Progress!

When most of the adoption feels like you're just "twiddling your thumbs" waiting for things to happen, you take absolutely any progress as reason to celebrate!

Last week and this week have been full of progress, and each little thing makes me feel like we're a few steps closer to meeting and bringing home our kids.  Last week, on July 12, our USCIS paperwork was in the mail, heading to Dallas.

On Monday, Scott and I met at the credit union to wire fees to our agency and have a stack of documents notarized.  We were glad it was a slow afternoon, because we were there for 45 minutes, until 4:45 p.m.  I rushed to the post office to mail 9 documents to the Secretary of the Commonwealth and one to the NC Secretary of the State, running in at 4:55 and walking out at 5:00 on. the. dot.

Yesterday, July 19 (exactly one week after mailing our USCIS paperwork), the check cleared the bank!  I don't think it means anything significant, other than the papers are out of the lockbox and waiting in another box to be assigned an officer.  But it's something, and it's better than being in the lockbox or lost in the mail!

Today, I checked the mail, and waiting inside was a big brown envelope with my handwriting on it... the documents I mailed in to the Commonwealth's office are already back, with shiny gold seals on them!  That was fast!!!  Those documents have all been scanned and emailed to our stateside agency, who will email them to our foreign agency to be translated.

They're not big steps, but they're steps, and we'll take them!