Shipping Out(Docs)

Well, we got the main paperwork shipped off today! Fedex Tracking # 797348613733 . I love the little Fedex Tracking thing we have now, it reminds me of the Dominos Pizza Tracker they have when you order online.

Anyways, I drove to downtown Memphis yesterday to get the Shelby county documents certified by the county clerk. I was worried this would take a while, but surprisingly enough I was only in the office maybe 15 minutes total. Me and a friend went on lunch and got in and out fairly quickly, making me regret the 1 hour of parking time I paid for in one of the lots.

I called before going out to the Fayette county clerk's office, which is good because she was not in yesterday. 2 days in a row(Fri and Tues) that she "wasnt in" but thats ok, she was there today and we got the documents done. I had already printed the Fedex labels at work for the shipment to Nashville and the return label to us, so everything minus some hot paper clip action was done. We made out a check for 26 bucks to the Tennessee Sec of State, $2.00 a document, and put it all in the Fedex envelope and dropped it off at the station.

I had already done this step for the birth and marriage licenses March 2008, I need to get these docs back and in DC before the middle of March so they don't go over the 12-month mark. Alot of the pre-prep-paperwork that I was told I could do was somewhat ruined by the length of time it took to get our homestudy and then the addendum done. The addendum alone took almost 2 months. We honestly don't even care about the time, we know we will be waiting enough in general, but because some people took so long to get their parts done we may lapse on some of our paperwork and need to get it re-done.

Optimistic me hopes we will get the packet back Friday, thats them getting the packet tomorrow, stamping it all, and then shipping it back tomorrow, so it is possible. We actually got the birth/marriage certificates back in less than a week. More than likely we will get the packet next week. After that we are going to turn it over to a specialized agency in DC that runs the paperwork to the US State Dept and then to the Chinese Embassy. Its supposed to be the quickest turn around time you can get, even vs. Fedex'n so I'll go that route. Its not too expensive, and if we have any problems from the embassy I'd like to know ASAP so I can get it corrected and re-submitted.

If all goes well with the Chinese Embassy my ulcer will probably completely disappear instantaneously and we start the process to get the FULL packet ready to send over to China. We have a few other puzzle pieces to put into the final "Dossier" as they call it, mainly some recent family photos and photocopies of our passports. After all that the agency reviews the packet and puts it in a nice binder and preps it for China, ie. correct page order, and translation into Chinese for some parts.