What I Did on My Summer Vacation:

Right now we are in the process of compiling our dossier to be sent to China. A dossier is a stack of papers about two feet tall that divulges all your most private information to the adoption officials.

In June and July we Completed or Gathered:
Medical Exams for entire family.
Financial Statements
Police Clearances
An adoption petition
Birth Certificates
Marriage Certificates
A Homestudy
Employment Verification
Non-Employment Verification (For me)
Passports
Lots of pictures of us


This morning I overnighted:
Immigration Paperwork (You have to wait for your homestudy report to be completed and approved before you can send this in.)

So now we wait for an invitation to get fingerprinted. We are praying (and would appreciate prayers) that this comes before Paul has to be somewhere for work.

After we receive approval from Immigration we will have all of these papers notarized (we've already done most of this.) Then they must be sent to the Secretary of State to be certified (already did a lot of this too). Next,they are all sent to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated. Then we send it all to our adoption agency and they go over it all with a fine tooth comb and FINALLY it is all sent to China!

I haven't fully grasped what happens after it gets to China. I will be familiarizing myself with that process soon. BUT it is said that once you are logged in you travel in 3-5 months!!

We are hoping to be logged in by early October.

(Bless anyone who read this post.)