We Received the Golden Ticket!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Big news people - we received our 171-H from the Department of Homeland Security!!!!! It has been almost 8 weeks since we were fingerprinted which is about average for our local office and not bad considering it was over the holidays. For my family and friends that have not memorized every form number, this is the approval from the US Government stating that we are worthy to bring our child into the country. More importantly, this is the LAST document that we needed for our Dossier (which is the group of documents that will go to China.)

This document still needs to go through the same authentication process that the other 12 documents went through. Therefore it was notarized today and sent to the Secretary of State's office for their certification. They should receive it Monday morning and hopefully get it back to us within a few days. I will then expedite it (aka - pay extra) through the authentication process of the Chinese Consulate. Hopefully all of that will be done within the next week or so.

Then we send our entire dossier to our agency. They will look it over and then send it on to China. Probably just in time for the Chinese New Year Holiday. Figures. Once our dossier is received in China, the wait begins. How long do we wait? That's the $64,000 question. When we started the process, it was a very predictable 6 month wait. Things have slowed down a bit and the latest families to receive a referral have waited approximately 8 months. We'll be keeping a close eye on those referrals.

Since the documents from the Secretary of State and Chinese Consulate will come FedEx, the parking restriction in front of my mailbox has been temporarily eased. Notice I did not say permanently lifted.