New Travel Date

We not only received an update on our son yesterday, but our agency also told us that we are now likely to be set for an April 5th court date!  Quite possibly we could be leaving for Thailand in just a few weeks!  We are still waiting to hear if the NVC has received our paperwork & forwarded it on to the Embassy in Bangkok.  Let's just hope & pray that they receive it soon.  God is definitely teaching me some patience here as I am such a planner & it is so hard for not to be able to already map out every detail of our trip;)We basically have to wait until we have a pretty firm idea that all the paperwork has been processed before making any firm travel arrangements. 

Update on Trit

We received an update on Trit today.  He has grown so much!  This was technically back from December, but it always takes a while for us to get the updates.  We are thrilled though & we sent him this outfit.  It looks like he has a new haircut.  Please continue to pray for us & our precious little boy. 

I800 Approved

I spoke with our officer at NBC (no, not the network) & she said that our I800 has been approved!  It will go to the NVC next & then on to Thailand.  We should be able to start making official travel plans in a week or so!
I am still continuing to pray that our paperwork progresses well through each of these next steps though.
We made a great connection already with another family traveling with us & it helps to know we are both going through this together. 

Please keep us in your thoughts & prayers.

67 days & counting

We are TENTATIVELY scheduled to meet our son for the first time on April 24th.  I really did not think much about this date initially until my FIL recently pointed out that is Easter Sunday.  What a wonderful Easter blessing & what a truly special day this will be for our family.
We are hoping to hear in the next 2-3 weeks from immigration & that we will get our approval with no problems.  Once we get our approval & it is wired to Thailand we should get a "firm" date for our travel.  I am trying to keep myself occupied & whose counting that there are possibly only 67 more days until we meet our son!

Article 16! Counting down the days to meet our son...

We received our Article 16!  We just finished up with all the I800 paperwork tonight and will be sending it off to USCIS in Texas tomorrow.  We are tentatively scheduled for April 27th for our court date in Thailand.  We should meet Trit for the first time on Sunday, April 24th.  We are so excited & just praying & hoping that everything goes smoothly with our paperwork for Immigration & the transmittal to Thailand. 

1st Approval - Officially

So, we now OFFICIALLY have 1st approval as of 1/12/11.  We were thrilled, but then we settled in to our next wait for the Article 16.  I've seen where some families received theirs in a week, 3 weeks, 6 weeks, etc.  We were told it could even take longer than 6 weeks!  We are praying that the Lord will continue to be with us in this process and give us peace as we settle in for the wait.

False Labor Pains...

Yesterday, we got a call from our adoption agency.  I was hopeful that they were calling to tell us about our Article 16, but instead it was to let us know that there actually had been a mistake & that we in fact had not yet been granted 1^st approval.  We are hopeful that in the coming weeks we will truly be granted 1^st approval, but to say we were disappointed today would be truly an understatement.

There is one type of labor that is the physical labor of child birth, while the other is the physical labor to complete the mountainous paperwork that is required as well as overcome all things that can occur through the adoption process.  As a mother we endure the hardships & pains that are required, but the end result is the most precious gift that God could bless us with – our child. 

I hope soon that I will be holding my precious little boy in my arms.

Patrick