Making Progress...Finally

Yes folks, you read that right, we are making progress!

Today I made the long drive to Albany to have the documents for our Dossier Apostilled.  I drove all by myself.  Those of you that know me, this is a big deal.  First of all, I strongly dislike driving in the rain, I got plenty of that on the drive there and back, but thankfully while I had to walk around Albany there was no rain!  Second of all, I am not a city girl.  I don't do city driving.  I don't do on street parking if I can avoid it either. Both of those things make me nervous.  Yep, I had to do both today, I even had to pay with a parking meter... this is a big deal folks.  Not only that but I also had to park on the left hand side of the street on a one way street, and it was legal.  Craziness!  Yep, I'm a country girl.

I decided to drive to Albany and have our paperwork done same-day instead of mailing it out, I figured this would save us about a week and a half.  I was wrong.  I quickly found out that one of our documents was incorrect.  Thankfully I could go to the Dept. of Health, only 10 minutes away to have that taken care of.  So I left the DOS, went to the DOH, waited for my new document, went back to the DOS and had that document Apostilled.  After a quick stop for lunch, gas, cash and caffeine, I was back on the road to home. 

Once I got home, I gathered the rest of the documents needed for our Dossier, went to the bank, got a big fat Cashiers Check to submit to our placement agency, went to the Post Office and mailed out our Dossier!  It took 2 envelopes because 36 notarized, certified, Apostilled documents take up a lot of space!  But IT IS DONE!

Now I pray that everything was done properly and that we can now sit back and play the waiting game.  If all of our documents look good, they will be shipped to Callie and Chance's country.  There they will be translated which should take about 2 weeks.  After translation our paperwork will go to the Prime Minister of the country for approval.  This could take about 3-4 months.  After approval, we will get invited to visit the children to get their official referral.  I am hoping that we (I) can travel in December to meet Callie and Chance.

After spending about a week with the children I will come home and we will wait AGAIN for the Prime Minister's approval, this could take 4-6 months.  With that we can fill out more paperwork stateside, get final approval and travel for trip #2.  That process should take about 2 months.  Trip #2 will be about 3-4 weeks long in country with the children, then we will come home as a forever family.

This timeline is an estimate and can change at any time, but it looks like the children could be home in about a year give or take a couple of months.  That sounds like such a long way away, but every day that passes is one day closer to being a family of 5!