In the review room…

Posted by Stephen on Jul 16th, 2007

For the past few weeks we (June 2006 LID’s) have been in what is called “The Review Room”. This is where the CCAA goes through the dossier, officially, and makes sure that all the paperwork is in order and that you qualify under China’s guidelines to be an adoptive parent. May went through very very quick which is nice, and makes me feel a little more optimistic about the process speeding up a little. I have heard from a few people that have an LID of a few days before us that they have already received questions on thier dossier. That means that they are moving through June fairly quickly too.. Yay!!..

With the review room, the old adage, no news is good news, really hits home. Anyone of three things can happen with the review room.

1. Questions are submitted to your agency in regards your dossier, and updated information is requested. Anything from medical issues, to re-writing your cover letter to include specific wording. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that clarification is needed.

2. The CCAA can reject your dossier all together. If this is going to happen at all through the process. This is when it is going to happen. While it is in the review room. You can be rejected for any number of reasons, some that don’t even have anything to do with your ability to parent a child. This is a standard part of the adoptive process, no matter what country you adopt from.
3. You could hear nothing. If your paperwork is in order, and they are happy with your dossier, then it is simply put in the line for a referral.

Obviously we are hoping for line item number 3. We don’t have any concerns that our paperwork won’t be accepted, or that anything out of order, primarily because of our Agency. They are sticklers about the paperwork and they jump through many many hoops to make sure that all is in order.

So… I am now checking on a regular basis for the update on the CCAA site that says :

???????2006?6?30???????????.

or in english…

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before June 30, 2006.

We are logged in!!

Posted by Stephen on Jul 17th, 2006

Just got an email from our agency… We are officially Logged In…

So we were DTC - on June 23rd.

We were LID on June 27. Woo hoo!!!!

You can’t see me but I am doing my happy dance right now.. :)

My wife, who is coming back from San Francisco as we speak, is on the side of the 5 freeway doing her happy dance as well.

So, if we can just get those referrals pumping again, we will be on our way to parenthood….

Dossier Approved!

Posted by Stephen on Jun 6th, 2006

OH YEAH!!

The Agency sent me an email today to let us know that our Dossier looked great, and that it would be sent out on the 15th.

Very very very good news.

So we will celebrating on the 15th!!!

I love LA!

Posted by Stephen on Jun 2nd, 2006

We have all the documents back from the Los Angeles Consulate. 5 days!! With a holiday in there and shipping it USPS…. WOOO HOOO!!!!

Only thing that concerns me is that they did not staple they used adhesive to affix it to the back of the Secretary of State document…. So I could not copy any of the documents. We are told over and over “DO NOT TOUCH THE STAPLES!” but there are no staples.

Anyway. We immediately bundled everything up and FedEx’d to the Agency and at 9:29 AM PST today….. It was delivered. Our agency officially has our Dossier and is prepping it for delivery.

HOPEFULLY, we did not screw anything up and they will be able to send the Dossier with the pack that goes out on the 15th…. June 15th. That will be our day.

DTC Baby!!!!!!

San Francisco in da house!!!

Posted by Stephen on May 25th, 2006

Our fine Chinese friends from the San Francisco consulate have pulled through for us. Laura’s BC had to be sent up there since she was born up in Northern California.

Sent, processed and received in 5 days… :)

Very cool.

Now - LA. The Los Angeles Consulate. You, my friend, get all the rest of our documents. They were delivered on the 24th of May via USPS. We had to wait since this was more costly then the others and a client, who shall remain nameless, decided not to pay me this month, so now that we finally have that worked out..

LA, like your collegues in San Francisco and Chicago, I trust that you will excercise the same effeciency and precipitateness that I have come to know and love from the consulate offices.

So - it is very possible that by May 31st, or June 1st our documents will be back in our hands with very nice looking Chinese Authentication paper stapled to them - DON’T TOUCH THE STAPLES.

Then we can FedEx everything up to AAO. AAO sends out dossiers on the 15th and the 1st (I think), so it is VERY VERY likely we will have a DTC date of June 15th. If that holds true we should have a LID of June 26 or so…

From the LID date we begin the countdown to referral, which is now officially running 12 months. Hopefully that will speed up, but if not, it is OK — we are willing to wait as long as we have too.

A shout out to Chicago!

Posted by Stephen on May 19th, 2006

I just wanted to say how much I love the Chinese consulate in Chicago. They processed our docs in 5 days. They also FedEx’d them back to me since I forgot to include the SASE. Very very good.

Thanks guys and gals.

