Countdown to Travel--Week 1

As I mentioned earlier, once we received the exciting news about our referral, a flurry of communications followed. Being Belmonts, we can never do things easily. Although our paperwork allowing us to travel will not expire until November, our fingerprints expire next week. You would think that once fingerprinted you would be good to go, but apparently this must be repeated every 15 months in case your fingerprints change??!! And although the fingerprints are cleared by the FBI, you cannot trot down to your local FBI office to have this done. Instead you must travel to a USCIS fingerprint center, the closest of which, for us, is in Nashville. And--no longer do they accept walk-ins, you must first have an appointment. And, you have no choice about when this appointment will be, nor do you have much control over how long it will take to be given an appointment. Needless to say, this stresses Michael out to no end, as he will have to cancel patients and/or surgeries at the very last minute and may have to talk to another ENT about covering call as his partner is leaving for vacation in 2 weeks. Not to mention, if we don't receive an appointment soon, our travel to China may be delayed. Anyway, we have a few options still left to us--such as contacting our US Senator--and hopefully something will break through next week. Other than that, I have been busy reading up on what to pack, what money we need to bring, what gifts we need to have ready for all those providing assistance in China, and trying to make sure that we are ready to welcome a second child into our home! Oh--and of course, we sent back our acceptance letter agreeing to adopt Baby Cai!