And it's off!

Texas!!  Yeeeehaw!

Our home study was (finally) completed and we mailed out our I-800A to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Lewisburg, Texas on Thursday.   It's the first step in many, many between 2 complex governments. Basically, this step in the process gets us approval from the U.S. government to adopt a child from another country and eventually apply for his citizenship.   It's approval to adopt a child.....not specifically our boy.  The specific approval for him will happen many months from now.  Anyhoooo...that glorious first packet is outta here and that's all that matters right now.   It arrived at 10:28am Friday morning to their mail room courtesy of the local FedEx man.  Hallelujah!   Praise the Lord!   Pass the Tylenol.

Ok, now what happens?

We wait.  Like another 45 days to get fingerprinted again  (as if one time thru the FBI itself wasn't enough) and then on average, about 2 weeks later we will (hopefully) get our approval from USCIS.   After that, we'll need to get our running shoes on and get a ton of documents notarized, certified, and authenticated in each local county, the state, the country....blah, blah, blah.    Are we having fun yet?

If you really want to understand how all this works and see a timeline of the next year ahead, I have found this website easy to navigate and a wealth of resources:  http://www.china-adoption-online.com/china-adoption-program.html

In the meantime, I'm actually getting some things done around here.   Like everything that's been on hold for the last 2 months.    Kicking up my cooking show schedule,  get taxes done, tagging about 200 items for an upcoming consignment sale, clean my house from top to bottom, paint a few rooms, lose 10 pounds for spring break, prepare for a huge school fundraiser with Pampered Chef, catch up on some sleep sometime in between all of that....  Shoot, I won't even have time to even think about that next step, right???

While you're out here looking, take a minute to vote on a middle name for our boy.     It's on the right side bar.  We're pretty certain that his first name will be Nathaniel (meaning gift from God).    Oh, and when you vote, make sure you practice it out loud like I do.    To do this, you have to yell his name across the house like you would your own child when either a)  they are in trouble or  b) dinner is ready and they have their headphones on.   It's the true test of naming a child, isn't it?     ;-) 

Now, before I forget, where's that Tylenol?