Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy 2009 to everyone! We are thrilled to tell everyone that even thought we did not recieve a Christmas miracle, we did in fact receive one on New Years Eve!! I call every week to see what the status of our I800A is with immigration and every week I get the same response, a very nice polite..."your case has not been assigned yet, but your 90 day mark is January 20th so it will be closer to that date." Ok..just checking every week just incase.

This week I was no different but at the end of the conversation I was joking around with her a bit about how I am never lucky anyway and should never play the lottery or anything like this. Ok, no big deal. Still 3 weeks to go anyway. Well then I get a call AT WORK a couple of hours later (I called from work originally..must have caller id) and it is the same agent I talked with earlier and she says that she went ahead and pulled my file and she would take my case. YIPEE!!!! I was so excited. She said there were people ahead of me, but she had paged through my file and thought it looked good so far.... I was so darn thrilled. She said she thought we would have our acceptance by next week or so. YEAH!! My new best friend for sure!

I was floating along on my cloud nine when I got to work the next day and there was a message from my new best friend!! I leave work at 2:30 and she left a message at 3:30. I anxiously paced my office until it was finally late enough to call her back (they open at 6:30 central time which is an hour later than when I heart the msg) and she called me back around ten. There was one simple of clarification that needed to be emailed to her and it would be done!!!!!!!!!!!!! I called Vickie at Hand in Hand and at 2:29 on New Years Eve she left me a message that said that my I800A had been approved and she was dropping it into the mail as she left for the day!

WOOOOHOOOO I was approved 3 weeks earlier than expected. In a process where everything takes longer than you think this was such a BLESSING for us. I had been praying for reassurance for the last couple of weeks because I have been very melancholy with the holidays. This just really clarified that no matter what this is Gods plan and His timing!

What this all means is now that we have our immigration approval, our dossier can go to China. Our "paperchase" is over! Once our Dossier is in China (probably a couple of weeks) and logged in (LID) it will be 90-120 days until we get our Letter of Acceptance (LOA) then another 3-4 weeks for our travel approval to get our little boy! So in 4-5 months our son will be home!

We were also blessed so much financially this week from friends and family! We recieved a few totally unexpected monetary blessings for our adoption. We are so grateful for our wonderful friends and family...THANK YOU! You all support us so much in so many ways!

We are so very excited for God has in store for us in 2009. We have so many challenges and adventures ahead of us in bringing our son home and changing our family life completely! We have a huge journey and a wild ride coming but we are so excited. We are also thrilled to be weloming new family members this year along with Sammy. My sister and her hubby are expecting their first child in June and my niece is going to be getting married to her fiance in August! Wow what a busy year for us!

We wish for all of you a wonderful 2009
Blessings