And the beat goes on

Today I sorted all the old paperwork I have from the previous homestudy attempt, and the new paperwork for this homestudy. Everything is carefully filed in my red file dossier, divided into sections based on what it is for- homestudy, USCIS, dossier, agency, misc, official document originals, and a section for things ready to be mailed.

I can't believe how much stuff I have already. All I really need to get for the homestudy, that I know of, are the medical clearances, the financial statement, and those are pending, as I know WIAA will have their own form for the financial, and we haven't recieved our packet from AAI for the medical clearance forms, so, we can't schedule our physicals til we have that.

All I need for USCIS is the homestudy.

All I need for the agency is to complete the financial statement they sent with their application packet, and that will be done tonight, and attach the copies of our last three years tax forms.

For the dossier I still need to get Tim's birth certificate, our marriage certificate, both of which have to be mailed for. I need to get our police clearances and employment letters signed and notarized. The medicals and the financial statement will be in the AAI packet they send us when they recieve our application fee, probably sometime next week, as I didn't have all the documentation they asked for until today. I am almost ready to print out our letter of interest and have it notarized, I just want to wait until I get the packet from AAI to make sure there isn't a format they prefer to follow that is different from ours. I'll gather the family life photos in the next few weeks, as I want to take all new photos for this dossier in our new house with the kids ages current. We'll take a few shots of the whole family, with and without the kids that live at home, and let the agency decide which one to use. I already have the passport page copies and then Tim and I can go get the passport size head shots for the dossier when we are closer to sending the dossier to AAI. The USCIS approval has to wait for the homestudy to be complete before we can apply for that, and once both are done, and all the official documents except the I800, are certified, authenticated, and an apostille where necessary are complete, and the letter of interest is also certified and authenticated, we are done.

I'm really looking at the following timeline as a hopeful progression, but, we learned last time around that nothing is set in stone, and the Lord will proceed at his own pace and in his own time.

Send applications to WIAA and AAI week of Sept 28, 2008, apply for Tim's birth certificate and our marriage certificate, and complete notarizations on financial, employment and police letters
Homestudy appointment scheduled some time mid October 2008
Medical clearances and family life photos completed sometime mid to end of October 2008
Homestudy complete first part of November and sent with I800a to USCIS
Send all documents to be certified, authenticated during the month of November 2008
Recieve I800 approval form sometime in December 2008 and send copy to agency
Dossier complete, and send to agency December 2008
Dossier to China by January 2009

We'll see if I can keep to this schedule or not.