Out of town

Marina and I are taking some well deserved vacation time. I am sorry if we don´t update the blog, but really, there is not much to say except that my fabulous father is taking care of some authentication issues for us and, if the paperwork returns soon, he´ll forward it all to Mary. Other than that, we are just waiting, and waiting and waiting some more. We miss Fernando, and that consumes us more than the waiting. By the way, the computer I am using for these updates does not cooperate with me in the least!!!

Re-do

We were excited to see that our FedEx from the NY Secretary of State. When it arrived we were quite sad to see that we had done the authenticating wrong. We should have send our letter of recommendation to King´s County Cleark´s office and have them forward it to the Secretary of State office in NY. So now we are left with having to re-do the NY paperwork. Any way, no harm done, one learns something new everyday.

Drum roll please! Yes, we are done with the paper chase. I talked to Heartsent last week because I was getting nervous about our CIS letter, so they gave me a number to call to check on our letter. The CIS lady called me back yesterday and let me know I could go pick our letter up today.
Well, today I went to CIS (in downtown L.A.), picked up our approval letter, then met Fernando and Marina at the AAA office , then Fernando and Marina went to the book store while I went to Norwalk (L.A. county clerk's office; which inexplicably is not located in downtown L.A.) to authenticate, then back to downtown to the Secretary of State's office to further authenticate, and then finally home. I am so tired, but so extremely relieved! Now we just have to wait for our documents; which we sent out to get authenticated in NY and in Sacramento, so that we can FedEx them to Gladney. They will then add their portion to the pile and send the entire dossier on to DC for final authentication, and that is when we are finally considered a "waiting family."

Every little grain of sand gets us closer to Ethiopia

At 10am today there was a loud knock at our door. It was the FedEx man. He handed me a large thin envelope and had me sign. I quickly ripped it open and looked inside...can you guess what it was? Is the anticipation killing you yet? MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE ARRIVED safe and sound; all thanks to my wonderful cousin Pedri.
Well, I lost no time and marched myself straight to the notary and then to FedEx to send it along with other documents to be authenticated. On my way home I received a call from Maggie at Heartsent letting me know that she spoke with the CIS office and our letter should be arriving by early next week! That letter is the last of our documents that make up our dossier.

AAA

We accomplished quite some today. All three of us went to AAA and, because we have been there so much, and we go to the same lovely person so much, he now knows us very well, and gets us in and out of there is a jiff. We notarized Fernando's passport copy, our financial statement, our limited power of attorney, and Fernando's birth certificate. We also FedExed one of our letters of recommendation to get authenticated in NY. Things are getting finalized quite quickly now!

Just got back!

Well, Marina and I just returned from our tour of the bureaucratic offices of the Los Angeles area. We first went to the Norwalk County Clerk's office. They authenticated 14 papers, charged us a pretty penny, and gave us directions to the down town Los Angeles office of the Secretary of State. We parked (for 16 dollars) in front of 300 N Spring instead of in front of 300 S Spring so we had to walk a long way. Marina was amazing with the walking! When we got there and told them we had 15 documents to authenticate, they were about to turn me away. I must have looked like a lunatic because they immediately said "well OK, but next time, if you bring so much, come earlier." What a relief, I thought I was going to lose it. Well they charged me a prettier penny than the County Clerk's office, but at least a great portion of the documents are basically ready to be sent to the Federal Authentication process...where they will charge us the prettiest penny ever!

Days off

Today is my first official day of vacation. At the end of last week I spoke with a woman in the civil registry in Mexico City and she said that she would take care of my birth certificate issue. She suggested I ask one of my cousins to pick up the documents so they can overnight them to me. So I called Pedri and he agreed to the task. Hurray for Pedri! On another note we have yet to receive our 1-171H from CIS. Although we do not have all our documents ready I will be going to the county clerk's office today to get the first step of authentication done. If I have time I'll also go to the Secretary of State's office.