Yesterday I received our Ethiopia dossier packet in the mail at about 11:00, and from the moment I opened the envelope, I went full steam ahead with my work! The older kids were busy working on their schoolwork, and I told the younger ones that today would be our “off” day (they do school 4 days a week and we have a floating day off) and that they would get to play. There were no complaints there, so I camped out at the kitchen table with my computer, my adoption binder, the new packet, and a pen. I made copies, wrote letters, adeptly printed notarial blocks onto copies of birth and marriage certificates (OK, so I wasted about 20 sheets of paper before I got it right), and filled out our I-600A. Around 1:00, I went to the post office to pick up postage and a stack of Priority Mail document mailers, came home and rounded up documents that needed to be mailed off, and gathered sample letters to take to various people and places.

I started at the bank and actually walked out with my notarized bank letter in-hand. Next, I went to our doctor’s office and dropped off the sample physician letter and instructions on what we needed, and then I drove to the police station to request our local criminal records check. Again, I left with documents in-hand. Woo-hoo! After that, I back to the bank to get a $685 money order for our I-600A. That hurt. Then, I drove to my friend J’s house to ask her to write a letter of recommendation (J is the wife of our doctor and they are adopting from Haiti) and discovered my other friend J, who I’d intended to ask to write the second letter), was at her house. (This J and her husband are also adopting from Haiti). I was thrilled to be able to hand off both sample letters at once!

I came home and wrote our family letter to the Ethiopian government, wrote our employment letters (we’re self-employed), copied our last year’s 1040, filled out our I-600 form (not to be confused with the I-600A), and got my husband to sign everything that didn’t need to be notarized. I worked like a machine and it feels good to have so much out of the way!

Our homestudy is completed, but our social worker can’t release it until our motor vehicles reports arrive, which mysteriously haven’t. Once I have it in my hot little hands, I’ll send off my I-600A. A notary at the bank agreed to come to our home and notarize everything all at once, so as soon as I have our medical letters and letter from our friends, I’ll be able to set that up. Except for the homestudy, I should have everything I need by next week, including the one document I had to mail to Washington state for certification. This is definitely my fastest dossier ever!

Finally, I’ll have to cough up another $2000, decide once and for all on an age/gender or whether we want a sibling group, and off it will go. Wow. This is starting to feel real!

Anybody got any name ideas?