PA!!!

Well after getting not- so good news about having to do my finger prints over again for our home study I was pretty stressed, but then I got a call from Beth at WACAP (our international adoption agency) and she told us that we received our PA (pre-approval) from China today to adopt Noah! This is a small step in the entire process, but still an important one since now China is acknowledging our plan to adopt Noah. I really needed this today because I have been feeling very anxious about deadlines that we have no control over. I"ll explain the steps a bit for those of you who aren't familiar- so...we have our PA (pre-approval from China), next we wait for our home study to get written up so it can be sent with our I800A form (immigration form which is petition to adopt an orphan) to USCIS (immigration services). This form is taking a very long time to get approved- in the meantime while we are waiting for that to go through we need to compile our dossier- which is a huge packet of documents which need to be notarized/authenticated both here and at the other levels of the government. When the 1800A, Home study and Dossier are all together it gets sent to China...then we wait for the next big step our LID (log in date- the date our Dossier is logged in). Then comes the LOA (letter of acceptance) a HUGE step because it is shortly after that we will receive our TA (travel approval). So that's about it- still not sure of the timeline- we will be very lucky I think to have Noah home for his second birthday (August of 09).
Well, that's a long post but wanted to explain the process for those of you interested and to understand why I might be a bit anxious at times over this. This is very different than the process with Ethiopia- but as it was with Ephram, it will all be a thing of the past when we meet Noah!