The paper chase...

Originally written February 12, 2006

hellooooooooo...

We've got another update...

Saturday we spent the day in Naperville, IL getting fingerprinted for Immigration. This is our third AND FINAL set of fingerprints. It started out with a very angry young woman that works at Immigration. At one point she literally said to us... "all you adoption people have been extremely rude all day long. And, it's your choice to go through this." Well, isn't that special? This was after she thanked us for being nice. Hard for me to bite my tongue...

So, Jennifer went first and was cleared right away. Everything scanned perfectly. Oh, did I mention fingerprints are computerized now? Then it was my turn. Well, apparently I don't have scannable fingertips. After about 30 minutes of them trying to scan my fingers, they asked me to do the old fashioned ink and paper prints. This way they would submit both my scans and my inks. I finally chalked it up to the fact that I work too hard and have worn my fingers to the bone. But as Jennifer says "all you do all day is surf the Internet." WHATEVER!

Then we went shopping. Naperville has great shopping.

Today, we had our final meeting before submitting our dossier. We have everything ready for our dossier -- with the exception of the results from the Immigration scans. Those scans will provide us the I-171H document that needs to be included for China. Basically, what this document tells you is that our fingerprints match our home study.

We did find out today that our birth certificates and our marriage license need to be certified by the State of origin. Which means, we have to send all three to Indianapolis for them to prove that they are real documents. Not too difficult, right? Just wait. I found out from the State of Indiana today, they will not accept our birth certificates because they were done at the County level. Therefore, I had to order two more copies of our birth certificates through VitalChek.com. We paid $56 in shipping for $28 worth of documentation. For those of you already thinking ahead, you're right. What about our marriage license? Well, they WILL accept that from the County level. Oh, and get this... we had to turn in our County birth certificates to get our County marriage license. We spell bureaucracy as B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T!

So where do you go from here?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

After we receive the certified documents from the State of Indiana and our I-171H from Immigration, we will go to Chicago to have the rest of our documents certified by the State of Illinois. After we leave the State of Illinois Secretary of State's office, we will -- literally -- walk to the Chinese Consulate (on State St, near Marshall Fields-- yeah!) and have them authenticate the documents. This costs $30 per document and they will authenticate while we shop. I mean, wait. At that point, we will turn our thrice-authenicated-copies of our dossier into our agency, who will then submit it to China.

Okay, as you have already figured out, we are now into March. Jennifer and I have already planned to take Monday, March 13 and/or Monday, March 20, 2006 off to go into Chicago to have this done. We are hoping to get everything authenticated on one of those two days.

I do have to tell you that this guy we work with, Will, is also going through Lifelink and the China program. Their dossier acceptance date was May 15, 2005. They received their match two weeks ago and she is precious. They have named her Allison and will travel in four to six weeks from now. I have to tell you that when Will showed me Allison's photos, it was amazing. She looked very happy. The quality of the photos were good -- I guess I was expecting to see a black-and-white xeroxed copy -- and only one. They received four different photos in color and all were very clear. She is a beautiful, healthy little girl. There was one picture of her sitting outside in a walker. Not to get too weird, but it was very emotional.

As of today, we have paid 30% of our fees. So, we are now accepting donations...

Love... us.