Good news but...

...we're not out of the woods yet. On Tuesday our immigration officer issued us provisional approval on our I-800, but it was NOT without some drama. Let me recap...

I spoke with our officer twice last week regarding our I-800 application. As of last Wednesday, we weren't even logged into the sytem. Without being logged in, she could not issue us approval. At that time, she was optimistic about us getting logged in any day, and depending on her work schedule, she would approve us quickly. Well, she had told me that she would be out of the office on Friday but that I should call her on Monday to check on the status of our application. She also told me to email her, which I did. So I was hesitant to call as well. But by the afternoon, I couldn't take it anymore.

I called immigration and was put through to our officer but had to leave a message. I was extremely frustrated by this because I at least wanted to know if we were logged in. I called back again, and a very nice officer who answered the phone informed me that our officer was unexpectly out of the office that day as well. She also told me to call back Tuesday afternoon if I hadn't heard from my officer, although she did expect her to return to work by then. I thought that offer was very kind and was quite grateful for it.

Tuesday morning rolls around, and I have lots of errands to run with Caleb. To top it off, my phone was unable to connect to my email. So needless to say, I was itching to get back home and hear from our officer. Around 1pm, I was finally able to access my email. At that point, I got a reply from our officer indicating that our I-864W was filled out incorrectly and would need to be redone before she could approve us. I was miffed because our agency was the one who filled it out!!! I tried getting a hold of our Ch*in@ coordinator to ask her how to fill the form out. But she was, unbeknownst to me, in Ch*in@!!! So a big thank you to Melissa (Iris' mommy- Iris is from the same orphanage as Madeline) for answering my questions! You rock!

The other HUGE problem we faced was the fact that Patrick was out of town on business for the day, and he was the one who needed to sign the form!!! I frantically texted him to find out when he was going to get back into town. He told me close to 5pm. So as long as our officer wasn't going to go home early, we'd be able to send it back to her that afternoon. Well, the guy driving the car that day (NOT Patrick) high tailed it home. By 4:10pm, we were able to scan it to our officer. About 20 minutes later, she indicated she would approve us before she left for the day!!!! I took her "Congratulations" to mean that she was really going to follow through with her word. ;)

So we managed to get our I-800 approved just 2 days before our I-800A expires. Now our officer will forward it on to the National Visa Center (NVC). Once we are logged in there, they will cable our approval over to the US Consulate in Guangzhou. The only problem is....I'm not so sure they are going to cable us because by the time they get a hold of our approval, our I-800A will have expired. :( :( :( I have a sinking feeling they are going to wait until our Supplement 3 is approved. And that won't be until we get fingerprinted. And we don't expect to have fingerprint appointments issued for another week or two. As soon as our fingerprint appointments are issued, we are walking in early with our notice in hand. We need to get approved ASAP so that our travel is not delayed by much. *sigh* It's possible this could hold us up (if it in fact does) for 1-3 weeks, I think.

But....now we wait....and hope that we soon get a letter from the NVC saying that they've cabled us. Please pray they do this without waiting for our I-800A approval/Supplement 3 to be approved. Otherwise I don't think we'll travel until the end of July. I really just want all this hoopla and drama to end. I would like to quietly make our way through the rest of this process and hop on a plane without a lot of nonsense. Pretty please...