Some Good News!

We learned on Tuesday that we will be able to update our home study, and not do a new one from scratch. This is indeed good news, because it means that it should take far less time to complete the process, and we should have less forms that we need to fill out.

We've made good progress on collecting our documents. We received our marriage certificate and are waiting on both our birth certificates. We still need to get our physical exams and police clearance letters. Otherwise everything else is ready to be approved, notarized, certified and authenticated!

Dossier Guide Has Arrived

We received our dossier guide in the mail yesterday, as well as our password that will give us access to all kinds of online help at our agency's website. I now have my new list of things to do!

We're still waiting to hear if we will have to do another home study from scratch. Hopefully, we'll hear early this week.

Tomorrow we are meeting a couple who live near us, who are about to leave for Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan to adopt a baby. Cameron is from Petropavlovsk, so we're excited that there will be another Petro baby nearby. They will be delivering a letter and some pictures to the Baby House director. They like getting updates on how "their babies" are doing.

We FedExed our signed and notarized service agreement to the agency today. We were also contacted by the local state office so that we can get started on our home study. It's still up in the air as to whether we'll be able to do an update, or whether a completely new one will be required.

Our agency called and we have been officially accepted!  Our servcie agreement is in the mail, on it's way here.  After we have signed and returned it, we'll get our dossier guide and will be able to start the home study process.
 
Wednesday night, several mom's from the FCC-Macon group met to watch National Geographic's "Lost Girls of China" with Lisa Ling.  I thought it was well done and even-handed.  There was one very emotional scene with a foster mother who thought the adoptive mom was bringing her baby on a visit to the orphanage.  The foster mother was distraught that she wouldn't see her foster child one more time.  It makes me wonder if we'll have to deal with this issue, and how we'll be able to decide what is best for our daughter.

The Paperchase Begins

On July 1st, we sent in our agency application to CCAI. Less than a week later, we received a call that we had been tentatively approved. All we needed was a doctor's letter. Today, we finally obtained the letter and sent it on to CCAI.

Hopefully, a service agreement will be on it's way to us either today or tomorrow and we get started paperchasing for our precious little girl.

We don't know if she has been born yet, or is somewhere in China right now as I type.