A few little baby document steps

It's only been a week since my last update, but I've been having one of those "urgent" weeks where I'm feeling a big push to wrap things up.  Those super motivated pushes have come a small handful of times throughout this process with both Ethiopia and Haiti.  I tend to believe that there is a reason for when those urgent pushes come.  Anyway, of course this one came at a time where I've been sick so that's been a bit of a bummer, but we've still gotten some things done since last week:

• Mark's medical letter got finished and notarized (a nice lady in another office in his building that's a notary offered to go notarize it at Mark's doctor's office).
• Reciprocal power of attorney letters typed up and notarized.
• Judicial power of attorney letters typed up and notarized...except I did something wrong on it, so we will amend the date and try again tomorrow when the notary is working that has the expiration date that we want.
• We gave the last of the information we need to get our psychological evaluation letters written
• Followed up on 2 remaining letters of recommendation that friends have written but need to have notarized.
• Looked up information on how to authenticate a document originating in Michigan and sent appropriate envelopes and checks off for that (to have a letter of recommendation authenticated).
• Wrote our IBESR letter (about ourselves and officially requesting IBESR to adopt a child from their country).
• Followed up TWICE more on our insurance company getting us the letter to verify coverage for our future child (we still don't have it).  I got bounced around on hold each time for more than a half an hour each.  So frustrating.
• I hand delivered all our documents except the aforementioned insurance letter (which I'll take in as soon as I get it) to our agency so our case worker can start completing our home study amendment.  We want to get a jump start on that so we are able to submit our immigration pre-approval paperwork (it has to have a copy of the home study submitted with it).
• I filled out our I 800a application (for immigration) so when our home study is done we are ready to quickly mail it off.

Also!  When I went in to our agency office to deliver our home study documents I was able to meet Chareyl in person.  I've talked to her several times over the phone and emailed with her many more, but I hadn't met her in person.  Just talking to her was such a solidifying re-affirmation that we chose the right agency to guide us through this journey to adopt from Haiti.  I am so impressed with her knowledge of Haiti and the adoption process there, her insight, and just in her as a person in general.  While I know that even the most knowledgable, experienced person on Haitian adoptions can't insulate us from the unpredictability of this process - I do feel like we have the right person at our side to guide us through this journey.  And I'm so grateful for that!


My newest concern is...the likelihood that Homeland Security will be closing for a period of time soon due to lack of funding from gridlock in congress on political issues.  And that is who we send our paperwork to for immigration pre-approval.  Just one more thing you can't anticipate or do anything about I guess, but grrr...

In good news I found out that while we do have to wait for our finalized home study to submit our application to immigration...we don't have to have already attended our fingerprint appointment that they'll assign us and have our favorable determination letter in hand before starting to process our dossier!  That could save us a couple of months on our timeline!  We can be getting our dossier authenticated and translated while we wait for USCIS to process our application and so it's ready to go when we get our FDL.  That was great news!  So, here's to hoping we get that home study wrapped up quickly.