Adoption Journal: You Down with DTC?

We got the big call today (OK, one of the big calls): our dossier of 13 authenticated documents plus a handful of other scraps of our lives are en route to the Chinese government. This is also called Documents to China, or DTC, and it's important to us for several reasons:

1. We don't have to keep running around like idiots picking up forms from doctors, checking notary signatures, and FedEx-ing said forms to D.C.
2. We get to stop paying for all that shipping and overnighting (example: one mistake by a chatty notary cost us $50 in extra shipping and expedition fees).
3. Like Indiana Jones sliding under a closing gate, we made the March document cycle by the slimmest of margins. If we'd been a half-day later, we'd be a month further behind right now.

So, for now, things are good and we can look forward to planning Lisa's volunteer trip without the constant hassle of paperwork. Of course, who am I to complain about constant hassles?