If A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

GOT ISAAC'S KENYAN PASSPORT!

It's in my hands today. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Our U.S. Visa appointment is tomorrow at 9am.
I'm out of words to say. Relieved beyond comprehension.

Yesterday.

So on Thursday we paid a courier friend to file Isaac's passport. About an hour later he called to say the application was approved, and that we need to bring Isaac down for digital photos. Well THAT wasn't in my day plans, ESP since I was shopping at the time. LOL! I whined and complained about it until Kevin agreed to take off work and go Downtown in a taxi with Zac. They were gone several hours but everything was done without any problems. Immigration is supposed to be ready with the passport on Wednesday or Thursday of next week. Ahhhhhh!

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Filing for Passport tomorrow.

Kevin picked up our COC today! Acquired certified copies of all our docs. And couriered over our passport application to our attorney so she could sign it as the Recommender. 
Will courier it back here tomorrow morning. And then we hired a consultant/courier (our friend) to file the application for us. We hope it takes only a week...but Immigration says could be up to 14 days. And so we keep praying! 
Woo hoo!!!! 

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Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!

Just called the NAC.
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!
Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!! Our COC is Ready!!

And it's only been 5 working days, not 7. Yeh, now on to the passport stage!!!!!!!!

Got the Certificate in Hand! I. Am. Happy. Right. Now.

After trekking to the Registrar's Office for two days in a row, I am happy to announce my husband was able to get the Adoption Certificate. Once he had it in hand, he met a person from our lawyer's office who had all our COC docs together. They walked over to the NAC and filed our application for the Article 23 Certificate of Completion. What a relief. It was a very, very stressful few days. Our i800/i800a expire on July 25, so we went round and round with USCIS and State Dept trying to figure out WHAT needs to happen before the expiration. Do we need to be back in the US by July 25? Does Zac need his US visa in his passport by then? Or what? We still don't have a clear answer, so we are playing it safe. We changed our flights to July 24 and will leave the country just in case!! Provided, of course, that we get everything else in order. The COC is supposed to take 7 working days, then we can apply for his passport (which will take a few days), then the US visa takes hopefully just one day.

I was so happy and so stress-free today that I literally danced in the produce market with my daughter today when we were shopping. Some Phil Collins song came on and I picked her up and twirled her around and spun her around. It was so much fun. Folks looked at us like we were crazy but I didn't care. It was nice to be carefree and not having this STRESS on top of me for one day. Needed it. Badly.

Order Is In....Waiting on Certificate.

It's been two weeks since our final hearing. I emailed our lawyer to check on the status of our case. Apparently we received our Adoption Order within three days (wow!) and are still waiting on the Adoption Certificate. When we get those two things, I fill out a form called Article 23 Form and take all these things down to the NAC Secretariat:

Certified copies of:

1.      Adoption Order.

2.      Adoption Certificate.
and

3.      Approval letter from the receiving state authorising that the adoption may proceed.

4.      Individual approval certificate from the Adoption Committee.

5.      Freeing certificate of the child.

6.      Duly filled Request form (Form 23) by adoptive parents.

7.      Copies of passports of the adoptive parents.

Then the NAC will issue me our Article 23 Conformity Certificate aka COC.

Little Angels will release Zac's original birth certificate to me once they see all that above.
Then with those documents I can get Zac's Kenyan passport. That will take a couple of weeks (I think).
When I get his passport, then we can go to the US Embassy (with all the above documents) and get a Visa put into his passport. And then that's THE END.