That was fast!

We already received our new I-171H in the mail. This is the form we had to go to K.C. recently to renew. The new one is good until July 2009...which means we'll have to renew one more time before we go to China. We're now predicting it will be summer 2010 when we get our referral. As children, we thought we'd be flying around like The Jetsons by 2010!

We are out of Review!!!

Finally, Sept '06 LIDs are out of the Review Room! This is the first milestone we've had in a long, long time.

We started the process to update our paperwork this week. Our social worker came over Tuesday night for dinner and to update our homestudy. Next Thursday we have to get our local (state level) fingerprints redone. Once we get those back and get a new copy of our homestudy, we can schedule our appointment to get refingerprinted (federal level) in K.C. sometime during the beginning of January.

Hope you all have a relaxing weekend!

ONE YEAR!!

As of today our dossier has been logged in one whole year! It's funny how your perspective changes...last summer we could hardly imagine waiting a year (remember we thought we'd be traveling this fall), now we've conquered a year and are preparing to take on another one or two.

To give you a sense of how much things have slowed down on the China adoption front, the CCAA has completed only four months of referrals in the past year. Also, September’s referrals arrived earlier this month, and they covered a measly four days worth of dossiers (November 22-25, 2005). That means the folks who just received their referrals waited a little over 21 months. There are a little over nine months of dossiers ahead of us.

On the brighter side, July 2006 LIDS are out of the review room and August 2006 LIDS are being reviewed by the CCAA right now. This means our dossier will be entering the review room in the next month or so. Hopefully, we’ll get past review in the next couple months without needing to redo any paperwork . The danger is that depending on the nature of the paperwork, having to redo stuff could mean losing your place in line by a month or more. Our dossier should be in good shape though, our agency does a very thorough review before sending it to China.

Greg has class tonight, but we're planning on some serious sushi eating tomorrow night to celebrate reaching the 1 year mark. Yes, we know sushi isn't Chinese, but we extend our celebration dining to all kinds of Asian cuisine. :-) Hope you all have a great week.

Love,

Greg and Laura

One year ago today...

We had our first home study visit. It's hard to believe it's actually been a year! We can only hope the next year or so goes by just as quick!! Yep, I said year or so...meaning the wait time is once again on the rise. This week the CCAA sent out referrals for those families with a LID between October 27th & November 1st 2005 (reminder, our LID is 9/12/06).

This time last year, as we were beginning our paperwork, the wait was about 10 months...now the current wait time is about 18...and climbing. Rumor has it that the wait will climb to 24-36 months!! YIKES!! Not sure where we'll fall in that estimate, but if current trends continue, we're probably looking at December 2008. When we decided it was time to start our family in 2002, we never imagined the journey would be this long, but we are beginning to come to terms with this reality and are determined stay positive while we wait.

Here is a great quote that we try to keep in mind:

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

The Brown Envelope

We received our Brown Envelope today from the American Consulate in Guanzghzou, China. This basically means that the U.S. Consulate has received our USCIS approval, and they will have our paperwork for us when we arrive. The envelope contains documents that we will need in order to complete the adoption while in China - it comes in a "brown envelope", so adoptive families refer to it as The Brown Envelope.

Another one of those little things that we can get excited about as we wait.

Put a LID on it!

Good news first..... we found out our LID today!! For the lingo-challenged people, this is the date our paperwork was officially logged in over in China.

The not-so-good news..... it was just last week. 9/12 to be exact..... 26 days after our dossier was shipped off to China. All summer the time from DTC to LID was taking 3 to 10 days on average. So this is a little longer than we expected. BUT... at least we're in, and for that we rejoice. That's all, just wanted to let everyone know that we're officially in there, baby! Now the countdown to referral begins...

Cheers,
Greg & Laura
LID 9/12/06

It's official... we are DTC!!

We found out yesterday that we're finally DTC (Dossier to China)!!! This is an important milestone as it signifies the end of the long "paper chase", and the beginning of the next phase of our journey. We are so happy knowing that our dossier is now on its way to China! And what better way to celebrate than to go out for some Chinese food (we're getting pretty good w/ the chopsticks) and Andy's Frozen Custard.

We should be getting a packet with more information soon, but our consultant was able to tell us yesterday that there were 6 families in our group. Now we'll wait for our LID, which stands for Log In Date. As soon as we're logged in we can begin the countdown to when we receive the referral of our daughter and see a picture of her for the first time. Currently the time from LID to referral is about 12 months, but this could increase or decrease at any time.

So everyone knows... just because we're entering this time of waiting doesn't mean we'll stop posting messages for you guys. Please keep checking in on us as we plan to continue adding to the blog, including a "photo gallery" that should be coming soon.

Take care,
Greg & Laura

This picture was taken outside a restaurant in K.C. when we went up for fingerprinting. Thought it was kind of funny.

We've been AUTHENTICATED...

Michelle, our consultant from AAI, called this morning saying she had just received our dossier from the consulate in Chicago! She said this was a pretty quick turnaround time considering the consulate probably didn't begin working on it until July 30. AAI had just sent a group of dossiers to China on August 1... we missed this by only a few days. Looks like our dossier will go out in the next batch, which they plan to send mid-August. So, we're hoping to be DTC (Dossier To China) on or around August 15!

Once AAI sends our dossier they will call to let us know. Shortly after, we will get a letter informing us of our group number and "introducing" us to the others in the group. After we receive this information, we can contact each other and use this waiting time to get acquainted before we travel. Doing so will make it a little less like traveling with "strangers".

The next time you hear from us, it should be to say we're DTC! Stay tuned...

Dossier on its way!!

Today we had our I-171H notarized and took the whole dossier to the Secretary of State's office to get it certified. The good people at Sec. of State's office had it completed within an hour, and then it was off to Mailbox It to overnight our dossier to the consulate in Chicago.

The authenticating process in Chicago is supposed to take 4-6 days. Once they're done they will overnight our dossier to our agency. We're hoping all this is done and AAI has our dossier by August 7th.

Greg gives the dossier a final check before having in sealed.

And here's the sealed dossier! Our last glimpse before sending it to Chicago.

"The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!"

...To borrow a line from Steve Martin's character, "Navin", in The Jerk.

Or in our case, shall we say... "Our I-171H is here! Our I-171H is here!!" That's right, we finally got it, just one day shy of 6 weeks.

This was the last piece of paperwork we had been waiting on to complete our dossier. Now we can get it sealed at the Secretary of State's office and then send the whole dossier to The Chinese Consulate in Chicago for authentication.

As Navin goes on to say... "Things are going to start happening to me now."