Forward Motion

We finally have some tangible forward motion!  I delivered our dossier (the packet of information we send to Meg's country about us, including our home study, that allows us to be registered to adopt a child) to be apostilled (every page needs to be notarized, then apostilled.  An apostille is basically an international notary) in the Lieutenant Governor's office at the state capital last week and we got it back yesterday!

 The beautiful capital building

 Our dossier paperwork before I submit it for aposilles.  This dossier (including the home study) has taken up a rather large chunk of my time and energy the last 2.5 months.  I am very protective of this baby!

 Here it is a week later improved with lots of expensive gold stamps!

 Aren't the stamps purdy?

 Whelp, there goes the carnival money!  Thanks to everyone who donated!  Thanks to you our dossier can be translated and submitted in Meg's country!

So long, capital hill.  See you again in a few months!

Our precious dossier is now on its way via Fed Ex to our adoption agency who adds a few of their own papers to it.  They will then be Fed Ex'ing it to Meg's country!  After being translated, it gets submitted to the Ministry of Education.  Once they review it and give us the green light (sometimes they need more paperwork), we will be officially registered in the region and get a referral with travel dates to come meet a child/children!!  Woot woot!  This whole process can take very little time, or it can take months.  The bottom line, though, is that we've done our part and the rest is out of our hands!  Well, at least for this initial registration dossier.  We will need a whole new dossier for court, but that's a post for another day!

In other news, we sent our USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration) application to adopt a foreign child in last week as well!  As long as they don't need any additional information, we will soon be in the clear with the US to bring home a little one and make her officially ours!

So close, yet so far away.  We are getting excited, though, because information on when we first travel *should* be coming relatively soon!  We will FINALLY have some sort of time table to tell ourselves and others.  Hooray!