Immigration Approval!

After waiting more days than I'm willing to count, we finally have our approval from the US Department of Homeland Security USCIS, Hague Unit to adopt a child from China! Our application was sent in mid-August and spent several months in a huge backlog of files created when new regulations were implemented in April . However, that will soon be just a memory. Our immigration officer told us she was putting our approval document in a fed-ex envelope for us today. Once it arrives, we will be notarizing it, driving it to Salem for certification, sending it to a courier in San Francisco who will hand carry it to the Chinese Consulate for Authentication and then forwarding it to our adoption agency where it will join the rest of our dossier for its journey to China! If all goes well, it will be there by the end of the year and we will begin the next wait which is for final approval from China to adopt Li Meng. That wait looks to be 3-4 months. Once we have that approval, it looks like it will take another couple months to actually get there. When we have received that Letter of Acceptance, we can officially post his picture on our blog.