LOA!

Imagine my surprise a few days ago when we got a phone call from our agency.  They were calling to tell us that our LOA had arrived!  LOA stands for Letter of Acceptance.  Even though we already told China that we wanted to adopt the little girl we were referred with our Letter of Intent, we still have to check mark a box and sign our names saying that we do, indeed, still want her on the Letter of Acceptance.

The main reason I was so excited to get the LOA is because it came so early - I wasn't even thinking about it yet.  The given time-line is 60 to 90 days, and we received ours in only 25!  What an amazing blessing - we would really like to travel by December!  (Secretly, I am hoping for the end of October).

There is only one other major event that takes place before we can travel to get our daughter and that is when we will receive travel approval or "TA" for short.  After we get this, we can travel in as little as 2 or 3 weeks.

In between the LOA and TA is a bunch of other little milestones and hurdles that we have to meet - and we are already working on our first one.  Because our new daughter was diagnosed with special needs that weren't apart of our original home study, we need to have an addendum added to it.  That addendum won't be done until Monday, and then we have to get it approved by CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services).  All this will add to the waiting game.  After that, we send away for something called our I-800.  Right now, the paperwork is "all Greek to me".  Once I become fluent in it, I will translate the time-line here so everyone can see how we are progressing.

I'm going to see if I can get our daughter's pictures figured out so I can post them on here.  (I'll post her new name also!)

Until next time,

Karen