Do'in a Happy Dance!!

I’ll just jump right in! WE GOT THE CIS FORM TODAY!! I was at school and walked out of my room to go discuss some things about the technology grant with the principal and when I came back I noticed that my phone had been doing a happy dance all over my desk (it was set to vibrate). Geoff had called 4 times. I called him right back and asked him if the form was here. I knew he wouldn’t call that many times unless it was important. So yes.. it is here and yes, my eyes teared up with joy.

However, just as it always is in this process, my up became a down not long after (but that’s okay, this is still good) I called Pam in Jacksonville to tell her the news and make some more plans. The bad news is while we can fairly quickly get our documents certified and authenticated by everyone else, we may end up WAITING for our birth certificates to come back in. This is the frustrating part and this is the part that brought tears of frustration to my eyes. (Poor Susan at school, she is the one who always picks me back up at work and brushes me off and tells me that Lexi will get here. Friends are truly priceless). Our officially stamped birth certificates that we got way back in August or September have to be certified and/or authenticated at the state of our birth. Then mailed to the US State Department for certification and then mailed to the Chinese Embassy in DC. Then from there they will go to the Chinese Consulate in Houston along with all of our other dossier docs. This is WHY anyone adopting from a foreign country for the first time should hire a dossier preparer. We’ve read our agency’s instructions so many times but things still get by us. I truly believe they want it to look more simplified than it ever will be. Had we known, we could have sent our birth certificates on their little journey all over the place many months ago. But the ups and downs that are our adoption cycle still leave me feeling somewhat UP tonight. As Pam said, there IS light at the end of the tunnel. I am praying that everything will go smoothly and that our completed dossier will go out to CWA and be in the group that gets sent to China on the 30th. Worst case, it’ll be Feb. 10th. In the meantime, we have all of this to occur:
1. I get a doctor’s note and get it notarized and send to Pam.
2. We receive some docs tomorrow from Pam that I will hand carry to the Superior Clerk of Court to get them certified.
3. I mail the certified docs to Atlanta to the Sec. of State (overnight)
4. The docs from the Sec. of State go back to Pam.
5. Pam has a courier deliver the docs to the Houston Chinese Consulate
6. The docs go back to Pam hopefully by the 24th.
7. The Homestudy, which is being certified in Fulton County, also has to go to the Sec. of State and needs to arrive back to Pam.
8. The completed dossier goes to CWA which I think then has to be translated into Chinese which add on I think another 4 days or more.
9. Then probably on Feb. 10th, CWA will mail the translated dossier to China.
10. Then we receive a logged in date several weeks later.
11. Then we wait…
12. And pray and pray.

Now see what I mean about hiring a dossier preparer. It’s worth every penny and MORE. The 10 easy steps given to us at the beginning are not easy steps, they are GIANT steps.