Obstacle 1

Our application has been submitted. Our money has rapidly begun to disappear. ;-) We have a list of documents that we need to obtain in triplicate as quickly as possible. Each document has to be notarized and certified and needs an apostille! (Overkill doesn't even begin to describe this process!) I cannot order anything over the phone, but fortunately, many of the documents I need can be ordered online or via emailing forms to the appropriate contacts. My mom is helping me obtain the ones I cannot get from here. It's a pain in the butt, but I'm glad to be kept busy! Less time to dwell on the fact that she is still there waiting for us. Less time to worry about what Germany may do to interfere. Less time to think about anything!

I had a bit of mis-communication with the agency that we want to do our home study. I had contacted them WAY back when, before we knew living in Germany would be a problem. Then, I had to inform them that the agency we thought we would be working with had another social worker they wanted us to use. Time passes. We end up with a different agency who says we can use whoever, as long as they're Hague accredited. So, I emailed the home study agency again to say they we're back in the game and would love for them to do our home study. They must not have gotten the email. Anyways, we got that straightened out. Unfortunately, the main worker whom I have spoken with several times said that the USCIS has been really cracking down, so we would need to get permission before she would feel comfortable beginning our home study. *SIGH* Since the people with our agency had reassured us that they checked with USCIS and they said it would not be a problem since we are US citizens, I told our home study contact about that. She suggested we try to get that in writing to make sure we don't have problems down the road. A VERY good idea!! However, I caught a nasty cold from DJ and it's making it hard to not get discouraged by this. I'm sure everything will work out fine. At least, I'm trying to tell myself that. :-\ I will keep you posted....

-V