It's been...

too long since I've posted. I've been busy just keeping up with our girls and then there was Thanksgiving, and Christmas, AND a new puppy (Thanks Pop-pop!) :)

There are some exciting things to share though! We finally got our USCIS approval aka I800A approval/797. It was dated the 20th of December, but of course that was the day that we flew to Colorado for Christmas so we didn't really 'receive it' until we got home on Dec 29th. This precious piece of paper was our last document that was needed to complete our dossier. The girls and I drove this document all over so that it could be properly authenticated/sealed. This included getting it notarized (which in itself I think is pretty funny: that the lady who works at State Farm needs to notarize/approve the letter from the US Govt!), then we were off to the county clerks office to have the first notarization notarized. After that it was a trip to downtown where the county clerks notarization was notarized by the secretary of state. Then this precious paper was sent to Washington DC where it could finally be notarized/authenticated by the US Dept of State. Finally it stopped in at the Chinese Embassy for its Chinese authentication. Whew - lots of running around (this process was required for all of our dossier documents)... On a side note - all that the Chinese Govt requires on these documents is the Chinese Embassy's seal but in order for that to happen it has to be authenticated by the US Dept of State, who requires the previous 3 notarizations! Talk about a streamlined process ;)

We managed to get this all done relatively quickly (considering that the Govt offices were closed for New Years) so that our 797 was able to join the rest of our dossier in GA (at our agencys office) to go through 'critical review'. After that it was all fedexd to our agency's main office in CO where a summary paragraph was translated and then the entire dossier went to China!!!! yay!!!! We are officially DTC as of Jan 13th!!!! The CCC*A received our dossier (taken in by courier) on Jan 16th!!!

So now that this step is done we are on to the next hurry up and wait. We are still waiting for our official LID (Log In Date) which is when the CCC*A logs our dossier into their system. Then it is the unpredictable wait for our LOA, which can be as quick as 35 days or as long as 120+... no rhyme or reason for the variation in the time frame... Once we have our LOA we file the next bit of paperwork, and then we wait for our next approval before we can proceed.

If you're still reading at this point I'm impressed! I'm mainly writing this down for myself so that I can look back on it and remember, see Gods faithfulness in it all. I thought that I would remember all the dates and bits of the process last time but it didn't work out that way so am attempting to record more of it this time around.

SO from here (well, from our LID) we are told to expect it to be 4-6 months from there to travel approval... Once we have our LOA we'll have a better idea of time to travel as time frames are pretty consistent after that, it is just this unknown wait that we are entering now.

Thats our update on process, will post an update on our precious son next!