Just Waiting On One Piece of Paper!!!

Last Monday (the 21st) we received our fingerprinting instructions from USCIS. It said that we had an appointment set for Saturday the 6th of December at 11:30 but if that didn't work for us then we could show up on any Wednesday between the hours of 8:00 am and 2:30 p.m. The December 6th appointment would have worked just fine but I liked Wednesday the 23rd of November much better!!!

So, two days after receiving our instructions, and after a failed attempt at a workout, I loaded the kids in the car and we headed out to Matt's office. We picked him up and went to the appointed USCIS office. We were expecting some grand governmental office and instead found a dinky strip mall joint. There were about a dozen people in the waiting area that looked like they had been there a while and weren't expecting to go anywhere anytime soon. We signed in though and they called our names before we could find a seat. We were fingerprinted simultaneously while Xander moved furniture and threw a cue ball around the place. (Who let him bring that in there anyway?) We were out of there in less than 20 minutes so either adoption fingerprinting is high priority there or Xander's antics earned us some perks!

Now all we can do is wait for the elusive I-171H. According to another Tucson family's web-journal, it could arrive in as little as 11 days after the actual fingerprinting. It has already been 7 for us so we could be receiving it late this week or early into the next. I am already stalking the mailbox just in case! Our first round of documents are circulating through the Chinese Embassy in LA for authentication. They should arrive back at our agency any time. When we get the I-171 we will send it along with other "stuff" and more money of course to our agency. The I-171H will need to be authenticated as well. We are planning to hire a courier to walk it through the Embassy and pay a fee to rush the document through. That could shave 3-5 weeks off of the turnaround time. When we started the adoption process, Matt and I promised each other that we would let things progress on their own time without taking any drastic measures to rush things through. Now, with the impending stretch of the wait time to referral from 7 months to 10-12 months, we want to do anything we can to get our paperwork to China ASAP! Plus, there is a chance that some of our bloodwork for our medical reports could expire soon. That would mess things up a bit. It would mean having to have blood redrawn, new medical reports made, and another fun time with rounding up a notary to take to the doctors' offices. No thank you!!!