Bon Voyage!!

I was getting ready to let go of my "little baby". I had worked so hard to acquire all the necessary documents. I had kept them safe and sound, and now it was time to entrust my dossier into the hands of strangers. I was a nervous wreck. All I could think about was my package getting lost in the mail, lost in my agency's home office, lost on the way to China....lost in China, you name it. So, I got a hold of my sisters and sister-in-law (Cori) and we all met at the Fed Ex office to wish our package a safe journey. We had quite the little group down there. It was myself, Cori, Norah, Sarah, Axl, Max, Saramarie, Emma Pachesky, Sammy and let's not forget Lincoln (who was still in Norah's tummy at the time).

People had told us that adoption requires a lot of trust and faith. I didn't really get what was meant by that until this moment. Up until this point, I had a measure of control over the adoption. I had a job to do each and every day. Some days were busier than others, but there was always some document that needed notorizing, or something. Now, I was handing everything over to people I have never met and probably will never meet. I had to trust that these total strangers would be as careful as I had been with our precious dossier. It was scary! Doug was being very reasurring. I think he was thrilled to be done with all the signatures and appointments and fingerprinting. I laugh when I think about it. He had been such a good sport. He did everything I told him to do, when I told him to do it...without hesitation or question. I don't think he even knew what he was signing half the time. For him, it was like dealing with a woman in labor...for 5 months!!! He had to have been thinking, "Just do what the little lady says...this will all be over soon." He's such a smart man!

So, on February 7, 2006 our dossier left for China! Well, to be totaly honest, I was only mailing it as far as St. Louis. Our adoption agency, Children's Hope International, has it's home office in St. Louis. All families have to mail their dossiers to their agency's office and then the agency can mail them to the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) in Beijing. Once the office in St. Louis receives a family's dossier, they check to make sure all the required documents are included and have been signed and notarized properly, then they forward it on to China. We were officially DTC (dossier to China) on February 10, 2006. We are blessed to be working with an agency that actually has staff in Beijing. This is great because all of the dossier have to be translated into Chinese before they can be sent to the CCAA. So, we got to have our dossier translated by people who work for our agency at no additional cost to us. Most families have to pay to have their dossier translated by a translation service who may not neccesarily specialize in adoption.

Once the translation was complete, the members of the Beijing staff hand carried our dossier over to the CCAA. We were contacted by email and told that our dossier had been given to the CCAA! There was nothing left to do now but wait! The first thing we were waiting to hear was that we had been "logged in". So, the wait began....