TA!

I received a call from our agency that we now have our Travel Approval and our visa appointment at the US Embassy (the appointment determines when we travel).  We will leave on March 14th and I will come back on the 27th.  Dirk can come home as early as the 21st.  We're skipping the tours in Beijing to keep costs down, but I would love to do those again some day.  I'm super excited!!!  In just under 3 weeks, we will be meeting our new daughter!!  Since we already have our visas, all we need to do is book our flights and pack!  And our bonus miles have already been applied to Dirk's united account, so he gets to fly for free!  (Now we just have to hope he can get the time off work since it comes at a bad time for him)

Happy Birthday, LuZao!

Today (well, yesterday in China but I haven't had a chance to post until now) is LuZao's 6th birthday!  Even though we didn't bring her home, I will always remember her birthday.  I hope she got to celebrate in some small way!  We may go out for Chinese in honor of her birthday, but I'm not sure yet.  (We just had to buy a new washing machine out of the blue so the budget isn't looking too happy)

In terms of our progress, I have communicated with our agency but they didn't bring up the Article 5, so I assume that means it was picked up on the 13th as planned.  (No news is good news, right?)  We're sitting just over a week out so we could receive our TA (Travel Approval) any day, but it's likely to be another week or 2.  There was a bit of a backlog with the Chinese New Year and ours is at the tail end of that so I imagine it will be a little on the long end.  I am so ready to travel!  I'm not ready to see our bank account empty, but we knew about that part going into this.  ;-)  

Article 5 Ready for Pick-up

I got an email from the embassy in Guangzhou this morning that our Article 5 was ready for pick-up.  I haven't heard from our agency about whether it has actually been picked up, but considering it's just after midnight in China, I'm not holding my breath.  Perhaps they just haven't emailed me yet, but since they know how eager I am to know these things, I am guessing it hasn't been picked up yet.  There's no reason that it shouldn't be picked up tomorrow though.  At this point, what's 1 more day?  The thing I'm most eager about is getting our TA and hearing when we will be travelling.  My step-mother is going to come and watch the kids for us while we're in China.  They are SO excited!!  But, we're starting too get a little too close for comfort to a couple of major conflicts for her so I'm getting nervous about managing those.  I'm trying not to panic yet, but it's getting tough.

Small Delay

Our Article 5 will be ready for pick-up on Thursday, the 13th.  That was quite a delay due to the Chinese New Year!!  What is supposed to be 2 weeks took nearly 4!  I guess that's good for us though because a little more waiting just gives us more of a chance to redeem the free tickets that we have earned on our new credit card.  I just have to trust God's timing.  I really didn't see this delay coming, so I have to believe there's a reason.

Lila has been asking daily (often more than once per day!) when we get to go to China to get her little sister.  It's been tough not having answers, but that's just how it is.  I know better than to tell them anything until we have actual travel dates.  They've had too many rugs pulled out from under them as it is.  I am also anxious to start scheduling her doctor appointments so we can try to restore as much of her vision as possible, but I need to know that she will actually be here before I can do that.  Soon enough.