Well we got the golden ticket (sort of)

Of course nothing is ever easy. We have a polish last name as my dear husband likes to remind me. We stepped out on Saturday night and went to a social gathering of waiting families. The FCC (Families with Children from China) has a waiting group. We had a really good time. We were surprised as Bill and I are not really social groupees. We are more into our family activities and such. We met about 10 other families who are waiting. We were the "new" kids on the block. One of only two families still chasing. We were talking about the elusive I797C/I171H stating our we think it will be over 8 weeks. We were just over 7 weeks at that point.

Well whatta you know, we got home and guess what was in the mail. The I797C. Don't jump for joy yet. Remember that polish last name -- nothing_comes_easy_ski. Well it had a mistake on it. yes a mistake. I about cried. Bill was pi$$ed. You know he works for the gov't so he had to take a jab at the gov't employees. They made a small mistake of leaving off his name from the form. There was a small field that said Spouse's name (if any). Well it was blank. Small problem. His name needed to be on it. So here were are on a Saturday evening wanting to jump for joy but instead we are now wanting to jump out the window. Small problem though we live in ranch home :-)

I called our agency on Monday am. USCIS needs to fix it. She will place a call to them. However, one small glimmer of hope is still flickering. We can notarize, county certify, state seal, chinese consulate authenticate this document we now have. They will just attach the new one to this one we have. So on Monday, I went driving all around Atlanta to get this done. The documents went off to Houston yesterday. They typically have a 4 day turn around so I hope to have it back early next week. USCIS should be reissuing this document soon....

The rest of our documents have been in Critical Review since last Wednesday. Critical Review is where the agency basically reviews each document like 4 times to make sure everything is correct. They say it typically takes 10-15 business days to complete. We haven't heard anything back yet so this is good news. But remember our last name -- nothing_comes_easy_ski -- so no celebrating yet.

One last note, CCAA (China's adoptive gov't agency that controls all international adoptions) just issued referrals for June 29 through July 13 2005. So people are waiting about 13 months now. Lets hope they do more next month.