If these post seem overly simplistic, I apologize. I am trying to explain things in words and terms someone outside of the adoption world can understand. Sometimes, we throw around words and assume every knows what they mean. Well, until we began this process, I had never heard of many of them. Our desire is to help explain adoption from the assumption that you've never heard of them either. With that being said .........
Tomorrow, Kirk and I will be fingerprinted, for the third time in this adoption process. Aparently, each agency requires their very own set our identification markers and each one requires a different form or way of capturing them.
Tomorrow's appointment is for The Department of Homeland Security. We have to get their "OK" to show we are all-clear and able to complete the adoption process. It will take approximately three weeks to receive the necessary documentation from them. Once we receive that coveted purple form, our dossier will be complete.
A dossier is a huge stack of required paperwork each international adoption requires. Included in that ream of paperwork are copies of our birth certificates, our marriage license, medical clearance statements, background checks from every place we've lived, three pages of family photos and our homestudy. Each document has to be notarized, county certified (which means the county office verifies the notary's signature), and appostilled (which is the state's stamp of approval that the county certification is valid). Whew - that's a lot of stamps and signatures!
That entire stack of documents, after making multiple sets of copies, will be mailed to our agency for the translation process. We've been told that process should take around six weeks. So, from today, we are likely nine weeks away from having all of our documents in the hands of the Bulgarian goverment. At any point after that, we could begin receiving referrals - a child's file to review for consideration of adoption.
We're getting very excited!
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