We are reaching the home stretch in preparing our dossier to submit to China, so hurrah! This past weekend, we prepped more paperwork, got lots of bloodwork tests done for our medical reports, got passport-sized pictures for our dossier application, and we covered our entire pub table in forms and documents.

Kathleen playing Important Paper Shuffle

Some of the highlights of our weekend also included removing staples by hand from forms (yes, it’s really as much fun as it sounds) in order to scan and yes, replace the staples by hand again. Believe it or not, staple holes in a document will invalidate it, and no one will seal or authenticate it. Go figure.

We also worked on our photo pages. Part of our dossier submission is a required photo spread of images of daily life for us that cannot contain any pets, alcohol, or religious images. Basically, no God, no cats, no beer. So I hauled out the glue stick and put together a little “this is our life” for the Chinese Government (minus God, cats, and beer, of course!)

What we are ultimately waiting for in order to be able to submit our dossier is the federal government’s authorization for us to adopt. We’re cleared through the agency and state, and now we’re just waiting on the thumbs up from Uncle Sam. We just got our biometrics appointment for October, so until then we’ll continue to gather and certify documents. Although the projected time frame for the government’s approval is set at 90 days, we’ll hit the 30 day mark when we get our fingerprints and are looking to be cleared in perhaps as few as 40. Depending on turnaround time for fingerprints, and how long it will take the dossier to be registered in China (assuming we’re accepted), we could be ready to match by the release of referrals at the end of November!