Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The bulk of the dossier documents (meaning documents originating from Maryland and NC) were sent off yesterday to Washington D.C. for authentication with The U.S. Dept of State and then the Chinese Embassy in D.C. So, we're almost there... The screw up with the employment letter for Derek has unfortunately, put that document lagging behind all the other documents though. So, right now, I'm waiting for that one to come back from the MN Secretary of State before being able to send it to IL to the Chinese Embassy for that region. Alright all you faithful adoption couriers that I've put my trust into, c'mon...the finish line is in site...what documents are going to finish first? NY, Los Angeles, D.C. or MN/IL??? I'll let you know.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Whoooo hoooo!!! We are almost there... today I'm sending documents off to the various Chinese Consulars for authenticating! For those still in the paperchase phase, if you want to know how just one document can throw off your entire timeline read this: Derek's employment letter, originates in Minneapolis, did not have a notary acknowledgement statement on the letter (only the seal and signature). I mailed it off to the SOS (secretary of state) and 2 weeks later, got it back "rejected" because of the missing wording. Ugh! See... watch all the little important things carefully, dot your "i's", cross your "t's". When they tell you to make sure the notary's expiration is valid for at least a year, they mean it. The smallest thing can throw everything off!

So, what else has been going on besides all the day-to-day happenings? Well, you could say that Meiying's American name has become our mealtime topic of discussion. Seems that I'm still getting pushback on the name Nina. We've narrowed our choices down to about 4 names. We'll see, Nina is on that list. I still see Nina when I look at her picture or talk about her, but I do like some of the other choices as well. I don't like being unsettled about her name though. I think we need to establish a deadline so as not to drag this on and on and also give room to toss in other name suggestions. Allie is having lots of fun with that! Who knew today's kids names could be so creative. She'll come up with a name that sounds so made up and then she'll show me Facebook or MySpace where she knows 10 kids with that name! Huh! Of course, one of the four choices is also the #1 name given the year of 2002 (Meiying's birth year) so chances are there would be a half dozen classmates with that name.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Immigration approval received TODAY, in record time...just 12 days after our Homestudy was filed!!!!