DTA!!!

As of Friday, October 11th we are finally officially DTA, or Dossier To Agency. 5 months of paper chasing has come to an end.
To back up a little, we were waiting for our I800-A,the immigration approval. This is a step that used to take a month or so, but in the past 6 months it has taken longer and longer, now up to about 75 days. We were prepared to not have the approval till about the middle of November, but on October 1st, we were approved!!
We were extremely fortunate to receive a very very rare expedite. I can't say enough how much this means to us and to Penelope. We truly believe that it is in Penelope's best interests to be here in the US as soon as possible. It was a huge blessing that the USCIS agreed.

Once we had the approval in hand, Linda GH made a notarizing house call for me and off to Chicago it went. We again used Denise at There's Always Hope for our courier. She is fabulous. It went to the Secretary of State's office and then the Chinese Consulate like all our other documents had.

Once received back safely we express mailed it to our agency in Colorado. They should get it on Monday.

Now we wait for our agency to review everything, translate it to Chinese, and then send it to Ch*na. This can take up to 2 weeks, our agency is super meticulous, they check everything 3 separate times. Of course I'm hoping it goes to China this week.

So now we are waiting for DTC-dossier to China. 

If it ever seems I'm being vague, please try to understand, it's often hard to know how much to share. I love hearing that people have heard about Penelope and have seen how beautiful she is. It make me so, so happy to know people are praying for her. I want this blog to be something she can look back on later and see how much we already love her. I want her to know that we have been fighting for her from the very second we saw her face. I also want to be careful not to share to much, because really so much of this is Penelope's story to tell, not mine.
That being said, I also want this to be an encouragement to anyone who is thinking about adoption. If that is your motivation, I will be happy to tell you anything I know.

While we continue to wait, retail therapy has been good for this mama's heart. I mean, have you ever seen a cuter car seat??Praying there is a sweet little princess occupying that seat sooner rather than later.....