Almost DTC…. and a new look

Posted by Stephen on May 12th, 2006

Ok - DTC - that means Dossier to China. That is the point when all the documents that we have spent the last 6 months compiling, notarizing, authenticating and certifiying are all compiled and sent to China. A couple of weeks after, or so, that we will be LID. That means Log In Date. That is the date that the CCAA relays back to our Agency that our Dossier has been received and is in line for processing.

Now, before you ask, no we will not have a baby next week. Current referral wait times are at 11 months and climbing. Odds are that we will not travel until next June or July 2007. This is OK though. We have waited 13 years, one more is not too big a deal. It also gives us time to get our life back in order before the baby comes. Paperchasing is all consuming and EXTREMELY costly. Now we will have the time and money to get the baby’s room ready, the floors in the house finished, and the backyard completed. All tasks which have been started but are languishing right now.

Now the blog. As you can see. I have given the blog a new look. The orange was really starting to get on my nerves. Also, we are no longer providing links for people to donate to the adoption. We SINCERELY appreciate all the help we received over the past several months, and now that we are about done with the paperchase, we are not really in need of any money. Thanks again though, to everyone who gave us your support, both emotionally and financially. We will never be able to truly thank you enough.

Another addition is that the photo blog is now also open to the public. So go have a look at our various pics that we have up. I will try to add more later.

So, Currently we have documents at the Chicago and San Francisco Chinese Consulates, and Monday I will be driving up to the LA consulate to drop off the remainder of our documents.

A couple of weeks after that we will be putting everything into a big FedEx box and sending it off to AAO for them to translate and send off.

Projected DTC date: June 15…. here’s hoping..

Tales of a Moron

Posted by Stephen on May 9th, 2006

Ok so as you can read below, we went all the way to Sacramento to get our documents authenticated, and we were very proud of the fact that we were in and out so quickly. Hurray for us right. So now we move on to the next step — getting the Consulate of the People’s Republic of China to certify the documents.

So I spend all day yesterday making copies of our documents and I come to the home study. Our wonderfully worded Homstudy. Our 3000.00 dollar Home Study. The document that declares that we are fit to be parents.

The document that is NOT authenticated by the Secretary of State. DOH!

Now mind you, after our 6 hour drive to Sacramento, we did not forget to bring this document to with us. We simply forgot to have them authenticate it while we were there.

There are not words that can describe the horror, and the pain, and the anger going through my mind at the moment that I realized that we did not authenticate the Home Study while we were there.

Thankfully, my wife, my beautiful, wonderful, lovely dutiful wife agreed to drive up and back to get it done today.

So - thanks to rising gas prices our authentication, and my stupidity cost us another 200.00. ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

It is OK though. We are still on schedule. I fedEx’d our Marriage License to Chicago yesterday and the consulate called and let me know that they received it. Wooo Hooo.

Tomorrow I will FedEx Laura’s BC to San Francisco, and the rest of our Docs go to LA.

Almost there. Almost DTC. Almost LID….. so close…..

Back from Sacramento…

Posted by Stephen on May 3rd, 2006

We’re Authentic!!!! YEAH!

A big thank you to the fine folk at the Secretary of State’s office. They were fast, effecient and extremely helpful. Especially when we ran into a problem with the copy of I-171H form. We had made the copy, but since I have been working ALOT lately and sleeping even less, I messed up with the Notary Public. I had her sign that the document was true and accurate copy of the original, when I was supposed to have done that.

So the SoS lady told me that I could have another done across the street at the credit Union. Thankfully I had made several copies.

I went over the Credit Union and Amy — she was the best — quickly notarized the other copy and didn’t even charge us!!! :)

Even with the mess up and the need to go across the street to notarize a document, we were in an out of there in less then an hour!!

That left us the rest of the day to see Ice Age 2, and The Sentinal.

We are home now though, and glad to be….

Authentication … off to Sacramento

Posted by Stephen on Apr 27th, 2006

So. We have sent our dossier papers up to the agency and they said they all look great.. Woo hooo. We had to make a couple of minor adjustments, which have been done, so we are full force in to the authentication process. I sent our Marriage License off to SoS in Minnesota and the nice folk (all people in Minnesota should be referred to as folk) told me that they will try and get it done this week and fedex back to us. How nice… :)

We decided to drive to Sacramento on Monday - about 400 miles - to walk the docs into the SoS office here to cover all the rest of our documents for California. The turn around time is like 2 weeks to 6 weeks if you mail them in, and I just figure, we both need to get away for a few days and if they will do it while we wait, we could likely have all our authenticated documents ready to go the consulate on Wednesday next week… WOOOOO HOOOO.

Then we can walk everything into the LA Chinese consulate and let them do thier thing and if everything works out, we might be able to get this thing sent out in May. Shocking….

It is all coming together and getting more and more real.

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