Week Five--Everything Falls Into Place

Well, we are less than a week away from our big trip, and everything finally seems to be falling into place. We made the marathon back and forth trip to Nashville last Saturday for our fingerprints and discovered early last week that our fingerprints had cleared the FBI the same day. The Memphis USCIS graciously expedited the processing of our updated I-171H and forwarded that info. on to the National Visa Center for them in turn to send on to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. According to our senator's office, that only takes a couple of days, so we will not be left stranded in China without a visa for our child to return to the US. Yay! We also participated in the final travel call with our CCAI travel group and learned that we will receive our children on Monday, August 18--Gotcha Day! We have rounded up most of the stuff we need to take with us and at this point, it looks like we will have plenty of space (what am I forgetting!!!) for what we need. Michael has finished fine-tuning the webcam with his Dad so that we can (hopefully!) communicate with everyone back home while we are in China--especially Nicholas. I am really not worried that he will miss us with all the spoiling he is sure to receive while we are gone, but WE are going to miss him like crazy! We had a busy weekend spoiling him ourselves. Nicholas and I went to Dollywood on Friday (we had a blast!) while Michael was working, and yesterday our whole family went to the zoo for another fun-filled day. Now we just need to finish everything before we depart on Thursday morning. Wish us luck!