The Casey's Adoption Journey: Let's try this again...Homestudy: Check!

Our home study arrived safely in the mailbox today! Which means we can send in our I-600a application to receive our I -171 approval. (To bring an orphan into the US as our child and make them a citizen) I don't know how long this will take. We have to be fingerprinted at the CIS (formally INS) office in Boston and then they will do a FBI back round check on us and then issue the approval.

It may be possible that we can receive our referral without the actually having the I-171. Our agency is finding out from VN if they can make the referral then send the I-171 along when it comes.

As I previously mentioned, right now referrals are made to our agency from the orphanage. When babies are "marked" as being specific for my agency, my agency then hires trained "nannies" to care for those babies. So that they are being well taken care of and then of course the orphanage staff can give additional care to other children. So because xx number of babies have been being cared for by agency nannies, of course our agency want to see families from their agency receive those babies. After Jan 15th if those babies have not been assigned to a particular family our agency loses the "rights" to them and the babies dossier (file) will be sent to the Department of International Adoption (DIA) in VN. Then any agency that also has rights to work in that province that the orphanage is located and has families that are paper ready will be assigned those babies. Clear as mud?!

So my agency is urging us to get our crap together so we can be assigned our babies before the 15th.

Here is what our dossier must have:

2 Home studies
2 original marriage certificates
4 applications for adoption
4 signed commitments (that we will send yearly reports of the child to the VN gov. until she turns 18)
2 letters of employment for Pat
2 Local police clearance each (4 total)
(2) Pat's medical certificates
(2) Kerry medical certificates
2 I-171 (application mailed)
2 copies of each of our passports
2 passport photos of each of us (4 total)
A photo of the front of our home and a family photo

The items in orange we have. The items in green, I have called about and are waiting for them to be signed and notarized and mailed to us. The items in blue I have to get.

As I mentioned I have to bring all this to Boston to be "certified" with the state seal. Except for the marriage certificate I have to get the NH state seal for. Then we have to send everything to the Vietnamese Embassy in California to be "authenticated" with their seal.
The good news is that I can physically deliver the stuff to Boston and they can do it in one day and we can pick it up the next day. We can also pay $20 extra per document to expedite the authentication process.

If we don't make it in by the deadline what will happen? we don't know. It is expected that this will (at least temporarily) slow down the process of when we get the referral. which means that will delay when we can travel to bring our baby home. That would be tough on making arrangements here for watching D and O. Because it could be the summer and they won't be in school. I just don't know! This makes things a bit more unknown. This process has not been tested by other families...so we don't know how it will all work and what the timetables are.

Anyhow, between this sudden change in events and it being the week before Xmas and me be the procrastinator that I am and waiting till now to finish making some of the gifts....I am about to go over the edge. :P

Not adoption related, but here is a pic that was in my email today....How sweet is this?!