AT LAST...TRAVEL APPROVAL!

We are so excited to say that we officially received our travel approval this last Tuesday, September 6th!  It has taken this whole week to determine our exact travel dates, but it's official...we will be on a jet plane heading to China on September 22nd, whoohooo!!!!  Our "Gotcha Day" of when we meet Amelia for the first time (and when she comes into our custody) will be Monday, September 26th.  Our consulate appointment is scheduled for October 11th and after a 22 day trip in China, we will arrive home on October 13th.  Amazing...we will be holding our baby girl in our arms in just a of couple weeks!

It's been quite a roller coaster of emotions this week.  When we first received the call with our travel approval on Tuesday, our agency informed us that we would be leaving next Wednesday, the 14th.  Then after 24 hours of excitement, anticipation and a sleepless night, we were then informed that all of the consulate appointments were booked for the remainder of September.  Our hearts sunk.  Basically, every family adopting has to end their China trip with a visit at the US Consulate.  So after hearing that we could not leave next Wednesday, our agency then told us we would have to wait for the next travel group, which was not scheduled until October 5th (ugh, October 5th, that's another long 4 weeks away)!  What we didn't realize is that there is a national holiday in China, the Moon Festival, October 1-7th, so the government offices are closed during this time.  This is why the next travel group is not scheduled to leave until after this time.  So after thinking for the next 24 hours that we would not leave until October 5th, our agency then proposed another option (phew)...we could leave for China sooner (yay), but we would have to stay for the national holiday, which would mean staying in China for a total of 4-5 days longer than the typical adoption trip.  This option would also mean we would not travel in a group.  After thinking about it for a long, well, ONE minute, we told our agency to go ahead with the earlier option.  Considering how extremely anxious we are...the sooner we can get to our baby girl, the BETTER!!!!!!!

So we just received confirmation on Friday that the consulate approved our appointment and we will travel September 22nd-October 13th.  We are actually excited to experience being in China for the national holiday, especially since we will be spending it together as our family of FOUR!!!   

We will send more details soon.  In the meantime...bags are getting packed, Babies-r-Us has a new regular customer, safety gates are being installed, clothes (and more clothes) are being purchased, emotions are running wild...and many happy tears are being shed over here at the Finney household :)!