We just completed something really important, drum roll please…. our first round of apostille!!
Here’s how it works:
- You get a bunch of documents notarized. We have found a great notary that’s willing to travel around with us and we had her notarize our doctor’s signatures, copies of passports, utility bills, employment verification letters, and our USCIS approval letter.
- You get all your friends to write you reference letters and then they take those letters to a notary.
- You take all of these documents to the Secretary of State office, we are lucky enough to have an office in downtown Los Angeles, and pay some money and they stamp a seal on them
- You are ready to send them to your agency and then they do whatever it is they do with all these papers!
Here’s Edgar photo of the secretary of state seal where he took all the documents for apostille
And here are all the documents we apostilled, yes this is real, this is not a joke
And done. At least with that. We still have some more documents to complete our dossier, but it’s just a few, we’re getting close and starting to feel a tad better about it all. We’d like to dedicate this next part of the blog to a big old GRACIAS!
Thanks to our friends Tricia, Rachel, Brian and Dan for rushing the reference letters to us, getting them notarized and writing really eloquent letters on top of it all. We’re very lucky to have such kind, loving and literate friends. GRACIAS!
Thanks to our mobile notary who is willing to meet in a doctor’s office and sign extra documents on her briefcase while we wait. GRACIAS!
Thanks to our doctors and their staff for being cool about bringing a notary into their office and taking the extra step of copying documents on to their letterhead. GRACIAS!
Thanks to our psychologist who did a psych evaluation for us in record time and will take care of notary and apostille with our agency. Double GRACIAS on this one!
Thanks to all our friends and family for being so supportive throughout this whole thing.
And we don’t even have the kids yet, so y’all are going to have to keep it coming! But really, GRACIAS!
Can I just say that that picture didn’t look like it had anywhere near enough documents for a international adoption……..
You’re right Claudia, this is only part of the dossier, just the apostilled part! 😉 If we spread out all the papers from home study, applications, etc., we’d have our floors papered from wall to wall!