Another Step Closer....

I am very happy to say that the very last piece of documentation that makes up our dossier (our I800-A - Immigration Approval) is on its way to The Assistant Stork (a courier that helps adoptive families) to be authenticated by the Chinese Embassy!

All of the rest of our documents that we've been working on since October....gathering them from various sources, having them notarized, certified and authenticated, are now on their way to Xiaoqing (our agency coordinator) to await the above last piece of documentation that will be sent directly to them by The Assistant Stork (overnight Fed-Ex I might add....not wasting time here)! :)




We are VERY excited about this, to say the least. It puts us one step closer to Luke. If you're not familiar with the adoption journey to China, this is a huge accomplishment. This means we prepared our dossier in about 2 1/2 months. This can take much more time, even 6 months to gather everything for some folks depending on their paperwork. This entails ordering certified copies of documents such as birth certificates and marriage certificates, having the homestudy completed, clearances with the local police, Immigration fingerprinting and clearance, employment letters and records, financial records, passport information, and medical exams and clearance. After you have each of these gathered and prepared, each one has to be notarized, then sent to our State Capitol for certification, then sent to the Chinese Embassy to be authenticated. Not until then is the dossier ready to be sent to China. Whew!

All along our goal has been to push, push, push and have our dossier ready to be sent to China in January. Then we can officially say we are DTC (Dossier To China). We still have a chance of being logged in before January's end, which was another goal. This is being LID (logged in date). Adoptive parents hang on each of these stats, believe me!




So now maybe this clears up why we were so excited over this little Fed-Ex envelope! It was a big ordeal and accomplishment!

But you can be sure that I will definately let you all know when we are officially DTC and LID! We still really want to be traveling by June to bring Luke home for good......if not before! Jason still says he has a feeling we will travel before then, but I don't know.....

Thanks for hanging with me and sharing our excitement! You have no idea how much it helps with the wait! I appreciate all the visits and comments so much!



Yes, Joy, it REALLY is on its way! :)



Blessings to you all!
~ Tammy ~