Today....

Today, May 19th, is Hope's 13th birthday.  It's hard knowing she's becoming a teenager and we're not there with her.  BUT, this will be her last birthday without us.  We will celebrate once she is home.  We did order a party for her and were told they would celebrate today. We are anxiously waiting to see if they send us photos.  Once they do, I will post some here.

I think our agency is not liking me too much.  You see, I'm a little anxious about getting to China.  They kept saying "No rush in sending us the next forms needed to go to China. Once you get the 800 approval you can send them".  Well, I don't want to waste time.  So I sent everything we had to them this week.  The last two things they need from us we can send via email.  So, once they receive that from us, they can immediately send the package to China. No waiting for the mail to arrive.  That saves at least 2 days.  They should realize by now that I'm not going to wait for a piece of paper.  I'm not going to sit here and do nothing.  So, they can be upset with me if they want.  I really don't care. I just want to get to China ASAP.  :-)

Update on the I800's.  This is another approval that we are waiting on. But thankfully it should not take long. Hopefully 2 weeks from now we'll have that.  We sent it all to China on May 11th. They received it on Monday May 14th.  We received a text yesterday with our receipt #.  They said it is being sent to the NBC for review & approval.  Then it will go to the NVC where they will issue our I800 approvals.  This should all take about 2 weeks.

Once we receive the I800 approvals, we email that to our agency. They send our DS 230 package to China. A day or so later we receive a PDF that goes to our agency.  Then it gets dropped off and two weeks later our Article 5 is issued.  That gets sent to Beijing and they issue our Travel Approval.  Once that is issued (about 1-3 weeks after the Article 5) then our agency requests our Consulate Appointment and then we book our flights.  We hope to leave anywhere in the middle of July to beginning of August.

Two months from now we would love to be in China. So keep praying.

Thanks!