Our best guess is that our referral will arrive at our agency on Monday, November 5th. That is excellent news, but it is going to be tough to not think about it all weekend!
The referral is the first time we get to see a picture of our soon to be daughter (or son). It is a package that contains information about our child-to-be including their name (given by the orphanage), where they are from in China, their age, weight, basic medical info, and of course, a few pictures. Our agency will forward the package to us which will probably take an additional day or two ( in the meantime they will send us an email that includes scans of the pictures).
Our first obligation is to post the pictures on this blog for everyone to see and make a lot of phone calls. After that we will have a doctor look over the medical information that was provided. Once we have reviewed all the information, we will send back an acceptance letter to China and will begin to wait once again.
This wait should be much shorter than before. The next information we will need will be our Travel Approval (TA) from China. That will tell us exactly when we can go to China. This has recently been taking 2-5 weeks to come after the referral has been accepted. The TA will contain one very important date... the Gotcha Date, the date we pick up Isla!
I bet you are asking "So when will that be?" or at least that is the question we think about a lot. Like the rest of this process, we don't know for certain when the gotcha date will be! It is very possible that we will have Isla in our arms by Christmas!
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1 comment:
Brilliant idea & blog! Thank you for sharing your excitement. RQ is a very "powerful" force. Can't wait to see the first photos of Isla! Think uncle tony will be available to train her???
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