Department of Homeland Security

I stay in touch frequently with our friends C & K and S & L, who are both a few weeks ahead of us in regards to the paperwork process to bring their daughters home. It has been helping me to know the general time frames of when each of their families completed each of the steps so far.

In regards to our next step, which is the fingerprint invitation from the Department of Homeland Security, C & K did not know when their I600 was actually mailed off, but received their fingerprint invitation two weeks to the day after receiving their daughter's legal paperwork. On the other hand, S & L had to wait a bit longer for their 1600 to be sent off, but they knew it was mailed out on a Monday, and they received their fingerprint invitation that Friday.

So, since today happens to be two weeks to the day after we received J's Legals AND the Friday after our I600 was mailed on a Monday, needless to say I was quite anxious all day!

I think I checked the mail 5 times today.

Really.

Typically our mail gets to our box at about 2pm each day. I started checking at noon, when C and I drove by on the way to lunch and to pick up the crib at Babies-R-Us which finally arrived from the warehouse. Empty.
Checked again on the way back to the house to pick up the trailer since the crib would not fit in the back of my car. Empty.
We didn't head back out right away, so we checked again at about 2:30 on our way back to Babies-R-Us. Empty. At that point C was getting frustrated with me and started reminding me that just because C & K and S & L got things on certain days doesn't mean that we will. So he didn't let me stop and check it when we got back with the crib.
But then I had to go get get gas as my car was near empty, so I checked again on my way to the gas station. That was try #4, at about 4 pm. Still empty. I figured we just didn't get any mail today at all.

We worked in the the backyard for awhile (we are landscaping it ourselves.) Then C went in to to start the grill for our late dinner. We realized we were out of milk, so I ran to the store quickly to pick some up while our chicken was grilling. I figured I would stop just one more time (at this point it is about 7:30 at night) just to check.

Voila- we had mail and in it was our invitation to go get fingerprinted!
What drama!

Anyway, now that we have it, we will need to drive up to Aurora to go get our fingerprints done, so that our I600 can be officially processed. I heard it is a very quick appointment, so we will be spending more time driving in the car then at the appointment! Unfortunately, the office will be closed tomorrow, as it is closed all Saturdays before holidays and Monday is Labor Day. So we will have to wait until Tuesday to go up. Bummer.