Holy Paperwork Batman!

It is official, my Dossier has been apostilled and it is now off to my Agency in Texas. :) Yahoooooo!

A quick re-cap, a Dossier is a bunch of paperwork gathered over the past 4 months that includes my Home Study, Financial Statement, Medical Evaluation, Guardianship Letter, Bank Statement, Home Ownership Letter, Copy of Passport, Birth Certificate, FBI Background Check, Letter of Intent to adopt, Immigration approval, Power of Attorney, Photos of my Family, Marriage Certificate (oh, oops, wait a minute, I didn't have one of those in my Dossier = saved $5.00 since that doc didn't need to be apostilled :), and so on. Once all of my Dossier Docs were gathered and notarized, I had to visit the Secretary of State in St. Paul, MN so they could Apostille each document. Apostilling is just the process in which they verify that my Notaries are in fact Notaries and that they are in good standings, so, I need to gather information, sign it in front of a Notary, so the Notary verifies that I am in fact me, and then I have to take it to the Sec. Of State so they can in fact verify that the Notary is in fact the Notary, and so on. :) Crazy!

Good news, I am me and my Notaries were all Notaries! Score!

One original pile of Dossier docs for my agency, one copied pile for my agency and a 3rd tree (oops sorry, pile) for me!

I now send off my Apostilled Dossier to my Agency, they compile documents (1-4 days) then send off my Dossier to be translated (2-6 weeks) it then gets shipped to the Embassy (about 8 weeks) and in this time, I should be getting assigned my region in which I will adopt my little girl from. :) At this point, I am told that the average wait is about 4-8 months.

Hurry up and wait now!