September 3, 2015

Tuesday, August 18 we received our pre-approval from China to adopt Priscilla. Lisa told us it would take 2-3 months for China to issue the official approval and send us our LOA (letter of acceptance). Since we had a bit of waiting time I decided to enjoy our last couple of weeks in the US and would begin our next set of paperwork (I800 application) after we returned to Spain and the kids were settled in school. This was a huge step for me because it was the first time I wasn't 1-2 steps ahead of where we currently were in the process.

We arrived back in Madrid on Wednesday, September 2...not super great planning on my part as school started on Friday the 4th. We were excited to be home, but were all struggling with jet lag. Thursday evening (745pm) with tired eyes trying to round up the kid for bed and make sure we had all the school supplies in order, I got an email from Candy. We received our LOA from China, again in record time! In just 2 weeks and 2 days our agency had received our approval from CCCWA saying yes we were approved to adopt Ling Jiao as our Priscilla. We were filled with joy and awe at God's timing and lead in this journey!!

I stayed up until 1am that night completely our I800 paperwork so it could be mailed to USCIS the next morning. I was frustrated with myself for not having the paperwork already done for this step, but didn't want to delay the process because I was tired and unprepared!

Friday morning, we put the I800 application in the mail to send from Spain to Texas and Candy put our LOA documents (that we needed to sign and send immediately back to her) in the mail to send from Tennessee to Spain. Quite the exciting first day of school! :)