WE GOT OUR APPROVAL!!!!!!!!

it was raining.
i grabbed the mail as we ran in the house from getting joshua on the bus and saw this return label right away!!!

i tried to keep from getting too excited after last time.
but i would have been devastated if it wasn't our approval.

{i have to make a confession...i emailed USCIS last Monday asking about our approval. they emailed me back and said it should be mailed out in 3-4 days...so i was even more hopeful that it would be arriving soon. yet at the same time very guarded in getting too excited.}

thankfully, it WAS our approval!!!

those of you that haven't been through this process are probably having a hard time understanding how much this 1 piece of paper means...but it means a lot!

it means that the United States has approved us to adopt 2 little boys.
and it was the last piece of paper we were waiting for to be able to send all our paperwork over to Rwanda.

but, of course, it's not that easy.

now that we have all our paperwork, we have to get each piece of paper (and there are a LOT!) authenticated (which is a step above "notarized" - which they are already all notarized). you have to get stuff authenticated at the Capitol - in Richmond - in our case. you can mail it and wait 3 or so weeks...or drive there and walk in and have them do it. um...we are driving to Richmond on Friday (works out nicely that the kids have a teacher workday that day...but i would have taken them out of school anyways...) :-)

over the weekend we will make 3 copies of EVERYTHING and get it all organized and then (hopefully) i will drive it to our agency on Monday and drop it off!

at that point it will be out of our hands. (which at this point sounds nice...but the next wait will be even longer and harder.)

they will approve everything and it will go through a process of being translated and sent to Rwanda!!!

once it arrives in Rwanda we will wait again for approval from their government. right now that wait is about 6 months...and traveling about 2 months after that to bring our children home.
AHH!!! SO excited today!

{and in all the excitement i TOTALLY forgot that i was supposed to register Bailey for kindergarten today. at her school. from 9 am to 3 pm. i remembered at 2:30 as i was picking the kids up from school. bailey and sawyer were sleeping. we ran home, woke bailey up and RAN back to the school just in the nick of time! she had sweet pillow crease marks on her face as she registered for kindergarten...at least i already had all the paperwork filled out!}