September 12th

Andy and I ended up having to wait until Monday to head down to Austin to the Secretary of State's office. When I called Laura at the Assistant Stork Friday morning, I was told that several documents I had were incorrectly done and needed to be redone. Thank you, Laura! If we had gotten the wrong documents sealed and then had to go through this all over again I. would. have. freaked. out!

In the meantime, God struck again. As we were set to head over to the CPA, the bank and then on to the post office with the money orders for the CCAA and X's wait child fee, X called me to say that I needed to hold off on sending funds because she thinks she will be able to have the money wired to the CCAA, not mailed. She says that this will take off several weeks of wait time on our LOA if we wire it. Woohoo! Right now people are waiting 45 to 60 days for LOA. That is a huge time to just sit there and do nothing.

So I am in limbo, again, on when to send things and how. All I know is that Andy and I will leave at 8am Monday morning for Austin to have the correct documents sealed. I'll overnight those to Laura in DC at Assistant Stork so she can go to the Washington,DC Secretary of State and then DC Chinese Consulate for authentication (and more money). From there she will overnight our irreplacable dossier to X in California and X will send it on to China.

The Dossier is like gold to adoptive families. This is the link to our child. The lifeline. This is the set of documents that we have spent MONTHS gathering, getting authenticated from the individual states (as well as certifying - yes, certifying is not enough - we also have to have them authenticated and sealed by both the SOS and the local Chinese Consulate of that document). So because Andy was born in California, I had to have his birth certificate certified by the state, then authenticated by the state and THEN authenticated by the local Chinese Consulate in that state. I was born in Ohio so the process was the same with me. And then we were married in Nevada... All the while, and every time this is sent to some government office, we have to enclose a check. It adds up quickly.
Luckily for us, we can bypass the local Chinese Consulate scheme by sending all of our documents to Assistant Stork in Washington, DC. She will take them into the DC Chinese Consulate and because they are the "head" government office, they override the others. Are you lost yet? I know I was.

So please pray that everything goes smoothly on Monday and we get logged in by September 15th.