Almost there

We received our I-797C via email on Tuesday. That is the sheet of paper that immigration sends to us saying we are approved to adopt from China. I'm so glad we were given a pleasant caseworker who readily emailed me the scanned copy so we wouldn't have to wait until the hard copy came in the mail.
So this is how it works:
We will take the original copy of the approval with us to China but we have to include documentation in our dossier that we are, in fact, approved. So we make a copy of the original and attach an affidavit stating it is a true copy. That must be notarized, certified by the state. yada yada paperwork shuffle.

Thankfully it is summer and the children are out of school so we got the affidavit notarized Tuesday evening and the kids and I were downtown Wednesday morning at the secretary of state's office. We had to certify the home study and the affidavit to complete our dossier. Before leaving downtown we walked to a market and purchased a money order for the consulate fees and stopped at Kinkos to FedEx all of it to Chicago. Sometimes I feel like this process goes from 0 to 100 mph in a matter of hours. OK, I guess it really does.

Our last two documents are being authenticated in Chicago now and when we get those back we will finally be ready to send the completed dossier to FTIA!

Sec. of State

I got an email today saying our documents made it to the authentication department at the US Secretary of State. Now they must make it from there to the Chinese Embassy and then back home. And that is only for the documents from Tennessee.

Our Georgia documents were delivered to the Houston Consulate last week but have not started their trek back home yet.

Our Missouri documents will be authenticated by the MO secretary of state soon (maybe this week if we have time) and then shipped off to the Chicago Consulate.

It's a good thing I still have a good grip on US geography from school.