One major step: DONE!

We have officially received all of our required paperwork for our homestudy and dossier. I had no idea it would take this long but finally, the day arrived. We visited California last month, and that made it much easier. My husband's CA police clearance apparently was lost in the mail, so while we were there we went to a fingerprinting place and they fingerprinted him and electronically submitted his police clearance request. How easy! So much easier and cheaper than the ordeal we had to go through here. We also mailed our CA child abuse clearances while we were there (supposedly they were submitted twice by our former HS guy, I don't believe he submitted it the first time, and the second he didn't bother to check to see that a check was required.) So, all in all we have acquired:

For me:
* birth certificate from CA
* police clearance from CA, DC, VA and Qatar
* child abuse clearance from CA, DC and VA
* FBI clearance

For my husband:
* birth certificate from ME
* police clearance from CA, DC, FL and Qatar
* child abuse clearance from CA, DC and FL
* FBI Clearance

For us:
* 3 recommendation letters
* marriage certificate

And, we have completed AND notarized the following forms:
* medical clearances
* financial statement
* employment letters (for both of us, from my husbands company and one I wrote saying "I choose to stay home and raise my children")
* personal statement to China

Whew! Now all (sarcasm here) we have to do is get all our dossier documents authenticated at the Secretary of State (for us, one packet to Maine, one packet to CA and one packet to DC) THEN get those authenticated documents sent to the Chinese Consulates in NY, CA or DC (depending on their authentication location). Whew! We left NH last weekend and here's how that is going to happen:

* the ME packet is being mailed by my inlaws in NH to ME Sec of State. Then when they receive the results, they will forward the second packet to the NY Chinese Consulate.

* The CA packet is being mailed by my inlaws in NH to the CA Sec of State. The results of that will go to my parents in CA. From there, they will send the results to the Chinese Consulate in CA. Slight problem. All the documents are from Southern California, but the Sec. of State is in Northern California. There are 2 Chinese Consulates, one in So Cal one in No Cal. We have to use the "correct" one. Not sure which one to use since the docs are from So Cal but the authentications are from No Cal.

* The DC packet is going to be hand carried by my sis in law to the State Department in DC (she works near it). First, though she must wait for us to receive in the mail my husband's CA police clearance that we will get notarized here overseas. She will then wait for the results and, if we are lucky, will hand carry it to the Chinese Embassy in DC and wait for those results.

* Oh, then there's the I800A form. That's still in NH awaiting a copy of our homestudy to be attached to that. BUT, one piece of good news is that we had extra fingerprint forms done here and since we couldn't understand the directions on the form for overseas fingerprinting (there are no biometrics fingerprinting places here) I just left them with the form. I just contacted NBC Hague about what to do and they said to just include our fingerprint cards with the form. Yea! For once something worked easier and cheaper than if we were in the US. So once our HS woman releases our HS we're ready to submit this form!

Still about a million steps to go, but since our paperwork starts expiring in January, we need to get our dossier submitted to China no later than December. Actually, now we might move, so we really need to get it in before we go. Can't move in the middle of this process, that would be a disaster. We can move before we get our little girl though, believe me, we have looked into that.