IT'S HERE!!!!!!!

Guess what came in the mail today?!?!?! Our I-800A approval from the USCIS!!! It actually made it before we moved! All my heavy-duty praying and positive thinking has paid off; we made it! Whew- I am shaking I am so happy!This approval means that U.S. Immigration (USCIS) has approved us to adopt a baby from China. Now first thing tomorrow morning I can take a copy of the approval form to AAA to be certified as a "legal copy", then notarized, then I am going to drive all of our Virginia documents out to Richmond to have them state authenticated in person.

This morning I sent our documents that had been signed by the military (who do not have a normal notary commission) to the Department of State in D.C. to be authenticated. Once we get them back (hopefully next week), I get to send everything, our entire dossier, to Philip who will take over for me! He will get our documents authenticated by the appropriate Chinese Embassy (Houston and D.C.), then everything gets shipped to China to be translated. Then we will finally get that coveted Log In Date (LID), meaning we are on the official waiting list. Then, THEN, we will celebrate, big time, because we will be officially "paper pregnant"!!

OK, I'm going to do the Happy Dance now, then relax because I have been so nervous about getting this thing back in time. I will sleep very soundly tonight!!

P.S.- This means that we are still on track for a February LID, which has been my new goal. (My original goal was September, then any time before the holidays, then before the end of the year... I stretched it out to February about a month ago. Hopefully I won't be stretching it any further!)