I sent off our birth certificates and our marriage liscense to their respective couriers for authentication at the Chinese consulates.  We’re using couriers for this, rather than sending them directly to the consulates.  It costs extra, but this means that the couriers will thoroughly go through our paperwork and make sure all i’s are dotted and all t’s are crossed.  Then, they will hand-deliver them to the consulates and, when they’re ready, they will pick them up and then mail them back to me.  It was so hard letting those documents go at the Fed-Ex office!  I know the clerk thought I was nuts, checking and re-checking to make sure I had everything right.  I’ll be constantly checking the tracking on these packages until they arrive back to me, safe and sound!

We met with our social worker at the house today and it went very well!  The kids were polite, the questions were easy to answer, I ran back and forth from the table to the copier (he needed copies of virtually all our documents) while Randy talked and talked.  He’ll begin the report now and we’ll meet with him on May 12th to finalize it.  Not a bad turn-around!  I just hope it truly is that fast.  I know glitches are common in this adoption journey.  I was glad to hear that he could count this 1 visit as 3 visits, to comply with the standard 4-visit requirement.  I love to save time!