Wait--What?! When?!

It's been exactly a year since our dossier was approved by the Colombian child welfare agency (ICBF). Our agency (CHI) advised us then (April 2008) that our official wait time for our sibling group of two would be somewhere around 18 months once the dossier was approved. So we were expecting to hear something about a referral this October at the earliest. And, we really thought our referral stood a good chance of being delayed past the holidays.

Needleess to say, it was a bit of a surprise to hear from CHI that we could get our referral in as soon as 1 to 3 months! What this means for us now is that all of the updates that were coming due--immigration approval, FBI fingerprint clearance and medical clearance forms and letters-- all need to be done immediately and then notarized and sent off for apostilling en seguida!

Normally, the objective with updating the paperwork is to wait until the last possible minute so everything doesn't expire a second time while you're waiting-or worse, in country! So I guess we'll be covered from that standpoint. I just hope we aren't expected in Colombia before everything comes back from apostilling. Our appointment at Homeland Security for the immigration paperwork update is at the end of May and we should hear back on whether we're good to go or not by mid-June. That means it could take us until the end of June or July to have all completed paperwork back in hand and ready for the trip.