Checking things off the list

I am a very organized planning type of person. If I have a lot of things to get done, I make a list. I LOVE lists. I feel so accomplished and proud of myself when I can cross something off. (I often times will forget to put something on the list, so I will add it just so I can cross it off:)

With the adoption process it's super smart to make lists. There is so much paperwork involved that something could easily be forgotten and then could delay things. From pictures of you and your family, medical examinations, marriage licenses, birth certificates, financial reports, essays, background checks, pet vaccination records, and so much more.

Up to this point we have pretty much crossed everything off of our list that we can. We have all papers filled out and submitted to our agency. We have pictures printed, we have had our medical examinations, we got all of the official paperwork ready to go. As soon as we get our approval letter from the USCIS we can give the go ahead to our agency to send our paperwork to China along with our payment for the dossier.

Yesterday we knocked out another requirement for the USCIS and are one step closer to getting our approval letter from them. We had our fingerprinting appointment in Indy. This appointment is assigned for you by the USCIS and make it pretty difficult to reschedule. And if you don't show up, you are out of luck. So our appointment was for the 22nd at 8am. Lucky us. We had a few things already on the calendar for yesterday so we had to move everything around so that we could make this appointment, wake up early, and drive down. All in all, it was a pretty fast appointment once you made it through security of the government building. We waited for a few minutes, had our fingerprints taken digitally, and then were free to go. A total of 30 minutes to drive down and then turn around and come back.

One thing that I will never understand is our governments ways of doing things in an adoption:) For our home study we had to go downtown in Fort Wayne to get fingerprinted for our background check. That appointment was the exact same thing that we just did yesterday. They were even scanned too.  So why can't they send a quick email with our scans to the USCIS? Apparently they don't communicate well and do not like like to share information. So we are in the system now for the county and state. So WATCH OUT:)

I wish we could have just made a fun day of it in Indy, but we had things back home that we needed to do so we couldn't stay. We did make it a point to stop at Trader Joe's to grab some things to make the drive worth our time. And the drive gave Aaron and I plenty of time to chat about fundraiser ideas, names, and just what's coming up in these next months with our family.

So hip hip hooray we get to check another things off our list!!!

We are hopefully almost ready to send our papers to China!!