Things We Wish We Knew!

As much research Ron and I have done prior to starting this process, there are many things we now know that we wish we knew earlier!  These things would have made our lives these past 5 months much easier and less stressful!  But we live and we learn, don't we?!?!?

BEFORE starting our HomeStudy...
 1.  It would have been great to have requested many of the required documents ahead of time: birth certificates, marriage certificates, etc.  All of these needed to be ordered online from the appropriate states, and then authenticated.  Having them at the start would have been nice. 
2.  Have the list of letters of recommendation ready and already ask friends (4) and family (1).  This way, they have a heads up with what's coming and aren't rushed.
3.  Contact USAA, our bank without true bank locations, and find out how to request notarized letters of good standing and account status.  It wasn't hard to do: we had to call, then e-mail, then call, but knowing this ahead of time would have been great!
4. Have copies of the deeds of our houses ready (not after they've been packed for a move) :)
5. Have a list of what states we have lived in over what dates.
             Example: Michigan: 1984-1999
6.  Have an evacuation plan for your house already written/drawn so you don't scramble to get it done to show the social worker :)

BEFORE working on our Dossier:
1.  Turns out, there are different types of notaries.  The military uses Judge Advocates, which are good, but they're not valid at the state certification level.  For Ethiopia, all of our documents needed to be STATE notarized (by a notary licensed in WA state, not licensed by the US military).  Then, these documents all needed to be taken to the Washington Secretary of State for Authentication of the notary ($15.00/form).  Then, these documents are all sent via courier to the US State Department for Authentication ($8.00/form).  Finally, they are hand delivered for approval by the Ethiopian Embassy ($94.00 total).  This is required for legal documents for countries not part of the Hague convention, such as Ethiopia.  All adoption documents are required legal documents, and thus, all of these certifications are required!  We had ALL of our documents notarized by a military notary (Judge Advocate).  As such, they were invalid at the Secretary of State in Washington.  So Ron and I ran around for 3 hours yesterday getting them restamped by a WA notary (thank goodness this was possible) so they could be authenticated!  Note to self: just have a WA notary do this the first time (and Ft. Lewis does have WA notaries at the JAG office who still notarize for free).
2.  Understand that everything needs a WA notary.  Even though all our documents from other states needed to be notarized in that state, Ron and I needed to do a "True Copy" statement for that document and have that notarized in Washington.  Only these could then be authenticated at the Secretary of State!  As such, many of our documents are double or tripled sealed/stamped.  Now that's official! :)

BEFORE submitting our USCIS Form:
1.  This form can actually be submitted before the HomeStudy is done.  It just needs to be submitted with the $800 fee, your birth certificates and marriage certificate, as well as a cover letter requesting early fingerprints.  Ron and I tried this, but even now, our finger prints aren't scheduled until August 9 as there's a 6-week back log.  Submitting this form earlier would have been our fingerprints could have been scheduled earlier, which would have saved time.

I know there's a lot more, but those are the biggies!  Needless to say, by the grace of God we were able to redo all of our documents yesterday with the CORRECT notary stamp and get them to the Secretary of State office by 3:30 so that they were authenticated by 4PM while working a full day!  Let's just say that was just a bit stressful and terrifying knowing we may have needed to start from scratch!  But it's done and on Monday, Ron and I are driving down to Portland to meet with our agency director to turn in our completed Dossier and our largest check in person!  Biggest day of the journey thus far :)