Drumroll please....

.... after just 9 business days, we have received our I-797 (otherwise known as the I-171H - it's a different form depending on where you're adopting from apparently)!!!!!! What does this mean, you ask?? Well, it means that the Department of Homeland Security has said it's okay for K & I to bring our little Russian peanut home!! Let me tell you that 9 business days from the date they received our home study is REALLY quick.

So, just 3 more documents left and with any luck we can accomplish that next week. Maybe I'll beat my self-imposed deadline of mid-July for having my paperwork turned in? Regardless, I'm happy to have my I-797 and the rest we'll just take in stride, right? (go ahead, laugh :-) ... I'm not sure I take much in stride!)

While I was getting ready thing morning I was thinking about the I-797... thinking that since I wasn't going home tonight, we were sure to get it in the mail because I wouldn't be there to see it! Low and behold, my gut feeling was right! My darling husband is just so calm. I called him to see if anything came in the mail today. Here's a bit of that conversation:

B: Did you get the mail today?
K: Yep!
B: Did we get anything in the mail today?
K: Yep!
B: Okay... WHAT did we get in the mail today?
K: Let me look.
(pause, pause)
K: Oh, loooks like something from the.................. Department.... of (as he shuffles through mail).... Homeland Security.
B: (read really fast) We did?!? We did?!?! Open it! Open it! I knew this was going to happen the night I was coming home. I just knew it. I wonder if it's questions we have to respond to or maybe it's our approval letter. And if it's our approval letter than I'll be really excited but upset because we still have more documents to get done and I was hoping we would be waiting on this so I didn't feel like I was the last one to get things done. Oh well, at least we got something. What is it??

Then K proeeds to read each box "The United States of America." "Receipt Number XXXXXX" "Petitioner - it shows your name"........ OH MY GOODNESS, JUST FIND THE GOOD PART!

K: Notice Type: Approval!
B: Really? Fax it to me.
K: You really want me to fax it to you? But I don't want to wrinkle it! (You can't have any of your documents that need to go in your dossier wrinkled, smudged, etc... trust me - it's been fun!)
B: Uh yeah, I need to see it! (As if he was lying, right??) Just do it carefully!

And so continued the crazy conversation. I'm happy to say that my darling husband did fax it to me, was really patient when I called back again and reminded him NOT to wrinkle it and to put it in my red adoption binder in the folder labeled "dossier documents" and to be sure not to bend the corners of any documents, etc, etc, etc, etc.........

Boy, I'm tired of myself just writing this back out again! :-) Sometimes, I'm a slight control freak.
So, congrats to us! :-) And congrats/thanks to the Department of Homeland Security in Atlanta for reorganizing and being lightening fast!

I'm off to scrapbook for the weekend with some friends! I can't wait... lots of laughs, tears (from laughing so hard) and probably not much scrapbooking because we'll be talking so much! I need a weekend like this and I'm sure Keith will love his Becky-less weekend just as much. :-)

Hugs!
Becky