Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad!

In Venezuela we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. We get together and have dinner as a family (a very late dinner). Then children go and play and at midnight baby Jesus bring them gifts (usually one per child). Oh, how many good memories I have from this holiday! Of course, now I live in US and I kind of got used to the tradition here to celebrate on the 25th. We will have lunch with Talley's mom and dinner with Talley's dad where my brother Max will join us with his special friend.

No matter what tradition we follow, this year is special. It is the first time that we are working toward expanding our family. Yesterday, December 23rd, we sent the last paperwork needed in our Dossier to be sent to Colombia. That is a HUGE milestone! Anybody who have gone through this process know how important is to complete and collect all the documents. Now start one of the less expected parts of the journey: to wait. Wait to have our documents translated and send to Colombia (2-3 weeks). Wait for the Colombian goverment to give us approval to adopt there (could take three months or more). Then we will have to wait again to get a referral for our beautiful child (+/- 2 years). So we are expecting to be celebrating Christmas with a child in 2011 (if we are lucky). Hey, I'm not complaining because he/she is not here yet, I'm happy because it is sooner than at the beginning of the process!

During this time, and during this particular holiday I will always be greatful for the beautiful family I have. I'm very lucky to have found one of the best human beeing in the world: Talley who will also be one of the best fathers ever! (I saw him last night playing with his little cousins and niece, he is soooo ready to be a dad!). Yes, I have been very blessed in my life to be surrounded by wonderful people on this season.

May this holiday season bring you happiness in your life. Feliz Navidad!



Friday, December 19, 2008

Latest update

New update in our list!!!!

Home Study - ready
FBI Clearance - ready
Birth certificate - ready
Marriage certificate (long form) - ready
Employment letter - ready
Physician letter - ready
Psychological assessment- ready
Name affidavit - ready


As you can see, all the documents changed to ready status.  Including the FBI clearance!  What does it mean?  We are ready to mail our documents to our agency so they can review them and send them to Colombia!!!   YES!!!!!!


On the other hand, Talley and I had to take off from work today to go to San Antonio to the Immigration office to get our fingerprints taken (this time for the I800A document).  Our appointment was schedule at 9am. We left Austin at 6:30am to avoid morning traffic.  We really avoided it!  We arrive to the office around 8am.  We took breakfast in a close IHOP, and arrived back to the office a little bit before 9am.  We were done with the entire process at 9:10! It was less than 10 minutes total!  We headed back to Austin immediately.  I had time to get (again) our physician reports and get them Apostille very quickly.  All before noon, it was a very productive morning!!!  

Now it is time to get ready for Christmas.  The tree is up, decorations are out of the boxes.  We still don't know exactly what are we doing on Christmas day because Talley's dad will have a minor surgery on Tuesday, so maybe we will celebrate another day.  Who knows... we still have time to plan ;-)

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Progress

At this point in Adoption, we are following two different process. One with the US Goverment and the other one with the Colombian Goverment.

The one in US is to request permission to bring an orphan here. They are requesting our biometrics (to be done on 12/19 - received letter on 12/09).

The other one is the paper chasing to complete our dossier to send to Colombia. This is the current status:

Home Study - needs Apostille
FBI Clearance for each adoptive parent. - At the FBI, it will be a week tomorrow that they received it.
Birth certificate of each adoptive parent (long form) - Talley's needs Apostille. Nancy's ready.
Marriage certificate (long form) - Needs to get Apostille.
Employment letter for each adoptive parent (if applicable). Needs Apostille.
Physician letter for each adoptive parent - Needs Apostille.
Psychological assessment of the couple or single adoptive parent - Needs Apostille.
Name affidavit - Needs Apostille.

All the documents that need Apostille are ready to be taken to the Secretary of State. I should be doing very soon!

The dossier also needs to include photos of us, the house, our families and our dogs!!! This is a work in progress.

So, we soon will arrive to a stopping point waiting for the FBI clearance before being able to send the documents to Colombia. When the dossier is ready, it has to be translate and then submit to the ICBF. Hopefully that will happen the second week of January, the latest.

~Nancy

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

I-797C, Notice of Action

So a couple of things had happen these days.

First, Talley's little sister Savannah (17) with her choir sang on the White House today!!!  Check the video (sec. 37). 

On Sunday, after arriving from work I decided to look at our mailbox.  Silly me because Talley check the mail on Saturday, and there is not delivery on Sunday!!!  But when I opened it, I found the letter from USCIS acknowledging that they received our I800!!!  That is very exciting :-)  But not only that, but today we got our letters with appointments to get our Biometrics done!  That means that the process is moving :D
Other than that, we put out our Christmas tree, and decided that our child will learn about the true meaning of this festivities.  Baby Jesus will bring our child a gift on Christmas.   Santa can take care of the rest of the world ;-)