Dossier in Progress

Our dossier is now in the hands of our agency, Living Hope. I mailed it January 28th, and they received it the next day. What's a dossier, you may ask? Well, it's a compilation of every possible thing you might ever want to know about someone, and plenty of things you couldn't care less about. Here's the list of what it included:

birth certificate for each parent (remember, we had to get newly certified ones as if the information might have changed)

employment letter for each parent (even for me, who's not employed)

marriage license (yes, newly certified again)

divorce/death decrees (we got to skip that one)

medical exam form for each parent

certificate of criminal or non-criminal record (thankfully, we both received the "non-criminal" version of this)

adoption application letter ("Dear China, We want to adopt one of your children, and here's why . . . ")

financial statement (which will be in much better shape if our house ever sells!)

completed home study (the requirements just for that would include a list longer than this one!)

USCIS notice of favorable determination (the form from immigration that I rejoiced over in my last adoption post)

three copies of each applicant's passport (why?)

two passport photos of each applicant (ok)

six photos reflecting family life (no, i did not send in the ones of the boys and the dog wrestling each other while the room around them is in utter chaos)

and, of course, a certified check (no, not a small one and not the last one)

So, after reading all that you can probably imagine my glee at having it all finished! Today we got an email from our agency saying, "Your Dossier is in the State Seal and Chinese Authentication process. We will let you know when we send it to China!" Yay!

No leads on specific children yet, but we could potentially get a call from our agency at any time; or we might find a child on their internet list when they receive the new one from China sometime this month.

So, it's an exciting time! But, for those of you who know me, you'll know that this whole process goes against my planned, scheduled, organized personality. I mean, we could go to China is less than 6 months, and we don't even have the date on our calendar yet! How can I even function?!!

=)