Dossier Mailed!

What the heck is a dossier anyway? Definition below, but regardless of what it is, it's a fun word to toss into conversation and feel important while saying it. It makes me feel hoity toity everytime I say it.

As you know once we received the approval from USCIS we were done creating our dossier and could mail it to our agency in Wisconsin for final review before they mailed it to the Philippines. (Side note: now that we're in the next stage of the game we're working with the agency in Wisconsin until the time our little boy or girl is back with us, then we'll go back to working with the Pennsylvania agency)

But then...we got an email informing us that the Philippines had altered the requirements and they now wanted the raw test scores for these tests we had to take along with the psychologist's reports. Arg. Seriously? Ok. No biggie. I called the office, informed them of the need and they dropped them in the mail right away and we had them a few days later. Crisis averted.

Oh but wait...I as I was going through making photocopies of everything in the dossier and checking and double checking that we had everything and it was in the correct order (yay for compulsive behavior!) I realized it said that not only did we did the psychologist's report but that we also needed a copy of his license. For the love of Pete. I have read the checklist approximately 3,982 times since last September and never saw those words. Another call to the receptionist at the psychologist's office (thankfully she's a kind woman). They couldn't give it to me, but our case worker could call and request it and they'd fax it to her. A few emails later and our case worker, Kim, in Wisconsin had the license!

With this news it meant we were ready to mail! Seven months of preparing:

 The finished product!

 I thought the angle in the previous photo didn't do the stack of papers justice!

It's hard to tell, but the stack is right at the 1 inch mark!

I went the Boalsburg Post Office the morning of February 28 and paid extra to overnight it to the agency in Wisconsin. I did this partly because I was excited and partly because I thought it would be cool knowing it arrived on Leap Day!

Kim emailed me on March 1 to say that they had reviewed everything and it looked good and she had put it in the mail to the Philippines! We'll hear acknowledgement of receipt and then we wait...waity wait wait wait until we get a referral for our little boy or girl. Right now the average wait time for a child under 4 years of age is 36 months. That's a long time. Please be praying with us that the time we'll need to wait is less. We fully trust in God's timing, but are not afraid to pray big prayers for our future child!