ugh..

Boy is this taking longer than it should be. Friday we went to the NH USCIS office to be fingerprinted and were told we were not in their computer system yet....I just got a call from our social worker today, saying she had just gotten off the phone with the INS office asking why we hadn't been fingerprinted yet....sigh. But, the good news is that that mess is all straightened out and we should be getting a letter giving us permission to be fingerprinted (hopefully) by the end of the week.
I also called the MA State police office to find out why our criminal background checks were taking so long....finally got a nice woman on the phone that explained that their computer systems had been down for a week and that she would look for ours this week and process it ASAP :)
so maybe we'll get to submit our paperwork to the MA Secretary of State to be apostiled in the next 2 weeks....
then it's off to the NY Consular office and and all of it goes to our adoption agency to be reviewed and translated.
if we are lucky, it will be submitted by the end of march....
our hopes for having her home by the end of the year are fading unless referral times pick back up again, but it will feel good to at least have it in the hands of the Chinese government and completely out of our control....(i think...)
:)

still waiting....

we are still in a holding pattern waiting for the state of MA to get our criminal backgrond check in the mail to us. I know our application arrived at the office on 2/6....ugh.
once those arrive, it's off to the MA Secretary of State office to get state certification....
We are also waiting for our letter giving us permission to get fingerprinted from the INS office.
so we wait wait wait...
i think the waiting will get easier when everything is submitted to China and there is nothing I can do about it. Now I feel like I should be doing something, but our hands are tied at the moment...

one step closer, one step back...

well we just got home from vacation last night. 3 envelopes awaited us-our revised homestudy for China, one from the Boston INS office and one from the Chinese Consulate Office in Chicago. The one from the consulate was good news-our birth certificates are now fully authenticated and ready to go. The one from the INS was a rejection of our I600A. According to the form, it said to check to website for the most current information on fees and payment. So I did, and it said to send a personal check. The application was returned because they no longer accept personal checks, just certified checks and money orders.... So back to the bank I go this morning to get a certified check, and then back to the post office to mail it again....
grrr.
but the cruise was an excellent time had by all :)

wow, this was more complicated than it should be...

So yesterday morning, I picked up the finalized copes of our homestudy. I mailed one copy to the USCIS office in Boston along with our I600A application and other documents they needed. I mailed our criminal record requests for Massachusetts to the State Records Office in Boston as well. All good. I took the NH criminal records request to the office in Concord in person since it is only 15 minutes from work...they took my check, stamped my form and sent me out the door. I asked specifically if that was all I needed for an international adoption (as I thought I needed a notarized statement that said "No criminal record") and I was assured that what I was holding was the official and only seal frmo the state of NH. So then I decided to take all of the NH documents to the Secretary of State's office in person (along with a FedEx envelope so she could send the authenticated documents back to me). The good news was that she could do them right then and there, so no need to pay FedEx to get them back to me. The bad news was that I was correct and I did need a notarized letter for our criminal record statement. I also needed a new copy of our marriage license because the copy I had was certified at the town level, and not the state level. Lucky for me, the Department of Vital Records was across the street from the Department of Safety (where the criminal records are done). So I fought Concrod traffic and drove back to the other side of town to the office I had just come from. I got our marriage license without any problems, but when I went back to criminal records, I was again informed that they did nothing special for internation adoptions. I drove back to the statehouse with the phone number of the person in criminal records. The secretary of state official called the criminal records and explained what I needed. I had to go back the next day (today) to ge tthe correct form, and the drive back to the statehouse for the certification....
whew...
So I have all of those forms in hand and authenticated now, but it took 3 trips to each office over 2 days to do it :)
Then I get a call from the homestudy agency coordinator who tells me that there was an error in our homestudy (which was one of the documents I just had authenticated at the state level) and would have to be redone...So that means I get to make one more trip to the statehouse after they reissue the homestudy.
Too bad I don't get frequent driver miles...
But at least everything else is submitted and maybe will be back waiting for us when we get back from vacation (leaving tomorrow!).
:)