And the final piece is enroute...

Still no new picture of Joshua.. the suspense is killing me!  But in some other great news- Today I opened my mailbox and inside was our "golden ticket".. well it wasn't really golden and really sort of bland looking but the meaning behind it felt like hitting the lottery!!

So today Dave and I drove to the bank got the cover letter notarized and then drove 45 minutes to the SOC office to get it apostilled. I took it to UPS and it is enroute to the U-land as I type. It is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday! If it does in fact arrive it looks like they are ready to submit our dossier to the authorities there. After we are submitted it is a matter of waiting for them to give us a date to pick up his referral and meet him. It seems like it is taking a couple weeks to get the date. Basically in this country, you get a referral at which time you are given limited info on the child and then you head to his orphanage where you will get more information on him and then we are allowed to meet him. Then we decide whether to accept his referral and then we will be issued the court date for our actual adoption. We have been warned that from the time we get his referral to a court date it might be 4 weeks. So that means we will be in his country for that long. After court there is a 10 day waiting period before you can take him officially out of the orphanage. We can either stay in country or come home to wait the time out. There are pros and cons to both. Going home means additional airfare while staying there means additional apartment/food/travel expenses. Going home means getting to spend some time with our other children that we will already have been gone from for 4 weeks but also means that we will be leaving Joshua behind and not be able to continue our visits with him during that wait. At this point it is looking like we will be coming home during the wait and then going back for "gotcha day"

I am praying we get submitted this Thursday. Not only because it is a giant step towards Joshua but also because I am mentally exhausted :) It would be so great to just know that all that I could possibly do has been done and my mind can take a break. I have spent the last few months running around like a chicken with her head cut off gathering papers, putting in adoption study hours, calling the USCIS to move things faster and I am ready to just mentally rest and wait for his country to give me a date and I will be ready with bells on. I am already visually picturing when I finally get to meet Joshua and hold him. Probably a good thing I do not wear makeup much! Keep praying for us and God bless everyone!!