The latest news...
Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, between work and life, things have been a bit busy.
A lot has happened for the adoption since the last post as well. CCAI got our home study beginning of October. Once that was completed, we had to go to immigration and get fingerprinted. There's only 2 offices in the state, Aurora and Grand Junction. As any who knows me could tell you, my choice would have been to drive the 4+ hours each way to go to Grand Junction rather than the 30 minutes into Aurora, but we went to Aurora. The trick with immigration seems to be go in the middle of the week, We've known other people who have gone in the middle of the week and got right in and out, as did we. We were only there about 15 minutes or so. However, you can tell that on the weekends they must get pretty busy, because they have about 50 chairs for waiting. If it's 15 minutes for 2 people, that's 8 per hour, 50 would be an all day event!
After getting our fingerprints, we had to get our adoption petition ready for the final push. This is the document that says why you want to adopt from China, and what you're looking for. Of course, there are restrictions about what you can or cannot put on this petition, but I won't get into that here.
A couple of weeks ago, we took a day off work to get paperwork notarized. What a process THIS is. First, we had to go to CCAI to have everything notarized.
Unfortunately, THAT's not good enough. After we got them notarized, we had to take all the documents including CERTIFIED birth certificates and an official copy of our marriage license to the secretary of State to have them authenticated. This is where the Sec of State says "yes, Joe Blow is a notary in the state of Colorado." Because a couple of the documents, my birth certificate and our marriage license, were from county clerks, we had to take those to a separate department in the Secretary of State's office to have them authenticated. This wasn't too painful, but we did have to go downtown to have this done. (Side note for all you "bimmerheads" out there, Saw a nice 2002-2003 M5 while we were downtown ;-) ).
We spent about 2 hours downtown getting this done, but even THIS isn't enough. Next, we had to copy documents so we could send the notarized, authenticated originals to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago to have the documents authenticated yet again (after all, can we REALLY be sure there weren't any shenanegains with the Secretary of State's authentication)!
So we got the documents to Chicago the same day (must have been about 11/13/2006). Just before going on vacation for Thanksgiving, we get the documents back from Chicago, well, actually, they get to the post office, I neglected to go pick up the certified letter before leaving for Thanksgiving. We had a mail hold so I suppose we could have screwed something up with that if I had actually gone to pick up the letter, you know how USPS can be ;-)
This week, Shari picked up the documents along with the rest of our mail and ran them to CCAI where they will be proofed again, translated to Chinese and sent to China for final approval. After that approval, we start the waiting game. Currently, the wait is expected to be between 12 and 18 months, with an estimate of 15 to 17 months after approval. So for now, there's not much to do but wait.
A lot has happened for the adoption since the last post as well. CCAI got our home study beginning of October. Once that was completed, we had to go to immigration and get fingerprinted. There's only 2 offices in the state, Aurora and Grand Junction. As any who knows me could tell you, my choice would have been to drive the 4+ hours each way to go to Grand Junction rather than the 30 minutes into Aurora, but we went to Aurora. The trick with immigration seems to be go in the middle of the week, We've known other people who have gone in the middle of the week and got right in and out, as did we. We were only there about 15 minutes or so. However, you can tell that on the weekends they must get pretty busy, because they have about 50 chairs for waiting. If it's 15 minutes for 2 people, that's 8 per hour, 50 would be an all day event!
After getting our fingerprints, we had to get our adoption petition ready for the final push. This is the document that says why you want to adopt from China, and what you're looking for. Of course, there are restrictions about what you can or cannot put on this petition, but I won't get into that here.
A couple of weeks ago, we took a day off work to get paperwork notarized. What a process THIS is. First, we had to go to CCAI to have everything notarized.
Unfortunately, THAT's not good enough. After we got them notarized, we had to take all the documents including CERTIFIED birth certificates and an official copy of our marriage license to the secretary of State to have them authenticated. This is where the Sec of State says "yes, Joe Blow is a notary in the state of Colorado." Because a couple of the documents, my birth certificate and our marriage license, were from county clerks, we had to take those to a separate department in the Secretary of State's office to have them authenticated. This wasn't too painful, but we did have to go downtown to have this done. (Side note for all you "bimmerheads" out there, Saw a nice 2002-2003 M5 while we were downtown ;-) ).
We spent about 2 hours downtown getting this done, but even THIS isn't enough. Next, we had to copy documents so we could send the notarized, authenticated originals to the Chinese Consulate in Chicago to have the documents authenticated yet again (after all, can we REALLY be sure there weren't any shenanegains with the Secretary of State's authentication)!
So we got the documents to Chicago the same day (must have been about 11/13/2006). Just before going on vacation for Thanksgiving, we get the documents back from Chicago, well, actually, they get to the post office, I neglected to go pick up the certified letter before leaving for Thanksgiving. We had a mail hold so I suppose we could have screwed something up with that if I had actually gone to pick up the letter, you know how USPS can be ;-)
This week, Shari picked up the documents along with the rest of our mail and ran them to CCAI where they will be proofed again, translated to Chinese and sent to China for final approval. After that approval, we start the waiting game. Currently, the wait is expected to be between 12 and 18 months, with an estimate of 15 to 17 months after approval. So for now, there's not much to do but wait.
posted by James | 8:24 PM
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