We've been busy working on paperwork and waiting on our home study to be completed by our social worker, then approved by our placing agency, and signed off on by the director of our home study agency. That all happened just before Christmas so we were able to put our home study and I-800A application in the mail on the morning of Christmas Eve! Today we got our receipt via email from immigration. We should get the actual receipt in the mail next week and then hopefully an appointment date for fingerprinting soon after that. Once we get finger-printed (likely towards the end of January or early February...depending on when our date is), we'll wait for the approval for those. Once we have that approval, we can send all of our documents to our state capitol to be authenticated and then to the Chinese Embassy in Chicago for certification. Once that process is done, we will send off our entire dossier (all the adoption paperwork) to our placing agency. They check it over and send it off to China. At that point you are considered to be DTC (Dossier To China). There are many more steps after that, but getting to that step will be a huge relief! People often ask when our little girl will be home or when we'll travel. It's still too early to tell, but our best guess is July or August at this point. There are a couple steps that make it a bit hard to predict from this point, but that's our guess.
We've also been busy doing some Hague training online. We had done 12 hours of it for Lena's adoption and were lucky to not have to do it for Reid's adoption because our adoptions were back-to-back. We learned this time that even though we met our state requirements, the Hague training is only good for two years so we had to do another 12 hour program because we were a little over two years.
Our agency's amazing guide in China visited our daughter's orphanage this week! He got us four new pictures and a couple short video links. So without further ado, there is no better way to end a post than to share new pictures. :)
She doesn't look very happy, but she sure is beautiful and it looks like her foster family is spoiling her! Look at her in that white fluffy coat and cute purple scarf with that long hair! We hope she got our care package we sent with her former foster brother's family. Celebrating the holidays is always bittersweet. We can't wait to have her home next year for this special time!
And the quick video links:
We're working hard to get to you sweet one!
So precious! Love that coat :)
ReplyDeleteYou're plugging along, and we all know how good that feels!
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