How to adopt

August 25, 2006

Wondering how to adopt? The web-site below is a great resource.
www.howtoadopt.org

We received notification today that our fingerprint appointment is schedules for September 1st at 8 am. Not a brilliant day schedule-wise and way too early. Luckily I was able to bring it forward and arrange for it to be tomorrow at 9am! Works better for all. So, we are piling the boys in the car tomorrow at 6am sharp and will negotiate the Seattle rush hour traffic to, hopefully, arrive in Tukwila for our 9am appointment. Yes, it's 180 mile round trip! Fun, fun, fun! However, we ARE having bucket-loads of fun with Matt, Morag, Joe, Isaac and Nathan who are visiting from England for 3 weeks. Our boys are having a ball playing together. Here are a few photos of our day in Seattle yesterday. We had a yummy brunch in West Seattle-Nana and Poppa's treat- a ferry ride, a trip up the Space Needle, fair rides in the park and scorching sunshine! What more could you ask for?!

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Where is that fingerprint appointment?

August 19, 2006

We now have all of our documents completed and ready for our dossier-yippee! Eleven documents came back from the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco after only taking 8 days to be authenticated. The two documents from Washington, D.C. arrived too after being walked through the British Embassy, the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Consulate courtesy of an adoption courier we paid to do it all! What a help that was.
Now we are chomping at the bit waiting for our fingerprint appointments from immigration. We requested an appointment for this coming week but have yet to hear anything.

Why is the wait so long?

What happens to our dossier when it is sent to China?

August 13, 2006

1. On receiving our finished paperwork, our agency sends all the paperwork aka the dossier to the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) in Beijing.
2. Your dossier enters the CCAA administration office and can wait for up to 1 month to be logged in. Once you have a log in date (LID)your official wait begins.
3. Your dossier waits to begin the process. This currently takes 3 to 4 months.
4. The CCAA administration office passes your dossiers to Bridge of
Love where they verify your dossier's translation. This process
takes from 2 to 3 months.
5. Your dossier is passed to Department I for review. This process
takes from 1 to 2 months.
6. Your dossier is passed to Department II for matching. This too
can take from 3 to 4 months. Your dossier is matched several weeks
before step #7.
7. Your referral is sent to the administrative office to be signed
by all the CCAA directors and mailed to the adoption agency. This can take several weeks.
8. You receive your referral - a very happy day! You return your
acceptance of referral letter to the CCAA.
9. The CCAA sends your travel approval to come to China to complete
your adoption. This process takes about 1 month.
10. You travel to China to meet your child and complete the adoption.
This is approximately 6-8 weeks after referral.
The current wait from LID to referral is 12 months as of 6/2006

Last leg of the paperchase

August 2, 2006

Finally our Home Study is complete and we can now file our papers with US immigration!
Today I am sending our British documents to a courier in Washington, D.C. who will take each document for certification and authentication to the British Embassy, US State Department and finally the Chinese Consulate.
We are also waiting for the Washington state documents...they are currently in Olympia, WA being certified by the Secretary of State. When we get those back, they will make their final journey to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco for authentication.

Now all we have to do is wait for a fingerprint appointment with immigration and after that we will wait for the cherished I-171-H which is our last piece of paperwork needed before we can send our completed Dossier to our agency (for critical review and translation) and then on to China to the China Center for Adoption Affairs!edit

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