A way around the US Department of State...

We had two documents that were Notarized by Military Officials,  and because of that we are required to send those documents to the US Department of State to get them Apostilled.  Instead of sending them to the US Department of State, we are going to just get them redone by a regular notary and this is going to save us months and months of time waiting to get them Apostilled from the US Dept. of State.  With a regular notary, we can just send them to the Secretary of State of CA, and they are very quick with their turn around time as far as getting things Apostilled.  This may sound super confusing to those who have never gone through this process, but believe me, it's confusing to us also!  Only 2 more documents to go until all of our paperwork goes to the agency.

What a process.

One step forward, two steps back.

We just sent out California documents to the Secretary of State in Sacramento to be Apostilled but we received a phone call reminding us that California will not sign military notary signatures and they have to be sent to the US Department of State.  We also found out we are missing 2 documents.  *sigh*.

More than annoyed right now.

Upon getting the documents back from the Secretary of State we were ready to forward everything to our agency, who would then forward it all to Poland.  I seriously have doubts that this is going to be completed before we leave CA in June 2011.

That's it in a nutshell.

It only took 5 months!

Paperwork pretty much complete.  We will be sending out the remaining CA documents to the Secretary of State of CA this coming week to get them Apostilled and we also have to send our I-800A application to US Citizenship and Immigration Office, which is a whole new fun project I will get it done this week.  When we receive everything back, we will send all of our paperwork to the Agency where they will in turn send it to Poland.  Once paperwork is received in Poland, we will keep you posted as to when we will be heading there.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.

Our Home Study was completed on April 16th, 2010 and according to the Social Worker, she wants to have all paperwork completed by the end of May. We have not had any feedback yet but we are not worried. We were honest, we have a nice home, a strong marriage, and plenty of space for a 3rd, all is well.

We have completed our physicals, child abuse clearances, FBI and DOJ scans, references, and mostly everything has been notarized... still waiting on 2 more documents to be completed. We had to hire a traveling Notary to get our physicals notarized and MY WORD this been a process.

I have sent out all of the RI and MS documents that need to be Apostilled and MS came back already. I got a call today from a woman in the Secretary of State's office in RI telling me we had the WRONG marriage certificates and we needed to order new ones from vital records in Providence. We obtained our originals from the town of South Kingstown, where we were married, which seemed like that right place to get them but apparently not and I lost it on that poor woman. For those of you who have never heard of an Apostille, (I didn't know what it was!) it is a document that has to be sent to the Secretary of State of where the document was originated. Notary stamps are not enough apparently. In California it is highway robbery, it costs 20.00 per signature and most of our docs that need an Apostille are mostly from CA, and we have LOTS of them, *sigh*.

In a nut shell, we are almost complete in gathering all documents. We will then send all of the paperwork to the agency and they will send our "Dossier" to Poland.

We have both been slacking on our Rosetta Stone learning Polish, I have to get back to that asap!

You want how many copies?

Dzien Dobry!

Holy cannoli there is so much paperwork to obtain and lately I am feeling especially overwhelmed. We are in the process of trying to collect 4 certified copies of our birth certificates and marriage licenses. We are getting physicals done, FBI and DOJ live fingerprint scans completed, employment verification, Child Abuse Clearances from every state we ever lived in (7 between the 2 of us), and reference letters. On top of all this, we have to get all of these documents notarized and Apostilled, I guess a Notary isn't good enough, errgg. We also have to complete 10 hours of course work online to adopt internationally in preparing for our adoption, oh and we are trying to learn the Polish language. Justin created a spread sheet checklist of all things needed in the hopes of making life easier as everything slowly come in the mail. Also, our home study is going to be scheduled soon and this is basically a full on investigation into our home and lives.

Until we get all of this completed, there will not be much to report.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned...

Do Widzenia!

Love-

Karin and Justin

The Big Announcement

First off, let me start off by telling you about Mimi. For those of you who don't know, Mimi was my grandmother (my dad's mother) and her parents were both full blooded Polish. Her maiden name was Kapinos and she passed away many years ago. I am dedicating this blog to Mimi as she was very proud of her Polish heritage and I know she would be thrilled about this. Below is a picture of my Mom, Grandpa, and Mimi on the day of my graduation from URI.

Justin also has family history in Poland as his great grandparents, Sophia and John Dobrzeniecki, were immigrants from Poland. Below is a picture of Justin's family. His grandmother is the girl on the left in the first communion dress; his great grandfather is holding the small child and his great-grandmother is the woman on the right of his great-grandfather.

I am starting this blog because BIG things are happening. Justin and I have decided to adopt a child from Poland and the process has been started. I was pregnant not to long ago, but turns out it was a Molar Pregnancy and long story short we cannot try again for another year. One year brings me closer to 40 years old and I do not wish to give birth at 40. We took the loss as a sign and believe it happened for a reason. We have been discussing adoption for a long time and finally decided to be proactive and make it a reality. The agency told us the process will take approximately a year which works for us perfectly as we would like to get this done while the Navy has Justin on land.

It is all very overwhelming and exciting at the same time. We feel this is a good way to keep you posted on the whole proces and so far, we have filled out the agency application (and got approved) and we just sent out the agreement between ourselves and the agency. Getting all of the required documents notarized is the hardest part, needless to say the notary's on base run when they see us coming. There are so many things to read and sign, and this is just the beginning. We recently ordered Rosetta Stone Polish Level 1 and 2 in an attempt to learn the language. Hopefully it is nothing like high school Spanish... ha ha. The next step is to find an agency to get our Home Study completed.

Stay tuned for more updates and as things progress, we will post what is happening. Thanks for reading!