one step closer

today i sent our i-800 documents to our agency via over night fed-ex it was so exciting going to the mail box etc office today putting the documents in that envelope knowing that we are one step closer... the agency will receive the documents i sent today they will put them with our home study and send them to texas to the USCIS (united states citizenship and immigration services)...our documents will be in texas for 30-45 days approximately...nothing is 100% with the adoption process...then we'll receive our appointment to have our immigration finger prints done here in atlanta, ga...this will include garrett because he will be 18 when we bring emma lael home...this is a good day for the sisler family...garrett just asked me this morning when he called "mom do we know who we're adopting yet?" i told him "not yet" but the agency is sending our documents to immigration tomorrow.

one step closer break down: remember this is only an estimate
1) when we get our appointment for our immigration finger prints the next step is to have all our documents notarized, certified and authenticated this takes 2-3 weeks...life line children's services does this for us...which is a huge relief because i've heard from several adoptive parents this can be stressful.
2) after we get all the documents back notarized, certified & authenticated we will send our dossier (13 documents) to china it takes approximately 2-3 weeks to get your LID (log in date) when we get our LID we can be matched with our little girl...we are estimateing this will be sometime end of may early june.
3)generally you wait 3-4 months for your LOA (letter of acceptance) basically means CCAA (china center for adoption affairs) has approved you to adopt your child.
4)then we wait to get our TA (travel documents) and then in approximatley 2 months we will travel to china.

hope this makes sense to those of you who haven't ever adopted...hey, i am still clueless with all the terminology etc. thanks for checking in on our blog site.

James 1:27 “Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for the orphans and widows in their troubles and refuse to let the world corrupt us.” (copied from the web site 147 million orphans)