We're on a roll now!

Friday we got our USCIS approval and today, just 4 days later we received our FBI clearance back in the mail. Next stop the notary!

Good Friday

Inspite of this day being a somber one in our church life it was definitely a GOOD FRIDAY in our adoption life. USCIS in Baltimore has been excellent in this whole process. Inspite of sending our homestudy report back on the 14th we received that sacred approval letter today in the mail. I had to laugh when it arrived because the return address on the envelope was Office of Homeland Security and the envelope wasn't sealed. So much for secure documents! No all we need is our FBI clearance letters and it is time to head to the notary.

A little hiccup in the process

We learned that USCIS sent our homestudy back to our local caseworker for a minor revision of wording. Of course that means it has to be sent to our IA caseworker for approval before she can re-submit it to USCIS. Thank goodness for email and the internet so this can be done quickly.

Coming down the home stretch

Our homestudy is complete! Yeah! It has been reviewed by our IA caseworker, approved and sent to USCIS by our local caseworker. We are sending off our FBI print cards so we will be ready to finalize our dossier when the clearance comes back. We have all our other documents in hand waiting to be notarized and apostilled. The papers provided by our local agency came notarized and we have already had them certified since that notary was from Baltimore County. We will have the rest notarized by a Howard County notary so Wayne can take them to work to be certified. We have been learning all sorts of fun legal terms. All the documents have to be notarized, then the notary has to be certified by the Clerk of the Court of the county they reside in. After the documents are certified they then have to go to the Secretary of State's Office to be apostilled (certifying the certification basically). Never a dull moment!