Shortly before eating this most awesome cake, (shout out to Trefzger's) we submitted our application to CCAI on 7/10/15! And, just so everyone is aware, we had help eating it. It wasn't just us, I promise! I will admit to having a piece for breakfast though.
Pretty much everything the past seven or so months hinged on submitting this application. Now that that's done, it's like we've hit the ground running. Funny how you go from doing nothing to doing everything! This is going to be a not too fun post and mostly informative for those of you who are curious about where we go from here.
Our second meeting with our social worker for our home study was last night, which went really well. Note to self, never assume they will tell you when they'll check the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Hey, at least one of them was working and installed! We have a few more things to do for the home study and then that will be done! Hooray! We are stretching that out a little so that we won't have to update our files in case we don't have our placement yet at this time next year. Any way to save a little money sounds all right with me!
We received our approval for our application for adoption from CCAI today too--and now we're really rolling! They gave a fancy-shmancy flow chart of our things to do to prepare our dossier and when to do them, which is probably my favorite thing ever! I do love a good check list. Here's a breakdown of how long each step should take (more or less):
1) 5 days: Application approval--done!
2) 1-2 weeks: Begin home study, begin to get forms and paperwork ready (this will be a theme...).
3) 2-5 weeks: Create your Adoption Petition and Financial Statement, doctors' visits, police clearance reports, gather photographs, and a few other things.
4) 5-10 weeks: Complete home study process, go through the checklist for your documents, get dossier information from USCIS.
5) 10-20 weeks: Begin notarization, certification, and authentication (Did you know authentification is not a word? Just learned that!) for dossier documents. (Ah, paperwork.)
6) Submit allllll of the above to CCAI for them to submit to the CCCWA.
7) Celebrate!
There it is folks, dossier submission in just seven--that's right, seven--easy steps. You're welcome. (Yes, I can hear some of you laughing. There's definitely a reason it will take six months to complete!) If you are unfamiliar with any terminology from here on out, I did pick a few major terms and stuck their definitions here under our Resources page.
If you have any questions for us, we'd be happy to answer them! We may not know the (right) answer, but we will do our best. Thank you everyone for your prayers this past week; we all appreciated and felt every one of them!
Lots of points to the first person to get the quote. And not google it.
As always, stay tuned!
