Dossier on it's way to Colombia

Excellent news!! Our dossier (all our adoption paperwork) is on it's way to Colombia as of today!

What this included:

·     Birth certificates for the entire family (one from another state that was a little tricky to get)

·     Marriage certificate

·     Psychological testing for Jerrod & Melissa

·     A home study (3 visits with a social worker and a very long document created)

·     Doctor's physicals (we had to get this re-done 3 times due to errors in notarizing)

·     Fingerprinting for the state of Iowa

·     Fingerprinting for the FBI (twice, three times for Melissa, since they lost the first ones, then both of ours expired)

·     Fingerprinting for immigration approval

·     A Shutterfly photo book for our daughter (the fun part)

·     Application to ICBF (Colombian social services)

·     A letter about our family and why we want to adopt

·     Employment letters (about 3 or 4 re-dos here for various reasons)

·     Copies of tax returns (originally 2010, then updated to be 2011)

·     Letters of reference from our amazingly supportive friends!!

I think that's all.... and a mere 13-14 months to gather and complete said list.

What's Next:

1.   Translation of the Dossier into Spanish

2.  Approval from ICBF (we hope to have this by the end of 2012, but we are resigned to the fact that it is out of our control)

3.  Once approved we are officially on the waiting list

4.  Current waiting list time is estimated to 6 - 9 months.

So, right now we are waiting to be waiting.  At least now we are waiting on someone else and not feeling like we are the bottleneck (ha!).

Are we really done with paper work?

Woo-hoo!!!!

We received word from our agency yesterday that ALL of our paperwork is complete and ready to send to Colombia.  We thought we were done at the begining of September, and just to redo a few (6) minor things.  We never thought when we started over a year ago that it take more than 6 months...  Oh well we believe the timing will working out perfectly for the daughter we are meant to have.  Not that it makes waiting fun.

What happens next...

• Our paperwork is translated into Spanish
• Then it is submitted for approval (hoping for 1 month, could be longer though)

We hope we will be approved by the end of 2012....  Which means we will officially be on the waiting list.  Currently the waiting list is considered 6-9 months.  I've read rumors that the waiting list timelines should be updated anyday now.  Let's hope they are shorter and not longer.

On a side note, I tried practicing my Spanish a little on a trip to Cozumel.  I can tell that I need to get a lot farther than level 1 on Rosetta stone to communicate much more than very basic things.  It's fun to practice though.

And, we really aren't done with our paperwork.  In 2013 we'll have to update our homestudy and immigration approval...  So only done for now.

Adios for now!

Still, almost done...

Filling out adoption paperwork must be similar to work, you can be 80% done for a really long time before you are actually done!  Well this is sort of a depressing realization.  My last post in January was that we only had 10% of the paperwork left.  Right now (a mere 8 months later) about 90% of our paperwork is our agency and we are working on re-doing the rest.

Well we waited forever on our FBI fingerprints (had to re-do them becuase they lost Melissa's even though they were in the same envelope with Jerrod's).  We probably had everything received and completed together sometime in July and then it took us a few weeks to get everything apostilled and mailed to our agency.  After they received it there, we found out we had to re-do about 5 things due to some expiring and job change stuff... 

We hope to have all that (except getting new FBI approval, which should take 5 - 8 weeks from today) sent to our agency with a week or two.  So I guess that means onto Colombia in hopefully September.  Next step is translation into spanish in Colombia, which takes about a month.  So fingers crossed, we should be on the official waiting list by November....  Then we are thinking 6 - 9 months from then until we get a referral. 
Seaking of spanish, I have been doing Rosetta stone.  So far, so good.  Yesterday I learned how to say Japan, Russia, Italy and Egypt in spanish.  Not sure why that is considered useful for level 1 spanish, but you never know when you might need to say those countries I guess.  Another fun fact, the number of times I have been fingerprinted so far, is 5 and we probably have at least one more for the USCIS (aka Dept. of Immigration & Citizenship) that will expire before we get a referral.

Stationery card

Stars And Peace Christmas Card

Make a statement with personalized Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

I made this card to include in the photos required for the Colombian ICBF (the agency that governs adoptions) since I didn't have a digital photo of the whole family together.  Turned out pretty nice :-)

The Last 10% of Paperwork left

We are happy that we are in the last 10% of things left to complete our dossier.  Hopefully we won't experience the phenomenon where it takes as long to do the last 10% as it did the firt 90%!  I think that is just experienced by computer programmers though :-)

We hope to have a completed home study next week so we can submit our I-800a form to be approved by the US government (at least that is my understanding of what it is) to adopt an international child.

So, in addition to taking down our Christmas tree this weekend, we need to make a lot of photo copies!  Also we still need to get some passport photos (even though Jerrod and I have current passports, we need a few more photos) and the boys need photos and passports.  Interesting, BOTH parent have to go along to get passports for minors.  I suppose it so one spouse can't take the children out of the country without the other one knowing.  A good safety measure I guess, but a pain in the behind in practice.

On a funny note, I believe we will have to go to the Colombian Consulate in Chicago to get a special visa to have custody of a Colombian child while we are in Colombia.  Major bummer (not), considering we LOVE Chicago.  Anyway, you know what's in Chicago?  An American G*rl Doll store.  I told one of the boys I'd like to get a doll for our daughter and he said, please don't get that type because they creep me out (I think he mentioned they look like Chuckie and he's never even seen that movie!).  What???  They seem awesome to me and all our nieces have loved them!

