We got our LOA!!

Our letter of acceptance or as China calls it, "letter seeking confirmation from adopter" arrived on Tuesday. It sat in the rain for a day because we were out of town and FedEX just left it on the porch without a bag, but we blow dried it, signed it, and it went back to China on Friday April 6, 2007. Yay!!! Our agency sent it to China with a cover letter explaining why it was wrinkled and faded (it was all their fault, but that's a whole other story/drama). They're confident that China won't reject it and require us to submit another one. We couldn't just sign a copy of it because it was an offical document from China with their red stamps (chops) on it and everything. The original had to be signed.

Now we wait for official travel approval which has been happening for other families around 2-4 weeks after sending the LOA back.

People who got their travel approvals in the last week are traveling anywhere from mid-April to mid May. If we get our TA in 2 weeks then there is a chance that we could go late May but only if there are still consulate appointments available. If they can get the most recent batch of people all scheduled to go before mid-May then we have a chance to sneak in before our mid June deadline.

If we don't make it before mid-June then we have to move to Texas first, renew our immigration approval, and get a new homestudy. We really don't know yet how long that all might delay us.

We could also be delayed if Alyson is not ready to travel yet if she is still recovering from her open heart surgery. Our agency has asked for another update with the exact date of her surgery and a prediction on when she will be ready to travel.

We have another tiny little issue that I'm not going to freak out about just yet but we still don't have Andrew's expidited passport. We applied on March 10th and paid the extra money to have it rushed and we were assured that we should have it in 4 weeks. Well, the tracking system online says they have no record of our application. I have emailed them and am waiting for a reply. The 1-800 number is impossible to get through on so we just have to keep trying. If we can get through to a human then there's still hope that they can figure it out and get his passport to us ASAP.
We still have to get our Visas too and we need the passport to do that so things could get a little hairy if we don't get it soon!!