In receiving the information from our placement agency, Children's Hope International (CHI), we realized all the paperwork we need to gather in addition to all the paperwork we needed to gather for our home study. Our documents need to be notarized and then some even need to be apostilled by the Secretary of State. We need fingerprints notarized, FBI background checks, letters from our Doctor, a letter from our CPA, notarized reference letters, photo albums for the kids (which I put together and were quite fun to do!), a photo book for the Institute of Child Welfare in Colombia (ICBF), a letter of Introduction for the ICBF, copies of our passports, a psych eval...the list goes on and on...this is why the "dossier" which is what this total package is called takes the longest amount of time. Today we got in some of our apostilling = our birth records, our marriage certificate and an affidavit of our names. We sent this in last week and got it right back so I am excited for the turn around of our documents thus far. Now we are waiting for Leah to continue to put together our home study then we need to send it to our placement agency for approval and then to our psych person the placement agency uses. A lot of stamps will be used over the next few months... :) Biggest things I have learned with all of this is being organized and being patient. Thank goodness CHI gave us a checklist for all this paperwork, you all know how much I love checklists! :)
On a side note Leah sent me an email this week letting me know that she began the home study process with a new family this week who is interested in adopting from Latin America. The coolest thing about this process we have found is the openness EVERYONE has been to speaking with us and sharing information. Now we get to share information with ours and help them on this journey too. SO cool!
Cheers!
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