I got a special envelope in today's mail!

Katie and Luke's immigration approvals finally arrived!  I'm SO thrilled to be done with that step!

What happens next?

Well, I emailed the National Visa Center to request our "cable" in email form instead of waiting for the next piece of paper to be mailed to us.  

Being that it's Friday afternoon, I'm hoping we see that return email sometime on Monday.  Given the way things are going, it may take a few days more, but I can hope, right?  

Once I have those emails, I forward them to our agency.  The agency sends them to their rep in China, who prints them and hand carries them in to be processed.  This step is Article 5, and it almost always takes 2 weeks exactly.  

Once we have Article 5, we are then waiting for TRAVEL APPROVAL.  

TA is the very last step on the China side before we leave.

We are getting SO close!  Squee!  

Happy news warrants the sharing of fresh pictures, right?  

Here's my sweet Katie girl.  

And this treasure is a new-to-us visa photo that we received from the agency that had Luke's file before it went to the shared list.  I found out they have an orphanage partnership and had recently been there, so I contacted them on a whim to see if there was any chance he was in their new pictures or they had any more info on him.  He's not, and they don't, I'm guessing because he's in foster care, not at the actual orphanage.

Since this was taken when his file was prepared, it's an older photo, but I'm still thrilled to have any scrap, as I'm sure you can understand.  

I'm really starting to believe that I'm going to China in June.  It's actually happening!  

Also, our fundraiser garage sale is tomorrow.  Please pray for generous customers!  All money raised will be going toward our travel costs.  

Don't forget to click!    I appreciate all the clicks we've been getting lately!  We are all the way up to #28 now!  Thank you for keeping us visible!  I get a good portion of my blog traffic from Top Mommy Blogs.