Waiting

I called our agency the other night mainly to try to figure out how long it will take me to get Z's US passport so we can come back to Germany ASAP.  I need to call or email Immigration to figure that out.  Ugh!  I hate relying on them because the last time I did that we had our fingerprint fiasco where the rep I saw in person didn't care what I was told over the phone.  I think I will email this time so I can print it out and bring it with me as "proof".  Fun times....

While I had our agency on the phone, I asked about projected timeline.  Our NVC letter is in Crescent Moon now.  Our Article 5 letter will be picked up on the 12th and taken to the main center for adoption.  Once they receive that letter, they will issue our TA in 2-3 weeks.  Our agency said that things have been moving very quickly lately, so it may be even quicker than that.  Crescent Moon will send the TA to our agency and they will schedule appointments with the consulate in Crescent Moon and let us know when to buy our tickets.  We will be travelling with a group and it sounds like we don't have any say over when we go since it's up to the groups' TA's and when we can get appointments.  She said we could travel as early as April 17, but it could also be in the next few weeks after that.  I am freaking out about that!  On one hand, I want to travel and get Z as soon as possible, but on the other hand, this has been so far in the future for so long that it seems strange to have it finally be close.  And DJ's birthday is on April 18th and I was planning on having his party on the 20th.  It's close enough that it might be ok to risk it but if we have to leave and miss his party, that would be the worst thing I can imagine.  As it is, I'll probably just have the party the weekend before just to be on the safe side even though it's a bit further from his actual birthday.  I really hope we don't have to miss his actual birthday, but that seems pretty unlikely.

We need to try to get our visas approved before that, but I'm not sure how doable that will be since we don't have details yet.  The website for our Crescent Moon embassy says that part of what we need to bring when we submit our application are flight & hotel reservations, which we obviously won't have for a while.  I am hoping they can be lenient on this point, but we are in Germany so that would take another miracle.  Before we waste a morning travelling to Frankfurt only to be told no, I will try to call the embassy to see what they say.  Hopefully the visa department is better at answering the phone than the authentication department, because they NEVER answered!  We'll see....