And, they're off!

Today we are sending off requests for some documents to fulfill our dossier requirements. We are requesting medicals from our family physician, a letter from our bank, and my husband is going to stop by the courthouse in Bagley and request copies of our birth certificates. We already have passports and our marriage license copies, so we're actually already halfway to dossier!

The adoption dossier is a collection of documents that will be sent to India to give the committees/judges information about us and what qualifies us to be an adoptive family. It includes medical, financial, personal and legal information. We need to send our home study, police clearance reports, 1040 copy, financial statement, copies of passports, birth and marriage certificates, many sets of pictures (3 and 5 sets of different subjects), letters from our employers, medicals, and power of attorney forms so that an Indian lawyer can represent us in the many court appearances we are supposed to appear for- 5 or 6. These documents (even each picture) need to be notarized. Then, they need to be sent to the Secretary of State's office to be apostilled- that is, they need to be stamped by the state that the notary stamp is actually a real notary stamp, and that the notary is actually licensed to be a notary. Then, this stack of papers is sent to our agency who sends it to the appropriate place in India. So, this is a tedious process. That's why we're starting now.

Our social worker from LSS has been contacted, and she is very excited for us. She is sending us copies of our police clearance reports and a certified copy of our homestudy. We're seeing if she can send us the original recommendation letters that were sent to LSS so we don't have to have our references write new letters.

We've got to submit lots of pictures of the inside/outside of our home and us in it. I already took pictures of the outside last summer and I'll use those. The outside of our northern MN home in spring is not really very pretty--ice, mud, receding snow, brown grass and dead shrub branches. Ick! We're hoping to have the interior of our home painted in a week or so, so I'm going to try to wait to take those pictures until after the paint job. It might look more "homey" and less stark when we're rid of all of the white walls. And, the kids will have to have clean rooms for the painting, so might as well wait until then!