Off to translation...

Yeah, our package arrived and our caseworker gave it her blessing of approval. It is not being sent off to be translated. This could take up to a month. There are over 4o documents and each one has to be translated exactly and the translation has to be and exact copy of the original document in text, images and layout. It's nice to have it out of our hands. Now we just sit and wait until our papers begin their journey to Kazakhstan. Once the documents have been translated the Agency waits for the Embassy to tell them they can submit the dossier for review and approval by the Kazakhstan Consul. The current timeline is 1 month for translation and 2-3 months for submission.

Special Delivery to Chicago

We have spent the last several months gathering and filling out papers, submitting forms and getting approvals. Today our package has left Eldersburg and is headed to Chicago for review by our caseworker prior to being sent for translation. Hopefully everything is corrected and done the way they wanted it. We cleared just about every document with our caseworker before having anything notarized to be sure it was done properly. We are hoping our due diligence pays off and we won't have to re do anything.

Putting it all together...

Well, we are in the home stretch. Now that we have everything gathered, notarized, authenticated, apostilled and photocopied in quintuplicate we are ready for the last step in the dossier process. With our trusty, multiple page checklist and instructions from our caseworker we are ready to assemble our dossier. One original, 4 exact copied sets for the agency, one set for us and a few extra original documents to take with us when the time comes. Included with the package is our payment for the next part of the process. Everything is neatly packaged and ready to be overnighted to Chicago. It's quite the stack of papers, around 7lbs and about 3-4 inches thick!

Visit to Secretary of State Office

After getting our documents authenticated by the court clerk we spent quality time with the photocopier make exact original looking copies of all our documents, notarizations and authentications in preparation for sending the package to the SOS office for apostilling. We had to make 5 complete sets of the original documents. Wayne's dad has an office in Annapolis so Wayne met his dad's assistant bright and early this morning on her way to work to hand off our package of documents and a blank check for the SOS. Our package was then hand delivered back to us this evening by Wayne's dad. One more step closer to completeing our dossier and sending it off. Back to the copy machine to make our 5 copies of each apostille.

How many documents do you need notarized?

We spent a lovely hour with our notary signing all of our papers and trying to keep them all in order and the correct number of original copies. I think it was some where around 50 pieces of paper total. At least it seemed that way. Each document had to be signed the exact same way and the signature has to match the way you signed your passport. We even had to have photo copies of our passport picture pages notarized! Next stop, Howard County Court Clerk's Office for certification and then on to Annapolis.