Merry Christmas

Wow, a whole month gone by since my last update.  We have made good progress on our paperwork.  Everything needed for our homestudy is done (including the on-line training).  The final documents were sent in to our homestudy agency and they have provided a draft of our homestudy that should be ready to go our adoption agency in St. Louis this week!  A major milestone for us.

We have a short list, including a couple forms and a letter to write, left to have our paperwork ready for our dossier (the paperwork that goes to Colombia).  Hopefully this will be completed over the Christmas break.  The only outstanding thing not in our control is our fingerprints for FBI clearance.  I think we submitted them about 6 weeks ago, so hopefully will get the clearance back soon.  Goal is to complete our dossier paperwork in early January, God willing on the FBI clearance.

This Advent season we have thinking of and praying for our future daughter.  It is wonderful, amazing and a little bit hard to imagine she might able to with by next Christmas. 

Merry Christmas all!

A major and minor delay averted

Not too much progress on our documentation the past week.  We did start doing our online training, so far it's common sense, so that is good.  We had two possible delays arrive this week and we avoided both of them.  The first was regarding our fingerprints possibly being on the wrong form and having to be re-done.  Let me say, I am not in a hurry to go back to the jail to have that done again.  Thankfully, they decided to accept the ones we submitted.  Thank you DCI.

Part of the documentation process for international adoption is getting everything "apostilled" or authenticated.  Other countries don't just accept things being notarized, you have to get all your documents apostilled by the secretary of state from where they originate. Jerrod was born the state of Virginia, so that is our only non-Iowa document. Thought we were good to go with his original birth certificate, but we had a major misunderstanding about the definiton of  apostilled.
We thought all our birth certificates did not need apostilled because they have a state seal on them. Those are issued by the department of vital records, not the secretary of state. So you need to have an official birth certificate  apostilled .  OK, fine, no problem.  After reading the fine print, it says the state of Virginia will only apostille birth certificates issued in the last year.  Now that is a problem.  When Jerrod called there in October, they were processing requests from June (do the math - 4 months!!).  After a few moments of freaking out that we would be waiting 4 months for a new copy of his birth certificate everything worked out.  Thankfully, they have an online request service (thank God for the internet) that turns copies around in less than 2 weeks.  Super.  So, if you call or mail a request for a document you wait 4 months, if you go in person, they give it to you that day and if you order online - 5 business days (an extra $30, a lot cheaper than a flight to Virginia!). Whew - major delay avoided!  I'm guessing Virginia is so busy with all the geneaology requests.

Our social worker thinks she will have a draft of our home study this week, so still on track for our goal of completing our paper work this year.

Several people have asked about the time line.  The short answer is that we have no idea and no control (a good way for God to remind us that we are never really in control).  Once our paperwork is submittted it takes maybe a month to translate, then it goes to Colombia for approval.  That process is a big unknown.  I'd like that to take 1 month, but it could take several.  Then we are officially on the waiting less, which is currently "approximately 3 - 6 months". 

So, we are hopeful of going to Colombia in 2012! 

Thanks for reading.

Home Study Meeting

Last Saturday we had our meeting with our home study agency (local Des Moines agency, since our adoption agency is in St. Louis).  We really like our case worker (not sure her actual title), Lucy. She has a really cool tie to a Kids Save program that has done camps to bring Colombian kids to Iowa. So, yet another reason we feel that this was meant to be our local agency.

We weren't too nervous for the meeting, since we are already parents and think we are doing pretty OK. Anyone who has met our boys can judge for themselves I guess, but we are quite proud of them. We did clean our house really well, but no more than if we were having a big get together.  I also took the opportunity to organize our game cabinet, storage area under the stairs, one of the boys closets, two junk drawers and our desk.  That was fun to me though!

We thought the meeting went really well. Knowing we had that deadline, really made us step it up on the paperwork.  I think we are down to just a few more photocopies of documents we have and doing our online training.   Back on track for our goal to complete our paperwork by the end of the year (or at least close to it!).

Good thing I am not blogging to attract a lot of readers, because I'm sure this is fairly boring.  It at least meets the goal of tracking our journey for future reference.

Thanks for reading!

Slow and Steady

Another week has gone by and we didn't accomplish as much as we hoped.  Jerrod was out of town last week for work and there were 5 papers that we needed to send to our agency.  Only 1 needed notarized and we got that done before he left, but we forgot to have him sign the other 4.  Oops!  Well all 5 are signed and sent off to our agency now.  At this rate we won't finish our paper work by the end of the year like we hoped, so we better step it up!

Instead of working on adoption papers over the weekend, Jerrod and I went on an amazing trip of beautiful churches near Dubuque, a winery, a monestary and a casino (could have skipped that part, not that exciting).  It was a good relaxing time with some wonderful friends.

Thanks for reading!

Visiting the Dallas County Jail

I didn't even know there was a jail in Adel, IA, but there is.  Jerrod and I went there on Friday to get our 3 sets of fingerprints for various background criminal and FBI (yes, FBI) clearnance.  We actually got to be printed in the room where they book people.  Glad I wasn't there alone, it was kind of nerve wracking.

Interestingly, once the Colombian government approves your documentation, the fingerprints actually are only considered good for maybe 15 months (not sure of the exact number).  So, if you are in for the 3 year wait for an infant, you would have to get your fingerprints done again.  Do they change?  I'm sure it is because they run the background check again, but don't you think they could use the ones on file and run the check again? 

So, we now have a set of papers to be submitted this week to three different places.  Defnite progress!

Thanks for following our journey.