One step forward, two steps back. Sigh.  So, the child abuse people screwed up and only sent one certified copy of our abuse background check letters instead of the two that were requested.  Took 7 weeks to get the first set.  Hopefully it doesn't take another 7 weeks to get duplicate copies.  Also found out today that the USCIS has an issue with some small part of our homestudy and are asking that we amend our homestudy report to include some little thing.  Will contact our homestudy agency tomorrow and see how quickly they can get this done.  Will likely require another social worker visit which means more time, and more money. Altogether, very frustrated, but trudging onward....  One day, we will look back and laugh.  Well, probably not laugh.  I can't find anything laughable about how inept this whole process is.   Happy New Years blogging world.  Hopefully a new year means progress...

Merry Christmas!  I spent the 24th, calling around and found a notary who was willing to drive to DSHS this week or early next week to notarize our letters. Turns out, that Santa came through afterall!  Our letters were notarized and sent off in the mail on the 23rd!  Whoo hooo!  They are now enroute to our placing agency, who will then mail them back to us and we can finally get the rest of our dossier apostilled!  What an awesome Christmas present!  How wonderful it is to feel the gears of this giant adoption machine churning once again.  Progress is a beautiful thing!

Sigh.  Well, got an update about our letters today.  They still haven't been completed.  The person who is in charge of doing that, still hasn't gotten them notarized.  Her "update" was essentially the same as the one that she sent last month on the 26th stating that she needed to find a notary in her building.  If she had just contacted us, we could have paid a notary to come to her!  Of course, now everybody is closed until next Monday.  I am going to call her on Monday and see if I can arrange a notary to go to her.  I just wish that she had reached out sooner, letting us know that she was having trouble finding a notary,  instead of just letting it go for a whole month!  Really annoying.  This is the one and only thing that is holding up our whole dossier.  I know that I said that I had already given up on getting those letters before January, but to know that they still haven't even been completed, meaning that they are not en route to our placing agency, to be back en route to us, is really annoying.  Sigh.

Let It Go!  Let It Go! Well, here we are, still waiting for our child abuse background letters to be processed and sent to our placing agency.  Sigh.  I am officially letting go any hopes of getting our dossier submitted before the holidays.  Our fingerprint appointment yesterday went smoothly though.  I expected long lines and a big headache, but it was actually very smooth and very streamlined.  So, now I am just trying to relax, finish up Christmas shopping and preparations, and enjoy the season.  We'll get back on track with this adoption in early January, hopefully.  So annoying because we just needed one person to do their job.  One person and we would have had everything submitted weeks ago.  Maybe I should ask Santa for our child abuse letters!  Also, as we're looking ahead to the summer now, it's hard to make concrete plans since we don't know if we'll be in Majuro or not before the summer.  Deep breaths.  I think that all these delays and frustrations are the system's way of preparing us for delays and frustrations while in country.  Happy Holidays, blogging world. 

Got our fingerprint appointments! They are scheduled for next week.  Still waiting on our child abuse clearance letters from the state, which is the very last thing that we need for our dossier.  So frustrating because we already got clearance, for our homestudy, but they needed a hardcopy letter. So we had to fill everything out again and mail it off, which we did the first week of November.  They were in receipt of it on the 26th of November and told us that it would be 5-10 business days before they could generate the needed letter.  Here we are, on business day #8, and still no news.  Looks like it'll get dragged to the bitter end. Sigh.  At least we have our fingerprint appointments.  Slowly, but surely.  Would love to have everything sent off before the holidays so that we can just relax, knowing that everything was submitted. 

So close to finishing our dossier!  Hoping to have the final pieces of it in the mail to us by tomorrow, so that we can send it off to be apostilled.  Our I-600A was received by USCIS on November 24th and is on its way to the National Benefits Center in Missouri.  Hoping to hear about our fingerprint appointments before the holidays.  From everything I've read, the timeline for an appointment can be as quick as a week to as long as a couple months!  While waiting, and waiting some more, I've been reading a lot about the history of the Marshall Islands and trying to learn a little Marshallese.  Have I mentioned that I'm a bit of a nerd?  I'm reading Bravo For The Marshallese which is very informative and very well written, but also very sad and more than a little disheartening.  The U.S. has not been the kindest to the Marshallese and still has not taken responsibility for many of the effects of the nuclear testing program on their health and the environment.  Shame on us!  I'm also reading Don't Ever Whisper, by Darlene Keju which is a little harder to get into as the writing is a bit scattered.  Regardless, both excellent educational pieces about the Marshall Islands and the nuclear program there. I have also been loading up my Kindle with some fiction reads for when we are in Majuro.  With a new baby as well as our two young daughters in tow, I'm not sure how much time we will have to read, but hey, I can dream, right?