Our dossier that is.  It left our hot little hands on Friday and is currently somewhere between Portland and the AAI office in WA.  I’ve requested information on a few other waiting children but am still waiting to hear back.

We had a little bit of a drama filled time getting the final piece of our dossier…the stinkin’ Financial Statement.  It’s a document created by a bank or CPA that states something specific.  Well since we don’t have a CPA, we started talking to our bank.  Not surprisingly, the bank (BofA) will only create documents that they have specific forms for.  Well the closest thing we could get to the Financial Statement was a bank “reference letter” which said a lot more than we would have liked it to – account number, balance, etc.  Well after talking to the bank 2 weeks ago and paying their $10 fee, we received the reference letter in the mail.  Thankfully the agency said that they could make it work somehow.  All I needed to do was take it to the bank branch to get notarized (which is what the bank’s 1800 number told me to do) but when I showed up on Thursday to get it done, they tell me that it’s incorrect and that notarization is not possible.  NNNOOO!  After a hour of arguing with them they agree to overnight something else that will include the same info but be able to be notarized.  HOWEVER, we will not get it until Monday – at the earliest.  This of course will not work if we hope to get our dossier out on time.  So Thursday was full of me contacting every CPA I could find in our area.  Most were either not open until after the New Year holiday or weren’t interested in helping us since we were not regular clients.

Finally on Friday, after I had given up, I received a call back from a very nice guy who exclaims he would be more than happy to help us with the form since he was a huge fan of international adoption.  We were invited to stop by at anytime on Friday to bring him our paperwork so that he could type it up.  Needless to say, I was doing a MAJOR happy dance!  We were in and out of his office in 30 minutes and only charged $15 for their trouble!  While we never ended up getting to meet him in person, he was out with dental issues when we showed up but were helped by his partner, we let them know that we would be back for our taxes next year.  They were awesome.  We got the letter AND still had time to get to the UPS place in time for overnight delivery.  It was truly a blessed day.

We officially have a completed dossier!  We’re overnighting it on Friday to our agency and they will be taking it with them to their September Thailand trip.  Yay!

So I know it’s been a while since I really blogged about the surrogacy so I thought I would give you guys an update.  Every Friday we mount another week of successful pregnancy and tomorrow marks 30 weeks down, 10 more to go.  Although, I’m betting I have more like 7 or 8 weeks which, no matter how you slice it, makes it less than 60 days.  Less than 60 days until N & H will be holding their little girl.  I’ll tell you right now, they can hardly wait!  They’re starting to put together the nursery and are looking at carseats.

I am wearing almost 30 extra pounds and am having a hard time breathing and my ankles are SO swollen.  Personally, I am so ready to be done – but 60 days is totally worth it to deliver this baby safe and sound.  Afterwards I am looking forward to loosing some weight and getting back to myself.

Keep checking back, I’ll have a birth story for you soon!

We’re excited to announce that our homestudy is officially done and approved by AAI!!  We had some hiccups when our doctor refused to sign off on our medical forms until we have a recent TB test, then she took almost 1.5 weeks to get us in!  We got our sealed approval letter this week….now it’s really, really official!   This means that first thing tomorrow morning our i800-A application will be mailed out (along with the $800+ price tag!) I have no idea how long those are taking right now but I’m estimating we’ll have a completed dossier in about 6 weeks.  AAI has a scheduled trip to Thailand during September so if we come to find out that the little guy we’re already looking at from their waitlist is spoken for, we’ll be able to know exactly who is available.  With the wait from referral to travel at about 9-12 months, we are looking at summer 2010!

We can’t wait for next summer and our trip to Thailand to pick up our little prince.  We’ve already started researching flights and let me just say, I’m glad that we live on the west coast!  Matt and I have decided to bring all of the kids so we’re looking at 5 flights there and 6 flights back.  Vietnam is also on the agenda so our trip is going to be about 4 weeks long!  SSOOO excited!