We have lift off!!

 This probably doesn't mean a whole lot to anyone, but...

 Our I800A has been overnighted to USCIS today!

Woohoo!!! A tiny step towards the big steps that will eventually get us to our child. This means that we will receive a Notice of Receipt in about 2 weeks.  This letter  notifies us that USCIS received our paperwork and payment.  10-14 days following, we will receive our biometric fingerprint appointment notice.  This notice will direct us where and when to go for our fingerprint appointment- Birmingham most likely.  Once we have completed our fingerprints, we will be waiting for our final I800A approval to arrive by mail...and when it does, we will scan it to our agency. That will be the final document we are waiting on before sending our dossier to China. 

So now, in the waiting, it is now time to get started on our dossier!! We received a new manual to direct our every move in this process. The good news is that after reading through it today- we have almost all of our 13 documents practically ready! A lot of these documents were required for our home study- which I am thankful that it is already done. We will send these documents to our agency, they will authenticate and certify all of our documents and then get ready to send it to China as soon as USCIS approves us. 

Clear as mud? Its taken me a long time to actually understand it...and once again...until you truly have to walk through this...there is no way to understand this process. 

But take a moment and celebrate this baby step with us tonight!!