WE ARE APPROVED! Approved for what might you say?! TO ADOPT! If you remember from the last post, with our homestudy in hand we applied to Homeland Security (specifically the US Citizenship and Immigration Services dept) to officially adopt, and we were fingerprinted last Thursday (they must fingerprint you to finish processing your application). So lastnight, Billy opened some mail and there our approval notice was. And yes, he was watching me as I smiled ear-to-ear. Before this, we were approved so-to-speak from our social worker, agency, and we had already met all state level pre-requirements, but now we are *officially* approved to adopt by the federal government!
This was the very last piece we needed for our dossier (the paperwork that gets sent to China)!
In fact, it was the most important piece.
Also -- we're approved for one or two children (in the one millionth chance our agency would refer us twins or "foster siblings").
This approves us to adopt in general (the approval notice gives what ages we're approved for, as well as the various special needs outlined in our homestudy report). When we accept a referral or match for our Little Stump is when we have to apply again to adopt him/her specifically.
As of now, our other dossier documents are being processed by our agency (they are getting certified through Iowa and Ohio's state secretaries, and going through the Chinese Consulate in Chicago for final authentication. Authentication is basically just legalizing the documents so that they can be used in China (no way around that).
After final authentication, our documents can be sent off on their merry-lil-way to China, and oh how that will be a happy day!!
We've been on this journey already for six months, so we're so ready to have those papers in China, let me tell you. :-)
ONE BIG STEP CLOSER!
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