Off the Immigration Rollercoaster!!

I am SOOOO happy to say that I emailed our USCIS (immigration) officer this morning and got the most wonderful response from her...she said that she (FINALLY) got our HS in her hands to go along with our I-800A application and that it was all processed and APPROVED late yesterday and my approval notice was in the mail!! Do you have ANY idea what good news that is??? I mailed out our I-800A on March 17th, so it feels great to finally be off of that rollercoaster....

"So, what is next", you ask?? Well, now that we have been approved, they will send us the approval notice and that is called an I-797. As soon as we get this in the mail, that document and all of our other dossier documents (13 total, I believe) will be sent to the secretary of state to be CERTIFIED....then, when those come back in a week or so, we will send all of our dossier documents to the Chinese consulate in Houston, TX to be AUTHENTICATED. Once these steps are done, our dossier is off to China (DTC) to be logged in (LID).

We are getting closer!!! Closer from a paperwork standpoint and for those of you wondering, we are also closer to giving our beautiful girl an American name. She, of course, has her Chinese name and we will be keeping part of it as her middle name. It has been really hard to decide on her American name. I really love alot of names and it has been so different from naming our other children. I can see her face, so she looks and doesn't look like certain names, but I have never seen her smile. Not yet. So, the closest thing I can do is imagine Lucy and her very large personality. When I think of naming Lucy based on what she looks like without a smile, it just doesn't seem right...so, I am holding out hope that we will get our update and maybe the hint of a smile. I understand that is a tall order....if that doesn't happen then we will just go with our gut:) We will definitely have to name her before we meet her because we have to put her name in some of the paperwork prior to our travel....either way you look at it, WE ARE GETTING CLOSER!!

Now, for a wonderful weekend!!