So far so good.

I sent our dossier packet to the Assistant Stork on Monday, and Steve called me today to tell me they arrived this morning. There was one glitch, and it was the I797c. Apparently you don't send the original, you make a photocopy, have it notarized, state certified and then authenticated. Since we didn't do that and no one told us we needed to, I sent the original, and he called right away to let me know about the problem and offered to fix it. He was so wonderful, and is making the photocopy, having it notarized, and then will take it onto the state dept for the final steps. He said this wasn't the first time this happened, and that he was confident in the fix. We'll pay a little extra for the extra trips he will make to Washington DC, and for the notary, but, that's not as big a deal as if we had to do all those steps ourselves. We would have had to wait until Monday to do the state certification, since that was going to be my first day off. Then, wait the week for it to come back, and then send it to him for the remainder of the steps. That would have easily added weeks to the process.

As it stands, with Steve doing this for us, he expected to have the documents to the State Dept on Tuesday, pick them up later that day, drop them off to the Chinese consulate that afternoon, and then it's about 4 days later that he can pick them up. We may just have the whole thing in our hands by the end of the following week, and then can send them onto Small World to be sent to China.

We have finally chosen a name for our little Cricket. After seeing her face, and getting to know a bit about her, we chose Holly Jun Nicole Anderson.