December 21 -
Today was an important day...everything became finalized. This morning we had to wait in the room for a call from Ann, our guide. She took all of the paper work to the consulate to do whatever they do. We got the call that told us everything was okay. From there, our
oath ceremony was moved to this afternoon instead of Tuesday. So, in the afternoon we headed to the U.S. Consulate with many other families for the ceremony. Once at the consulate office, we waited for our name to be called up so we could sign some more documents-I brought a lot of paperwork with me that was required, I'm bringing twice as much home. After all the families signed their documents, so lady from the consulate talked to us about what their job was in each country. Learned an important fact I wanted to pass on to everyone. Before traveling out of the U.S., go to the website travels.state.gov and give your travel information. By doing this, if an emergency occurred while you were a different country, the U.S. Consulate would be able to locate you and evacuate you. Very interesting, only 1 couple in the room had done this. Would like to have known this before hand. So after the lady explained what the consulate does, all the parents stood up, raised our right hands and took an oath, making everything official. From this point, we wait for
Emma's visa which will be ready on Wednesday, along with mine, and I'll received a brown, sealed envelope with documents that I will present to immigrations when we land in L.A. At this point, Emma will officially become a U.S. citizen, at our point of entry, and the government will send a certificate of citizenship and I'll be able to register her for a social security number. After that, I'll just have to apply for a birth certificate in Michigan.
After the ceremony we had dinner at Lucy's again - can't wait to get home and eat mom's food.
Emma did very well through everything today; she seems to be shaking her cold, her temperature is gone and she seemed happier today. We don't have many pictures of her smiling because she is not a fan of the camera. We looked for the infamous red couch
that everyone gets their picture on, but there were about 6 red couches so we choose one and took Emma's picture. Until tomorrow...