Homestudy? Check! Fingerprints? Check!

On November 10th, our final home study finally arrived from Angel Adoptions and James immediately rushed it off to FedEx along with our 600A form and documents for immigration. He made it just as the mail guy was leaving and he generously agreed to wait while James packaged it all up and sent it on its way. Wahoo! Unfortunately, the next day, after looking a little more closely at the home study, James noticed our address was slightly wrong. So we had to go through some logistics to get that changed, but it seems to be taken care of now and hopefully hasn't delayed the process. It did teach us to triple check everything though! While we wait for our 600A approval from immigration, James sent another copy of our home study to get state certified on November 18th. This, along with our USCIS approval will be part of the dossier (the ultimate collection of paperwork that goes to Holt and then Ethiopia).

Less than a week later, the home study was returned to us. We were surprised at the speedy turnaround, but when we opened it, realized that it had not been state certified but mailed back to us as the notarized documents within it were not done according to new Massachusetts standards. What?! We then had to figure out exactly what the new standards were and get the Power of Attorney document redone. We went to three different banks before finding a notary with the proper stamp that didn't expire within a year. Meanwhile, we received notice that our 600A was approved and we received an appointment to go to Cranston, RI for our FBI fingerprinting appointment. The appointment was for December 6th at 8:00 am and since James had to be chef at work that morning, making this appointment would be extremely challenging. We had read that couples sometimes went for their appointment early to gain some time in the whole process, so we decided to take a gamble and drive the two hours to Cranston in hopes they would squeeze us in a week early. We also decided to try to kill two birds with one stone and take our home study personally into Boston to get state certified to ensure we had done it correctly this time. We figured if it was incorrect, we could at least get clarification on what we needed to do properly and save time with going back and forth in the mail. So the day would involve five hours worth of driving with no guarantee that anything would get accomplished.

On Tuesday, November 30th, Grandma and Grandpa came to watch the girls for the day and James and I headed to work - James was chef and I was helping to serve and we were thankfully able to escape and be on the road for Rhode Island at 10:30am. We arrived at the fingerprinting office at 12:30 and were told we would need to come back for our originally scheduled appointment on Monday the 6th. We told the officer that we had driven all the way from Chatham in hopes they could squeeze us in and that the 6th would be very challenging with work committments. After speaking with his boss since he claimed it was a very busy day (though we were one of two parties there), he agreed to squeeze us in and we were to come back in an hour. Phew! We went out for a really good sushi lunch at "Uncle Sushi," a little hole in the wall James found online and returned at 1:30 at which point there were maybe three couples there and we were in and out in ten minutes. I have a feeling they tend to make it seem like it's a big deal to override your original appointment so not everyone does this, but with a little arm twisting, it's probably fairly easy to do unless they do actually have a really busy day. So one mission down, one to go. Off to Boston and once again, success! We had gotten the proper notary stamp and left the building with a state certified home study. Now all we have to do is wait for our fingerprinting approval to send off to Holt with our home study and once they approve it and send it off to Ethiopia, we will be on a wait list for our baby...then the countdown will really begin!