Taking a break!

Care package has been sent!  It should take 2-3 weeks to get there, but that's ok.  As long as she gets it before we get there, it's all good.

I received my letter from the NVC with my codes so I could fill out the next forms online.  It took the better part of a day for the website to let me do anything, but you can bet that as soon as it did, I was all over that!  It turns out we didn't need to know her American name just yet, so that was good.  We still haven't decided on one yet.  We have a list that ebs & grows, but we're getting there.  It's a little harder because her Chinese name doesn't lend itself well to any American names the way LuZao's did.  And we had the PERFECT name for LuZao (Lucy Rae), so we've got a high bar to reach.  Fortunately, we have more time to settle on the right name for Yang.

As far as the process goes, we are officially done with US immigration and everything else will be handled in China.  The courier in China will take our confirmation from the form I filled out today to the embassy.  They will then issue our "Article 5".  This takes 2 weeks.  We're hoping they can get ours done just a little early because it's already Friday in China and 2 weeks from today is the Chinese New Year, so everybody has the week off.  Well, the embassy might return on the following Wednesday depending on which calendar is correct, but there will still be a rush of people that our courier won't want to contend with.  Once that is picked up, he delivers it to the CCCWA in Beijing.  They turn around and issue our TA (Travel Approval).  That can take 1-3 weeks depending on their speed, but since it will be right after a holiday, they should be moving quickly.  Once we get that, we will be good to go!  Our passports are supposed to be picked up today and they will be mailed back to us, so we will have plenty of time to get those before we need them.  Everything is coming together smoothly this time around!  I don't know how much of that is because we have done it before and how much is us being stateside, but I'm enjoying the relative ease of it all!  Now if we could just agree on a name.... ;-)