BRINGING GRACE HOME: WOOHOO!!!

Credit

Yesterday, after we picked up the girls at the airport, we went to downtown Milwaukee for our Dept of Homeland Security USCIS biometric fingerprints. Our appt wasn't until 3pm, but we got there about 10:45 or so.  They were gracious to work us in and we were out of there by 11:45 or so. All went well!

So, I called USCIS today and left a message with our officer. He called back w/in the hour.  (Can I just say how much better this communication process is than 2 1/2 years ago? YAY!) He had quickly reviewed our file beforehand and didn't see any red flags.  He'll review it more closely TODAY and will issue our immigration approval TODAY if nothing comes up. (We're pretty squeaky clean, so it should be fine. LOL)  It takes about a week for us to receive the hard copy as it has to bounce through their system (this is the federal government after all).  We should have the "GOLDEN TICKET" in our hands late next week!!! WOOOHOOOO!!!

Then what?? I'll drive it down to Madtown to get it apostilled (SO thankful our state finally offers one-day service) and then the whole dossier will be on it's way to Ukraine. Our facilitator translates everything as he approves it, so he will only have to get it notarized, sewn together (yes, I said sewn - with string - don't ask :-)) and it will be submitted - if there are no problems of course.

It sounds like it is taking about 8 weeks right now from dossier submission to traveling. :-(  It was only about 4 weeks for the boys. So, I'm praying they speed up and we will still get there in July. I would love that for a birthday present! :-) Of course, we would have loved to have gotten there last month, but paperwork out of our hands just takes time as I explained in my last post about Grace's adoption. Really, we've only had about  2-3 weeks of processing time on our end due to Pat and our social worker being out of town at the same time. But that is the way adoption goes - hurry up and wait - over and over and over again.

Thanks everyone for your prayers!  Please continue to pray we don't run into paperwork snags, esp like THIS one.  This same exact thing happened to another family in our state just a couple months ago.  Inexcusable in my opinion, but what do I know. The whole dossier (minus our I-171H approval) should be here in the next day or two, so we'll see how her spelling is this time as we used the same notary. (We like tradition. lol)

Love to all of you who continue to support us and encourage us! We are truly blessed. Thank you from the bottom of our heart!