Great News!

Our re-sent notarized addendum to our homestudy showed up in the mail today so we were finally able to mail off all of our paperwork to the state capital to be apostilled!  Whoo hoo!  Original ones still haven't made it.  Only option for mailing our paperwork was USPS since it's a PO Box.  Given the amount of our mail that they have lost in the past 6 months, I am very nervous about having them in control of our precious, hard-earned documents.  I sent it certified express with a tracking number, just to be on the safe side.  I also included a return certified FedEx envelope for it to be sent back to our home address.  Also, my husband got his approval letter today from USCIS to adopt.  I'm sure that mine will be in the mail tomorrow, as everything from Homeland Security has been going to him first, and me the next day.  Odd, but that's been the pattern.  This means that when our papers have been apostilled and returned to us, we will have everything we need for our dossier and we can mail it off to our placing agency!  So excited! 

***edit: Turns out that USCIS only sends out one letter (apparently addressed to the mail head oh household...GRRR...so we are actually both approved to adopt!***

One huge step forward, one tiny step back

WE GOT THE CAN LETTERS!!! WHOO HOO!!!  They came yesterday via FedEx.  Only problem is that our home study addendum, which we need to submit with everything else to be aspostilled, appears to have gotten lost in the mail.  I kid you not!  It was mailed last Tuesday, but never showed up.  Our home study agency just put another one in the mail today.  Everything is in one big envelope, just waiting to be sent to be apostilled.  Feels like we are always waiting on just one more thing.  Our home study agency has been amazing though so when they say that it's in the mail, it's in the mail.  Generally we get things about 2-3 days after they send them so either we'll get the replacement this week...or the original will show up.  Either way, we should be able to send our stuff off to be apostilled by this weekend and then hopefully submit everything to our placing agency by the end of next week.  It was a huge hurdle, but now we are almost there! 

Not holding my breath, but, maybe, just maybe...

Our homestudy agency submitted our addendum of our homestudy to USCIS yesterday.  Still had no word about our child abuse letters so I went from patiently waiting, to purely obnoxious.  I emailed the social worker two days ago, left a voicemail message yesterday, and then called the main line today and left a personal message with a colleague of the social worker to give to her.  It worked!  I got a call back AND an update!  She mailed the second set of letters to our placing agency two days ago.  Finally!  Not holding my breath as there is the whole postal service to count on now but fingers crossed that we finally have this last part of our dossier completed!  YEAH!  Only took 8 weeks to get those letters done, but hey, who's counting?  Oh, yeah, right.  WE ARE!

Still nothing to report. Still awaiting our child abuse letters.  Apparently the person in charge of doing this is aware that they only sent one copy, instead of the requested two and apparently told our placing agency that they would get it done.  That was two weeks ago but here we are, still waiting.  No letters.  Meanwhile, our home study agency is supposed to be updating our homestudy and sending it to us to proff before they resend it to USCIS.  That hasn't been done yet either.  So here we are still.  Waiting.  I promise to report if anything at all happens...

Just had our repeat home study visit per USCIS request.  I guess that it's a good thing that we haven't gotten our child abuse letters yet afterall.  We were waiting to send everything to be apostilled until we received those letters.  Our social worker told us that our dossier would need to include our most current homestudy, which will now be updated to include the visit from today.  So, had we gotten those letters already, we would have had to pay out more money to get this newest homestudy apostilled, and our dossier still wouldn't be completed.  So, I guess the silver lining is that the lengthy delay by the child abuse office actually saved us money and hasn't cost us any time yet.  Now, our homestudy will be updated on Monday and we should get new official copies on Tuesday or Wednesday, so hopefully the child abuse office will be able to complete the request and get those letters to us by early this week so that we can send everything off to be apostilled by the end of next week.  I can hope, right?

Our homestudy agency is wonderful.  I notified them yesterday of USCIS's need for another visit with a social worker, to meet our live-in nanny in person.  Today our social worker, who is still on holiday leave until Monday, contacted us and arranged to come to our house tomorrow and get that done!  On a weekend!  How awesome is he???  If you end up adopting in Washington, let me know as I highly recommend them.  Now, back to waiting on those child abuse letters.  I'm hoping to hear something about that on Monday.  Well, at least we are moving another step forward in one area.  Baby steps...