LOA paperwork

Our LOA paperwork finally arrived around 1 pm on Monday, April 15th.  Besides just signing and sending back our LOA, we also had other paperwork that needed to be sent back to our agency.

The most anticipated Fed Ex delivery of the day!

Because I'm a planner and like to work ahead, I had the needed US Immigration forms all filled out and ready to go several weeks in advance of receiving our LOA.  Well, I thought they were ready to go.  Imagine my panic, when I realized that I had put Ava's birthday wrong on all the forms!  (I put 4/9/2012 instead of 3/9/2012....ugh.)  I had to go back and redo all the forms. This caused my stress level to become "slightly" elevated.  Luckily, two of the forms were PDFs that could be saved.  Unfortunately, the other one for the Dept of State had to be completely re-typed.   Thank goodness that her LOA was issued and dated exactly one month after her birthday...this is how I caught my mistake.

USCIS I-800, State Dept. DS 230- and I-864w

All of these forms are then sent to USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration) so that Ava can be classified as our relative.  This is how the US allows us to bring her home.  Once we land on US soil, she will be a US citizen!

Thankfully, this is the last of the paperwork.  This was quite a bit more stressful than I was anticipating.  Realizing and having to fix my mistakes was a big part of it.  In addition, we also had to sign and initial every single page of her English and Chinese referral file pages including pictures.  Apparently, USCIS wants all of the documentation.  Her file was 28 pages long! We also sent copies of our passports and copies of our previous I-800a approval which states that we have been approved to bring a child to the US.  Now that we  know who Ava is the I800 completes the process.

Ava and her LOA!

This is what we waited 42 days for!

We are now 1 week into our I800 approval wait.  We hope to receive our approval next week, then we receive a PDF that gets sent to back to China telling them everything is good to go.  We then wait exactly 2 weeks for that paperwork to travel through the system.  At the end of those two weeks we are officially waiting for travel approval.  Travel approvals are currently taking about 2 weeks.  We are so hoping that we can travel in June!  We're getting closer!!!!!!