If you have been following along on our adoption journey, you are well aware that we have been waiting for over a year now for something called first approval. And you also know that we had hoped to have it by now.
I have been in touch with our adoption agency over the last week or so as they tried to figure out if we would be presented at the meeting taking place this week in Bangkok. So, when I picked up my phone on Tuesday and saw that I had missed a phone call from our adoption agency, I just figured it was an update about whether we would be presented or not. I finally connected with the director of the program on my way home from work and got some long expected, yet totally, unexpected news.
Tuesday was THE Thai Tuesday!! We got first approval!! And while this was the Thai Tuesday we found out, we actually got approval a couple of weeks ago! We can hardly believe it!! After so long and too many days of wondering if it was ever going to happen, it HAS happened!!
We got FIRST APPROVAL!!!
What's next you wonder?
Article 16. We need this piece of paper, which is a summary of how our children came to be placed for adoption, along with some of our kids' legal documents so we can file them with USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). This next step usually takes anywhere from 2-8 weeks.
Guess what?
Our article 16 and other needed documents came in the mail YESTERDAY! And after frantically completing a TON of paperwork over the last couple of days, everything was sent back out today via Fed Ex to US immigration!
Lots more little steps have to be completed over the next few months, but the end is in sight!! And there is a very good chance that we will travel before Christmas! Christmas! We might be with our children before Christmas! I don't think there could be a better Christmas present than having my children in my arms.
