Good news from China!After over two months of waiting, the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has officially moved our dossier from review to matching. Our adoption agency's office in Beijing, has also been able to confirm this with the CCAA office. So we are now officially "pregnant" with a Chinese baby!
The CCAA has finished matching children with families whose dossiers were logged-in before July 22, 2005. With our November 16, 2005 log-in date, there are still several families ahead of us in this process and it is looking more and more like we will not receive our referral until after the first of the year. Still, our daughter has taken one more step closer to home, and we are very grateful.
Because this process has taken longer than anticipated, we will soon begin another round of paper chasing. Our fingerprints with the FBI will expire before the end of this year and will need to be redone. Our "approval" with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will also expire soon after. This will require us to re-submit an application to them, along with an updated home study and all of the required paperwork that goes along with that. It will not be as tedious or time consuming as our original paper chase, since the documents are only for the USCIS and will not have to be notarized, certified, and authenticated as were the documents that went to China with our dossier. Whatever lies ahead, we are very excited and grateful to have made it over this hurdle.
Please have a wonderful, safe and blessed Labor Day Weekend!
Angie and Mike
