Approved!

Well, it's official, the U.S. has said that we are okay to adopt a child from China!  Our I-797, which is the form they send saying that they approved our I-800a (confusing, no?), came on Saturday and apparently spent the weekend in our mailbox.  Oops!  I called USCIS on Monday to find out if we had an officer assigned to our case and lo and behold, we had been approved as of February 8th!  I ran out to the mailbox and there it was, just staring out at me.  This is seriously the quickest approval I have ever heard of!  It usually takes 2-3 months and it took less than a month for us!  Wow, enough with the exclamation points.  Can you tell I'm excited?!  But so many things have felt to us like we can just see God's hand in them and it makes me wonder, is our girl almost ready for us?  Is that why things are happening quickly?  So, our I-797 form has been notarized and should be arriving at the Texas Secretary of State today to join our other forms.  Or maybe it passed them in the mail on their way back...who knows?

More good news, I got our documents back from Oregon and Washington today and it looks like they certified them correctly!  So, tomorrow I will send them to the San Francisco Chinese Consulate to be authenticated.  Whew!  All of this certifying and authenticating business is a bit of a whirlwind!