Check!

Lots of checks, actually! So this week...

We received our contracts to sign and send back. Since we are SO lucky to have several lawyer friends, we sent it to faithful B (thank you!!) and she promptly responded with helpful questions and comments. We hope to send that off tomorrow, or at the latest, Friday. Along with that, we get to pay, and then everything is finally super official.

As for our dossier, our agency has a service that will help us, so we're going for it. It is VERY reasonable (price-wise), and I think SO worth it. I THINK that this will help avoid a bunch of papers going back and forth the Pacific for silly reasons. Also, they "get" to be in charge of requesting all of our documents and obtaining all the stamps/seals/appostiles anyone could ever want.

But today, we had a real geterdone experience. We, along with friends I and K who are also adopting from Ethiopia (I know, lucky, right?) made our way to the Chinese PoPo, and then to the Chinese Notary for our criminal clearance. As far as we know, we all passed. Hurrah! This potentially could have been one of the most difficult boulders to hurdle, but thanks to J and B (expecting Baby M any day!!!), we had no problem. Our school Chinese liaison had already gone through the motions once, and took us straight through everything.

So--so far, everything is on track, or ahead of schedule. I originally decided that next March or April might be our Gotcha Day, but now I'm wondering...will we bring'er home sooner? Keep your fingers crossed!!