Where are we now?

So, I finally have all my documents ready to go to the home study agency.  It has taken much longer than I expected to get everything ready.  I forgot how the first time around I didn't have any distractions and was able to use every spare moment to get things done.  I'm not complaining though, I love my little distraction. 

This time around I am working with two separate agencies because my placing agency, Joshua Tree, is not licensed in North Carolina so I had to use an agency here to do our homestudy.  When we adopted Olivia, we used Gladney in Texas.  They weren't licensed in North Carolina either, but they contracted a social worker in our state to perform home studies for them.  We didn't have to do anything additional or in duplicate as all documents went to Gladney only.   Now that we are working with two agencies we are having to do two different sets of paperwork. 

Monday I will be mailing the completed packet of documents to Carolina Adoption Services so that they can proceed with our homestudy.  We will have the same social worker that we had for Olivia's adoption.  It will be great to reconnect with her after all this time.  Once the agency reviews all of our documents they will send requests to our references for notarized statements and requests to our employers for notarized letters verifying employment.  Once they have everything they need and all documents have been approved they will schedule a time for our social worker to visit us. 

Once our social worker has met with us twice, she will take the info she gathered when meeting with us, combined with all the documents we submitted and she will write our home study.  We will review it, and they will once again review everything before signing off and notarizing the completed homestudy.

These are the next steps after the homestudy is complete:

•  Notarized Homestudy sent with I-800A application for determination of our suitability to adopt  a child from Ecuador.  

• Wait for USCIS to send notification of fingerprint appointment.

• Travel to Concord, NC for fingerprinting. 

• Wait for USCIS approval of I-800A application. 

• Send approval, homestudy and all other documents to the NC Secretary of State to be appostilled (certified).  Send NY birth certificates and marriage license to NY Secretary of State to be appostilled.  

• All of these documents once appostilled will make up the Dossier.  

• Dossier is sent to Joshua Tree to be reviewed and translated

• Dossier and translation is sent to Ecuador to be approved.  

• Once approved we will wait for a referral.  

It looks so easy and quick and simple when you write it out like this.  It's really not.  Although it is pretty easy compared to the first time around when everything was so foreign to me and I had to wait for instructions for everything I did.  I am thankful I can navigate this pretty easily.  Hopefully it will go smoothly without any snags.  Anything can happen, especially when thing are out of my hands and we are at the mercy others and rules, regulations, and laws.  All that can throw a wrench in things pretty easily.

Until next time.....