BRINGING GRACE HOME: Dossier Update and Rambling

(Sorry, this got a little long and wordy.)

I have to say I love the ladies down at the State Dept of Justice in Madison.  For the 3rd time in a row, they nailed the state background check letters for our dossier.  They even humor me by using blue ink like I ask them to! :-) (I have asked many others and many do not. Blue ink is not a requirement for Ukraine dossiers but it helps the folks checking the dossier to verify it is an original notary signature, not photocopied.) When the Secretary of State office goofed up the apostille on one of these background letters for Elijah's dossier, they were more than willing to work with me to get a new letter right away. Anyway, it is just such a relief to get a perfect letter and not have to wonder if it will be ok or not. By the way, in case you were wondering, the letters said we had no record. :-)

Just a side story - last summer, Pat was going to volunteer at a VBS that wasn't at our church. The pastor there wanted his date of birth to do a background check.  Now, this is something they SHOULD be doing and I am glad they are doing it. But I had to laugh...I wonder if she wants county, state, Dept of Homeland Security or Interpol background check. We've had them all! hee hee

So, anyway, Grace's dossier is complete except for that Golden Ticket. We got our fingerprint appointment letters last week. We will travel south to visit the Department of Homeland Security the 3rd week in May. (The DHS is right next to my alma mater MSOE. Ya, kinda crazy a stay-at-home mom of seven, going on eight children, has an engineering degree, huh?  I LOVE how God works out the true desires of one's heart! Anyway, it's nice to finally drive to downtown Milwaukee and not get a feeling of dread in my stomach.) Hopefully, we'll receive our immigration approval shortly after and get her dossier sent over by the end of May or beginning of June and get it submitted!  I'm hoping we will be traveling by the end of July. Woohoo!


International adoption is a game of "hurry up and wait" over and over and over and over and over and over again.  From the very beginning of the paper chase to the very end of arriving at the airport. When we started our home study, we got all of our paperwork done and turned into the social worker (SW) within about 2-3 weeks. It would have been sooner, but our SW and Pat were both out of town, so our final visit was out about 3 weeks after we got started.  Home studies are very long and involved. Ours was about 10 pages long, which is actually short compared to some. (It's a little freaky to see your whole life summed up in 10 pages though!) The length depends a lot on the state requirements, and of course, what USCIS wants to see. Ukraine's requirements are pretty simple actually. We had to start over with our home study because in the state of WI, just like Ukraine, documents are only good for six months.  Some of you remember how quickly we did Jonathan's adoption after Elijah got home. We had to redo all documents for that home study too even though Elijah had only been home 3 months. Plus, this time around, we used a new agency b/c our old one no longer does home studies for non-Hague countries like Ukraine.

So, we hurried up and got all of our paperwork turned into our SW , and it took our agency about 4 weeks to complete the draft of the study, and another week or so to get the hard copy in our hands and get our I-600a application in the mail. Our fingerprint appts are about 4-5 weeks after we sent in our I-600a. (Some states allow you to walk-in early once you have the fingerprint appt letter. Not WI! We tried a couple years ago. We failed.) All reasonable. Paperwork just takes time whether we like it or not. We have no control over that. We wait now for our immigration approval. We will then bust our be-hinds to get that Golden ticket apostilled by driving to Madison and paying for same day service. (I'm sending the rest of the dossier to get apostilled w/in the next week or so.) And then pay top dollar to my fav FedEx store in town here to get it into my facilitator's hands asap. Then we will wait.  Wait again for a travel date after we are submitted. See how fun this is!  I love it!!!! :-)

Please pray we get approved very quickly! Thank you to everyone who has shown us so much support during this journey so far. We are SO grateful!