DCFS Endorsement Received - Yay!

Our DCFS endorsement letter arrived in the mail yesterday. When I got home and found it around 4 p.m., I immediately jumped in the car and went to make a copy of it for our records, then I went on a wild goose chase trying to find a FedEx box that hadn't had last pick-up of the day yet.

Once I found one, I over-nighted our I-800A to USCIS (Lewisville, Texas). Our I-800A had to have official copies of our birth certificates and our marriage license, plus the application itself of course, and payment of $830 (see previous blog for breakdown).

Using FedEx's website, I've been tracking our I-800A and it was picked up in Springfield at 7:13 p.m., left Springfield at 7:32 p.m., and went to Memphis, Tennessee. It arrived in Memphis at 11:44 p.m., and left at 3:31 a.m. It then arrived in Dallas, Texas at 4:38 a.m., then Irving, Texas at 6:09 a.m. Irving is considered the local facility for Lewisville, so hopefully USCIS is the next stop. It is estimated that it will arrive by 3 p.m.

The next step for us is that we will receive an appointment to go get our USCIS fingerprints. From talking to other adoptive families, I've learned that we may want to take that appointment notice and go to the facility early, as it can sometimes speed up the process. They will not, however, take our fingerprints until that appointment is assigned, so we can't go in until we get it. If I'm correct that we will have to do this in St. Louis, I'm considering making a family day out of it and taking Preston to the St. Louis City Museum or some other fun place around there.

A family that is about 2 months or so ahead of us in the process is expecting to travel in October or November, so I'm still not optimistic that we will get this done in 2010, but as of right now I'll keep praying that perhaps December is a possibility.