Big week!

All of the work in 1 folder!

This week is a big week in our Journey.  It is hard to express the amount of time and effort it has taken to get to this point.  Through the process, I out what a dossier is, found out what it means to have documents apostilled, and learned about biometrics.  I also find myself getting excited about emails, text messages and Mail from the Department of Homeland Security.  Today was one big milestone, and tomorrow is another.  Today we got all of the documents that we had to get notarized, apostilled.  We have been working since February to get to this point.  The road has not always been smooth, and it will probably not be smooth from here on out, but today is the day that Linda and the kids drove over to Springfield, and went to the Secretary of States' Index department (I did not realize the Secretary of State did so much, well not the Secretary himself, but his agency), and got all 41 documents that make up our dossier apostilled. I find it funny anytime I talk about getting the dossier apostilled everyone seems to say "What?".  It is basically verifying that the notary is a valid notary and that it is completed correctly.  Thankfully all 41 of our documents were accepted. and we were able to take  our dossier to the FedEx store and ship them off to begin the translation process.

Success!!!

The other big thing that will be happening this week (actually tomorrow Tuesday), is that we will be going to our biometrics appointment.  Many of you are probably wondering what a biometrics appointment is.  It is basically a fancy term for getting your fingerprints done.  Now for those that have been following our process you are probably thinking, didn't your fingerprints taken in the beginning of this adoption journey?  That answer would be Yes, Yes we did, but apparently there is not such thing as sharing digital finger prints and their results.  We have to get them taken again tomorrow and again ran through the FBI database.  Seems strange but it is a necessary step along the way.  We are super excited about where we are and can not wait to get our approval from Immigration.

Sending it off!