Waiting on I800a approval and a Surprise!

It has been such a busy week that I have not had the opportunity to update our blog until today.  We sent our USCIS packet off last Friday and it arrived on Monday according to the FedEx tracking.  Our check was cashed Wednesday.  When I got back from Katrina's track meet just now, I found that we receieved a letter that USCIS received our packet and that it has been forwarded on to the adoption unit in Missouri.  I had written this blog this morning so it was a nice surprise to get an official confirmation that they actually got it.  We are now waiting for a letter that gives us our biometrics appointment.  This is for us to go get our fingerprints done.  We have been told by many to just go in early before the appointment as they will usually process you if they are not busy and this speeds up the waiting process.  From what it looks like, we will have to go to Omaha, which is an hour away, to get our fingerprints done.  We are excited that we are now in the 2nd step of the process, despite having to wait again.  It just means we're that much closer to traveling to meeting our little boy and bringing him home later on this year!

I received a wonderful surprise email from another adoptive mom who is bringing home her daughter in 2 weeks.  I am not sure if she wants me to mention her name so I'll say it's "J".  J had received an email from our foundation (this is the facilitator that helps with the adoption on their end in a country in Eastern Europe while our adoption agency CHI does things on their end here in the US) stating that since they are also processing Andrei's adoption from the same orphanage that J's daughter is being adopted from that they went ahead and asked the orphange's director for permission to come and visit with Andrei and to take pictures.  The orphange director gave approval!!!  This is almost unheard of!  The information and pictures of Andrei that we do have is from exactly one year ago. We are excited to get any updated information and news on our little boy. How is he? What does he look like now? I cannot even begin to comprehend it all.   By the grace of God, J has also said she will take pictures of Andrei!!!    To top all this off, J has also offered to bring a gift from us to Andrei as well.  We said of course!!  I looked online yesterday (this is when this all happened) and found a teddy bear that just is perfect.  For those of you that do not know sign language, it says "I love you"   We hope you love this, Andrei!!