The hardest part of this whole process is that so much is out of our hands.  I am very organized and am the planner of the family.  I like to be in charge.  Right now, I am so very dependent on other people doing their jobs and making this adoption a priority in their lives too, which of course, they don't.  I understand that we are just one family out of many that are going through this process, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating.  I hurry and get everything done on our end....to just wait and wait some more.  Then stuff gets done incorrectly on the other end and has to be redone.  My initial estimates for getting stuff done didn't take into consideration the Thanksgiving holiday and people taking this whole week off of work!  Sigh.  My new goal is to have everything submitted by mid-December.  Still waiting for our fingerprint appointments too.  So much waiting... 

Slowly, but surely, moving through the dossier process.  With a little luck, we can send all the paperwork to our placing agency by the first of December!  There are a couple things that are still out of our control, namely the finalized copy of our homestudy to arrive, as well as an official child background check letter, make that two, for each of us.  Everything else is moving smoothly though. FBI fingerprint letters arrived today.  Will have to send those off to Washington, D.C. to be apostilled now.  I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel!  With any hope, we will be spending some time in Majuro before spring!

We are officially starting on our dossier!  I must admit, it is all a bit overwhelming and just a wee bit confusing.  Why do we need 3 copies of our marriage certificate and 2 copies of each of our birth certificates?  Do we need to get fingerprinted again by the FBI, given that we already did so for our home study?  What about repeating the background checks?  I'm hoping to get some clarity from our placing agency and home study agency next week.  After all that gathering, we need to get it apostilled which apparently means that we mail it all to the state government to be stamped, but first it needs to be notarized?  I'm so confused.  Glad to be moving on to the next step, but boy, the next step is confusing!  Fingers crossed that we do this right the first time and don't have to redo anything!