WOW... LOA!

Well, we had been told by the agency to expect a wait time for our LOA (Letter of Approval) of approximately 2-4 months. Nope. 1 month, 5 days. We got it today! What does that mean? It means that China (CCAA) has now officially reviewed all of our documents from our dossier and has decided that Mike and I are fit for adopting Gracelynn. They gave us the go-ahead! Tomorrow we'll receive paperwork from the agency to fill out. Then in about 2 weeks, we're expected to get Travel Approval (TA). Wow! At that point, we'll work with the travel agency to determine dates of travel and visa application, etc. So, going by the standard timeframes.... 2 weeks till TA.... 6-8 weeks till takeoff after that. So... we're looking at MAY (maybe April or June). I told the kids today.... Grace should be home before school is out. They are really excited!

Of course this good news came with a little sadness and stress too.... one, wow, do we have to get ready with our travel preparations... and two, this trip could easily conflict with my Dad's current plans to travel to Alaska. We talked it over. He asked us not to play around with the dates... just go get our girl. (It would be sad if he cannot join us though... we were really planning on it. But maybe he can organize our trip back to China in another 8-10 years to take Grace back to visit her homeland?)

The agency said that 4 Special Needs families received their LOAs today and that we'll be traveling together. That's nice. I'm not sure where their children are (as in which Province), but we'd fly out together, spend time in Beijing together, and then we'll meet up again in Guangzhou later.)

Oh, on a separate note... we submitted paperwork last week to have our fingerprints retaken (since they will expire April 24) and to "motion" for a new I-171H since we thought that's what we were being told to do. Last Friday, we received the fingerprinting date... next Thursday morning. We also received the receipt in the mail for our "motion" ($$). Today I learned from our case worker that it wasn't necessary. Our current I-171H is just fine. That's great in that we won't have to wait for a new form... but that also means that our check was useless. I'll try sending a letter to request the money back, but I won't hold my breath.

Well, wish us luck. I'll post more as things progress. Soon, we'll be blogging from China.