Checked off the list

Jay's Spring Break was this past week, and we had the chance to get lots of adoption related items checked off our list.

1) Health Physicals and Blood Tests. The numerous forms that the doctor needed to fill out for foster care licensing and for our dossier are now signed and notarized.

2) Psychological Evaluation. Jay and I are pleased to announce that we're both in fine mental health, and most importantly its in writing, signed, and notarized.

3) Local Background Checks: We now have documented by the local police station that we have no criminal records. Unfortunately, this paperwork still needs to be notarized. The police station's secretary has less than a year left on her notarization stamp, and for the dossier, a notary has to have at least a year left on their stamp. (We have no idea why). So we're waiting a few weeks until she gets her new stamp.

4) Fingerprinting: Once taken digitally for Foster Care, once taken with ink for the FBI by our local police station, and once taken for INS on this really high tech looking machine. Funny story: the INS only has a few sites throughout the U.S. in which to get fingerprinted. The closest site to our house is in Hammond, Indiana. So we drove the 2+ hours north to Hammond and found the site in an abandoned strip mall located behind an abandoned K-Mart. Not exactly the place we'd expected government offices to be located! We found it humorous so decided to take some pictures:

We're almost done with the paperwork on our end. That's a nice feeling! We're approaching a waiting period while papers get processed here and there.