Dossier Smoshier

Things seem to finally be moving along in the adoption process, so I thought I would give you an update. I still don't really know a timeline for when we can expect to bring MF home, but I am starting to feel really anxious and really, really excited.

It hits me at random times and all the sudden I am crying thinking of her and how badly I want to hold her and see her smile. For example, I had a girl's night out last week with my aunts, cousins, and sister in Boise where we went to see the amazing play Wicked (more on that later), and in the middle of the play I started bawling because I just had this image of MF in my mind doing fun things like this with us and I could just see this massive grin on her face. The image stayed with me for some time and I was so excited thinking about it. Don't get me wrong- I know she isn't just going to show up and understand plays (and it is likely she probably never will), but it was more the idea of her being able to be out doing something fun. I don't know what she is exposed to in the orphanage, but I hope that we can take her to some places and show her some things that she hasn't been able to experience before.

I have been reading some international adoption stories on blogs and such and each time, the Spirit has testified to me again that we are on the right path. It gets me so excited thinking about welcoming our daughter home after such a long wait.

There are so many hoops you have to jump through with international adoption (well adoption in general, but so many more with international!). Let me just tell you the range of emotions I have felt this week as we have been working on things: overwhelmed, frustrated, ready to give up, excited, anxious, happy, peaceful, did I mention overwhelmed?

Just in case anyone wonders what the process is like...well, let me tell you. Last week, we went to the post office to apply for a passport for Jace (he looks adorable in his passport photo, just so you know). At the same time, I realized that my passport is in my maiden name, so we needed to re-new mine as well. Good thing we asked. I thought we could just go and bring our marriage license with it to show the name change. Not so. Also at the same time, we were mailing off the biggie form to the US government, which is an application for immigration and visas basically. It is called the I-800a form. That handy dandy little form only costs $900 to file. No biggie.

I don't tell you the costs of these things to garner sympathy, because of course we knew going in that this was going to be an expensive process. However, I tell you this because I want to be real about my emotions throughout this process. Each time we spend a big chunk of money (which has only been a few times so far), I find myself feeling especially overwhelmed. However, I have to remind myself that this is something that we feel strongly about and it is a decision that we feel that Heavenly Father is pleased with. Therefore, He is not going to leave us stranded. I know things will work out just fine. I just have to constantly re-assure myself of this. On the topic of money and full disclosure in our journey, we have been denied for two grants so far (one no reason was given and the other denied us because we have not supplied at least half of the full cost ourselves). There are three more that we are still waiting to hear from. So prayers for something to work out would be wonderful.

Okay back to the process. Love the dis-jointed thoughts, don't we? The next step is this form called a dossier. (I recently learned that this is pronounced dos-ee-a. a as in pain. Smart me, I was pronouncing it how it looks.) Holy moley, talk about stress inducing. The dossier requires the following:

*3 personal reference letters
*Certified copies of our birth certificates (all four of us)
*Certified copy of our marriage certificate
*Certified copy of Utah's law of adoption (yeah, you are thinking what I was thinking...what the heck is this and where in the world do I obtain one? Luckily, I found out that the agency supplies this for us. Whew.)
*Home study
*Psychological Evaluation (yes, we were evaluated psychologically. Fun.)
*Background checks with state seal embossed
*Employment verification letters for both Devin and I
*Adoption letter from our agency stating that we are qualified to adopt
*Medical reports for Devin and I
*A signed post placement agreement (we agree to 2 years of post placement visits after MF is in our home and the reports are then sent to Ecuador)
*A signed Power of Attorney form

All of the above documents must be notarized and apostilled. Don't get me started on the confusing and very not specific instructions on this. Notarize a certified birth certificate? WHY??? Notarize something that was done six months ago (such as our medical reports for our home study) that we did not sign? Isn't that the purpose of a notary...to witness a signature? So I was thinking I would have to drag a notary to the doctor's office, to my personal references houses, etc. to do all this, but finally I got instructions from the agency today that the notary just notarizes each of these documents stating that they are an original copy. Okay. Much easier, but still a bit pointless in some cases, such as the certified birth certificates. Agreed???

After the notarization of all above documents, we must get them apostilled, which is basically a notarization that the notary's seal is valid. Lovely good fun, right? And each document costs like $15 to apostille. Extra fun.

The dossier must also include the following, but these documents (luckily) do not need to be notarized or apostilled:
*photo copies of our passports
*an Application filled out
*1-800a form approval
*pictures of our family and home

We did a bunch of this stuff today and have all of our documents gathered to be notarized except my employment verification, but that should be in the mail and on its way. I am sure I will drop onto the couch and not move for 48 hours when this is all done. Gathering them was sort of a process as well, as the agency in Florida (Joshua Tree, which is facilitating the adoption) said to get the medical reports, reference letters, and background checks from our home study agency (Families for Children in SLC). Well, I called to talk to our worker there and she said that she never, ever releases original copies of things, which makes total sense to me, because we don't either at LDSFS. So how else was I supposed to get originals except for start over? Well, she took pity on me and said that she would give us the originals and keep copies in her files. Hallelujah, bless her heart.

Bless your heart if you are still reading this. I realize that this is likely incredibly boring for most, but I want to document the journey for ourselves and possibly for future people who may read this some day who are going through the same thing so that they realize that they are not alone in the frustrations of this process at times!

Anyway, there you have it. Now we wait. The I-800a is supposed to take about 8 weeks to process and somewhere in there, they send us notifiation to go get yet another set of fingerprints for background checks (that will the the third set!). Once we get that approval, we can file the dossier. That is when all the money is due for the cost of the adoption as well. So, it looks like in the next 2 months or so we will be getting much closer to bringing home MF!