Well as I mentioned in my last post, it normally takes about 6 months from acceptance of the referral until we can travel to go get him. Time seems to be moving in fast forward and so has this process for the first time in almost two years.
We were pleasantly surprised when his legal documents arrived from the Philippines in about 4 weeks instead of the 6 weeks we were told it would probably take. By the time they arrived we were ready with all of our documents for US Citizenship and Immigration Services and were able to FedEx our I-800, I-864 & I-864A to them the very next day. USCIS received and accepted our application and forwarded them to the National Benefits Center on a Monday...we received the notice that Wednesday and were told that it would take 10-14 business days for NBC to receive our applications for processing. 11 business days later we received our 1-800 Provisional Approval in the mail!! I was not even expecting it so when I went to the mailbox that day I was completed surprised!
From there we were told that it would take 1-2 weeks for our approval and file to be sent to the Department of State's National Visa Center. It is our responsibility to contact NVC and verify that they have received the file and obtain our case number and the date of when they upload the file to the US Embassy in Manila. I called NVC on the 6th day (because I couldn't wait one more day! LOL) and they had just received our file that day! They told me to call back the next day for our case number and to verify that our file had been sent to Manila. So, I called back the next day and got our case number and the official date that our file was sent!!
So now we really do just have to sit back and wait while the Inter-Country Adoption Board prepares all of his travel documents, secures his passport, and contacts the Embassy to get him scheduled for his visa "interview" and medical exam. We are praying that everything continues to move along at a quick pace so that we could get him home in time for Christmas! All that being said, we decided that we better prepare ahead of time for Christmas and his arrival and therefore have already bought a few Christmas presents and one item that we'll need for his room.
We've also been "scarfing"! So far I have 100 scarves ready and 24 more to sew by the craft fair on October 18th. I'm also doing a Noonday Collection Trunk Show Fundraiser on September 23rd. If you haven't ever heard of Noonday you should really look them up. They are an awesome company and they support adoptions. If you'd like to shop the Noonday Collection with 20% of the sale going toward our adoption you can go to www.elizabethperkinson.noondaycollection.com. Please ensure that Elizabeth Perkinson is the Ambassador and include 'Alaina Nielson' as your Trunk Show Hostess at checkout.
Thanks for all your continued support and prayers...we are getting there!!!!
