Getting Closer! We got our golden ticket!

This is how I feel.

Well we received the last paper for our dossier yesterday! The infamous I 171-H, translation: our permission from the United States Immigration Office to adopt Ren and bring him home! It is our Golden Ticket, LOL! This is a huge step in completing our side of the process. For every step closer it makes GUESSING (and I stress guessing) when we travel easier, it narrows down the window. We are thinking we might travel in November. We are hoping to travel in November, God willing. We still have a couple of steps, but we are thinking we will have our dossier to China in August and then we wait for travel approval. Travel approval is averaging anywhere from 90 to 120 days to be issued. Who knows, but for those of us adopting we take quite seriously all the work that goes into our wild speculating.

November would be good for several reasons. #1. The city of Nanjing where we will be staying is called one of four "Furnace" cities in China! :-O Jiangsu Province has four seasons with winter being cold and summer being extremely hot and rainy. Hence it is better to visit in the spring or fall. #2. The trade fairs are in October, they will be spaced out over 3 separate weeks. That means the hotel and air fares will be doubled and even tripled during those weeks. Also the trade fair means tons of more people and even more crowded. So even though we would like to travel sooner we are trying to look at the bright side of having to wait till November.