Authentication

I haven't written for a while. There is a lot of waiting in this process. We finally got all of our documents together! It was so exciting. We received our written home studies in the mail just before Thanksgiving, so I had the whole weekend to figure out the authentication process. We have to have everything notarized locally. Then, we have to send it to the secretary of state of the state the document was notarized in, so that the local notary can be authenticated. Then, we send them to the federal department of state, and they authenticate the seal of the secretary of state, then it can be "sealed" at the Chinese embassy. Oh my! I had documents from 3 states, so I had to send letters, and checks, to 3 Secretaries of State. I'm waiting to get those back now. It should be next week. Then, I can send them I believe to one document handling agency, and they will deliver them to the federal agency, and then to the Chinese Embassy. I don't even want to think about what that is going to cost me. Holy Cow! Those agencies only work with some document handlers, and time is of the essence, because if any of the documents becomes more than 6 months old, they "expire" and you have to start all over! The waits at some of these agencies is up to 90 days. I had no idea.

We also applied to immigration to adopt 2 foreign orphans! So exciting! That application is called the I-800a form. When we are approved, they'll send us an I-797c form, and "invite" us to be fingerprinted for their application. That approval process also takes up to 90 days, but when we get it, we're DONE paper-chasing!! We have to send our I-797c to be "sealed" like our other documents, but that one supposedly goes through the system faster.

I ignorantly thought that we would be finished with all of our paperwork by the year's end, and that we would be logged into China's system (LID) by January. That so isn't going to happen at all, but perhaps by Spring, early Summer? I don't have a clue what to even hope for at this point. There is so much more waiting that has to happen. Even after everything is turned in to our agency, they put it in a book-form, translate everything into Chinese, help us make any corrections that need to be made, and THEN send it off to China. Once it arrives there, it goes to the bottom of the pile for who knows how long until it comes up to the top, and they log us in, and give us a Log In Date (LID). Then, we can be matched to our girls, and we'll travel with-in 9-11 weeks of being matched.

I'm excited for how far we've come, I'm anxious for how far we have yet to go, and I so can't wait to meet my girls.