Homestudy Approved!

Whew!  Our first step of the adoption journey is complete.  Our homestudy was approved, and we will get the notarized documents today or tomorrow in the mail.  The only thing that was holding up our homestudy, after my 1099 corrected form, was our cps background check from Washington DC from when both Doug and I went to college back in 1987.  We were only there for 4 months but it is a requirement to get background checks from every state we have lived in since we were 18.  It seems that everything that comes from DC takes at least 30 days to process.  The next step now is to mail our I800a application (this is to ask permission to adopt internationally) and that process can take anywhere from 45-60 days. 
Here's an estimated timeline for the process so that you can see how long it approximately takes.

January 15th - Started homestudy
February 8th - Got email about Andrei, and put a hold on him
February 28th - MOJ officially accepted our hold on Andrei
April 4th - Got email saying that homestudy was approved, and would be notarized and sent to us the following day
April 9th - Sending off application to USCIS for our I800a approval
June 4th - Hoping to get I800a approval
June 5th - Sending our dossier off to a country in Eastern Europe
July - Getting our dossier approved, and getting travel dates in July
Oct/Nov - Getting our court dates and traveling to bring our little boy home!

Keep in mind, after we send off on Monday for USCIS, the rest of it is a guess!  We are hoping it all goes this way, but we don't really know until it actually happens. :)

We just want to take the time to thank everyone for their support of our news of us adopting a little deaf boy. It really means a lot to us to have the support throughout the long process of paperwork and more paperwork before we truly get to bring our little boy home.