Getting Started with Adoption

We are the Jansen Family from Michigan. Bob and I have been married since November, 2000. We both are originally from Michigan, we lived in Alaska for four years, and are now back in Michigan. We have two wonderful children, Caelan is five and was born in November, 2001 and Garrett is two, born in July 2004. We are planning to adopt our daughter from China.

We are going to keep this blog as a record of our adoption journey. I want to be sure to keep track of all of our dates and events.

So far, here are our accomplishments:
9/1/06: We were approved by our agency.
9/11/06: We began working on our homestudy. Thanks to Julie, David, Maura, and Karin who must have said some good things about us in the reference letters!
10/12/06 :USCIS mailed a receipt for our submitted documents (minus the homestudy).
11/16/06: Homestudy visits were completed.
12/15/06: Submitted 11 dossier documents to MI Secretary of State.We are still waiting for the Homestudy report and the I-171 approval from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration department. I wanted to get the documents that were ready mailed and then I will express process the remaining two.
12/28/06: Received the certified documents from SOS and mailed them to the Chinese Consulate for authentication.