Friends of ours just adopted!! Pics and travel story

All this good news is so heart warming!

Well, we are STILL waiting on our 171H papers from immigration. ugh. It has been almost a month and I'm getting jiggy about it. i know that God is in control of it all...but of course, I'll still anxious.

I will let y'all know also when Bryan gets done with the baby webpage for us. He is making some kind of masterpiece I guess. ;)

Michelle

Hey ladies,
We received our 171H late Thursday night! Yippee. Our last piece of the adoption puzzel. This document gives us clearance to bring the baby back to US and it give us the thumbs up that we have nothing on FBI records...hence the reason for the FBI fingerprinting. As I read over the document,however, I realized that they made a big ol' typo. Where they put when our fingerprint FBI clearance expires (they are good for 15 months), they put the correct date for DH but for me, they accidently put 2005, which means I only have 2 months left before my fingerprints expire. Getting a new 171H would delay our dossier going to China.

This is a very bad thing for CIS to do this. You'd think that Homeland Security would be a little more careful, don't ya? Anyway, this info is sent to the American Embassy in China as well as the National Visa dept. So I had a melt down. I cried and cried. DH said it will all be fine, but I was livid. I tried to get in touch with someone at the CIS via phone...couldn't get a live person. I called my case worker at Great Wall. She gave me some good news. She said that the Chinese gov't doesn't care about the date, only the clearance. So this means, we can use the incorrect one for our dossier. Still doesn't thrill me however.

She also said that I needed to write to the CIS and explain what was wrong and ask for a corrected 171H as well as them sending the new info to Amer Embassy etc. If they don't, then we won't be able to bring baby back to USA. So I sent the letter off Friday hoping they will get this all straightened out asap.

Nothing is simple I tell ya. The hardest part about all the paper work is that no one seems to do their job correctly the first time. I've had to have so many things re-done b/c people didn't follow directions. ugh. At least we can go ahead and get our dossier out of here. DH and I went to the bank to get it notarized this morning...technically, we have a copy of it notarized...stating that it is a true and authentic copy of the original. The original goes with us to China for when we visit the American Embassy and get our daughter's visa. I also have to have this notarized copy certified by TX sec of state and then I fedex it off to Houston to the Chinese consulate to authenticate. When we get it back from Houston, all the paperwork goes to Great Wall and then to Beijing. woohoo. We are close. Then we get to wait 7-10 months for them to pick our baby for us.

I'm so thankful that this will all work out. DH says this is going to be the only baby b/c he cannot go thru all this again. We'll see...

michelle

Hi everyone,
just a quick update:
we received our last 2 docs from the Houston Chinese Consulate today!! Yeehaw. They are properly authenticated and so we are ready to DTC! I need to put it all together and drive it down to Great Wall. I will do that on Monday. They send dossiers to Beijing on Fridays and in order for your dossier to make it into the Friday package, you need to have it to GW no later than by Wed at 10am. So that means I have a few days to put it together but I'm anxious and will do it asap.

I plan on taking a picture of me handing the paperwork to my case worker, Angela!!

Michelle

The excitement mounts!!! I'm so happy for you.

Thanks Pirl. I can't wait for Bryan to have our webpage done so you all can keep up on our blog. I need to run off to bible study this morning, but this afternoon I am going to put the dossier together and make sure we are not missing anything. So glad to have the dossier behind us. Of course, now waiting for months until we get our referral will seem like ages. But we have the baby room to get ready and the quilt to do so it will fly by.
Michelle

You just might want to jot down a little note on your calender every day about something nice that happened. When your baby arrives you'll know what you were doing the day she was born.

I did it and missed out for about a week - of course that's when she was born. I had been busy in the garden - of course. Now she is.

Hey Pirl, good idea. I can't wait to teach our daughter how to swim, read and of course, how to garden. hehe.

Since this thread was getting so long, I started a new one: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/554489/

it has our latest updates on our adoption stuff!!

Michelle