Dossier To China (DTC)

Today we are officially DTC!! We now move into the waiting stage which is currently 16 months. That would put us at meeting our new daughter in July 2008 (right before the Olympics start) if the current wait time frame does not change. However, for the past few months, it has only been getting longer. Please keep our family in your prayers that that does not continue. It took us just over 4 months to get our dossier completed and submitted. Many items were expedited in order to meet the May 1 change of requirements deadline. Our next step is to be logged in (LID) in China. It could be 6 weeks before we know our log in date but hopefully it will be before May 1.

Dossier Sent to Agency

Last week on Friday I sent our dossier to the courier in Chicago so she could take our documents to the Chinese Consulate (just to be on the safe side). I over-nighted them. She called me Monday to say I forgot my birth certificate! UGH! So another $20 to over-night that to her and another $20 to pay for expedited service on the birth certificate so that it was done at the same time as my other 13 documents. Boy am I glad we had very few documents to get certified and authenticated! She over-nighted them back to me yesterday so I received them this am. I had to make copies of everything for the agency and sent that over-night today to our agency. If they received them by 10 am tomorrow, then they would be reviewed and sent to China on Friday! YIPPEE!! Please keep praying that this finishes smoothly for us. I sure hope I didn't forget to send the agency anything. We are 3 weeks ahead of our schedule so we have a little bit of time if something I sent has an error in it. Hopefully it won't as I sent everything over to them to be pre-approved before I had it certified.

I-171H

We received our I-171H today! YEAH! It has been exactly 4 weeks since our fingerprint appointment. It came much quicker than we had expected! I'm so excited!! And Pete is not here to celebrate with me : ) He has been in China/South Korea for the past two weeks. Oh Well. It will wait until Saturday. So now tomorrow I am off to downtown to get our notorial statement certified so that everything can be mailed to the Chinese Consulate to be authenticated. That takes about 4 business days. Then our dossier can be sent to our agency for final review and then sent off to China to be logged in. We are almost out of this paper chasing phase and into the waiting phase! Please keep our family in your prayers that these last few steps go quickly and smoothly.