Article 5 is in Bogota, FBI fingerprints come back to haunt us

Great news today! Our Article 5 was approved and sent to Bogota in 1 week (they had estimated it would be 1-2 weeks so it was on the quick end). If everything else was in order, that means we could book our travel for 2 weeks from today which would be July 5. However, our dreaded FBI fingerprint/background checks are now preventing us from making those arrangements until they are on the way to Colombia. We got the background checks in the mail on Saturday (no arrest records for either of us, yeah!!), we had them notarized today, and at noon I sent them off to the Minnesota secretary of state to have them apostilled (an official seal that verifies the notary is a true and current notary). Based on some documents I had done not to long ago, I expect a very quick turn around time so we should get them back on Wednesday or Thursday. After I get them back, I will FedEx them to Bogota. Once they are on the way, THEN we can make travel arrangements so it looks like we will be traveling around July 9th or so as of right now. If that happens, it would be a few days earlier than we had been planning but this is fine with us.

We did find out some bad news today. There appears to have been a change in the processing of visas to Colombia and the last 2 families from Lutheran Social Services has had to make a personal appearance to request the visas at the nearest Colombian consulate which for us is in Chicago. At least only 1 parent has to go but that is going to suck if we have to go. Nothing like a 13 hour round-trip drive for something that will probably take less than an hour. In the past, they have allowed the visa requests by mail and then they would FexEx them back to you. Any one up for a road trip with me??

Now that we know traveling is imminent, I am starting to go into panic mode. I feel like I have so much to do! I have been connecting with other families who traveled to Colombia recently and got some great advice. I also got this awesome packing list from one of them (thanks, Phyllis!!) and some other great lists of things to do in Colombia. I now have about 5 lists going and really need to consolidate so I don't forget anything. I still need to collect some things from a couple of friends too and my parents brought back a ton of stuff from Carrie for me that I need to get from them.

Kerry and I also need to make a trip to the cities so we can get our fingerprints taken AGAIN. These are for the Department of Homeland Security and have to be done at a Federal Building since our fingerprints taken at our local police department must not be good enough. We had to do this last year as well and thought we were going to get out of doing them again but part of the US government approval we got last week stated that our fingerprints had to stay current through the end of the adoption process. Our fingerprints expire on July 30 so they have to be taken before we leave since I for sure will be out of the country and Kerry may or may not be back by then. Ah, one more thing for us to do........