Approved by USCIS!!!

It's nice that some things don't take nearly as long as you think they will. I thought for sure we'd be waiting weeks for our approval letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS)--after all, our home study was just mailed to them last Friday!

But today (Saturday) we got the magic "letter of approval" that allows us to proceed with the adoption of a child from Korea. It's called the I-797C, Notice of Action, and it's titled (are you ready for THIS mouthful?) NOTICE OF FAVORABLE DISPOSITION CONCERNING APPLICATION FOR ADVANCE PROCESSING OF ORPHAN PETITION. And the "approval" box is checked! Yay!

Of course I found a typo (see if you can find it too): "Your approved advance processing application is being retained or has been forwarded as indicted by an "X" below..."

Funny, I never knew you could "indict" an "X"--I'm certain they meant "indicated," but that's a whole other discussion.

Oh, and they apparently think we live on Thornberry "Land" vs. "Lane" (I asked Margie if that matters...I really, really hope it doesn't!).

We also got in the mail our certificate from Catholic Charities that reads as follows: "Catholic Charities Center for Family Services ADOPTIVE HOME CERTIFICATION--This is to certify that the home of Jeffrey & Kathleen Halverson has been certified as an Adoptive home for the care of children who are under the supervision of Catholic Charities' Center for Family Services." Whoo-hoo! We're official in every sense of the word!

Routine, bureaucratic paperwork typically bores me to death, but we are pretty darn excited about these two integral pieces of paper, both of which are critical steps on our journey to get matched with our child and to travel to Korea to bring him/her home.

So now, there really IS nothing left to wait for except our referral (when we get matched with our child), which probably won't happen until, at the earliest, the end of 2008, early 2009. Once we accept the referral (after running the baby's file by two international adoption pediatricians), we travel to Korea typically 2-4 months later. So travel will likely be anytime between spring and fall of 2009.

All in all, a pretty good weekend, wouldn't you say?

Keep the prayers and positive thoughts coming our way!

Hugs,
Kathleen