I800A Approval!!!!

So on Monday, May 25th early in the morning I emailed the USCIS about our I800A to see if there was anything to report. Not too much later I got an email back from the officer that reviewed our documents that indeed we did have approval and she was going to send it out in the mail that day. WOOOHOOO!!!! I called Ryan right away and he shared in my excitement and thankfulness to God for this!  So this is the US government going over our home study report and telling us that they approve us to adopt a child from a foreign country. A big one!! The next big approval is from China! Well I learned from one of my awesome adoption Facebook groups that you can send a Fed Ex label through email. So I paid for an overnight Fed Ex label and emailed it to our officer (who was willing to do that for us). So we got it that Wed, instead of 5 days or a week. Every day is one day less, my friends.

I made a photocopy of it (the original we keep, the only doc that we keep the original) and ran it over to Trivan to get notarized, then went to the Post Office and overnighted it to Olympia to get certified along with an envelope for them to overnight it back to us. We got it back pretty quick! While that was happening, I had been in contact with a courier service in San Francisco to take care of our authentication. So we mailed (overnight again) our notarized, and certified I800A approval copy to the courier called "The paper midwife". She then took it to the Chinese Embassy in San Fran to get it authenticated (they do it quicker if you hand deliver it). That is where we are at today. She thinks (Jill who is the Paper midwife) that it will be done on Monday. She will then mail it (overnight) straight to our agency (saves us time). Our agency will then look it all over to make sure all the i's are dotted (and since the bulk of our dossier has been reviewed it won't take them that long) and then they will put our dossier (all of the documents that we have been working on since January) in a big red envelope with a picture of Ryan and I on the front, and then send it off to China. And then we will be DTC!!! Which means Dossier To China!! People will often then refer to the paper chase being done. Then it will be a long wait......and once China approves us, they are telling us that yes we can adopt Anna! This is the biggie. Once we have this approval we will celebrate somehow. :)

This is our I800A approval

Sending it off to get certified

This is what I had to put on the front of the envelope. yeah.

And it all came back. Such important things we are putting in the mail, and then praying it doesn't get lost or mishandled. 

A beautiful gift I got for Anna. 

I did some more shopping.....

I am actually quite proud of myself, it's not easy shopping for girls. I bought this all second hand and I had to coordinate tops and bottoms to make outfits. All the clothes that you see here are going to China hopefully this week. They are not specifically for Anna. They are for anyone in the orphanage really. Maybe some of it wouldn't even fit her. The only problem is that I can't get it to all fit in a shoebox. I might have to just bring it to China with me and then hand deliver it. 

I bought this book for Anna. It is a recordable book. So I recorded myself reading it (Dylan and Tyler did a couple of pages too) and then when she looks at it she will hear our voices reading it to her. I also got this great idea from a Facebook group. I read this book to all my boys. Definitely a favorite. And Auntie Pauline was able to teach Dylan not to touch fire with this book while he stayed at her house. :) 

Trying to learn some Mandarin. It's not easy people!! So thankful we will have a guide with us while we are in China.  I'm still hopeful that Dylan will pick it up ;) 

Well that's it for now! Hopefully next week I can update you on more exciting things happening.