I have been remiss.....

And it has been confirmed by more than one person that I have been remiss in posting to the blog...but I have devoutly sworn upon my morning coffee that I will be sure to post to my blog while we are traveling, DEFINITELY.

As of friday night, here is where we stood on the RQ charts:

For those of you not familiar with the RQ charts- there is a chart that tracks progression from DTC to TA for those in the Special Needs/Waiting Child line. I think we started in this line somewhere around #150 or so- it was so long ago I really don't remember!

The step before Travel approval is called "Article 5" and it is dated according to the date that your Article 5 was picked up from the Chinese Consulate. Everyone on the RQ chart with an Article 5 pick up date of 1 week earlier than us received their TA last week. There was ONE other person on the chart above us who actually had the same Article 5 pick up date as we did- "Zoeymakes7"- so she and WE are the two green ones at the top of the green section.

The highlighted pink people are those who already got their Travel approval- which means there were only two of us on the Charts (although this is not EVERYONE) waiting on travel approval. All signs pointed to Monday....

This morning I woke up with mixed feelings- Excitement that this could be the day we get our travel approval, and dread that we wouldn't get it and would have another full week ahead of us with the China National day holiday this week. But China was on our side...and we are so happy to have an east coast agency who was doing all the waiting before we got too far into our morning...

I was on the phone with Jacque who is with our agency (and also has a Gao girl at home!) and we were talking about how excited we were that it should come, when who beeps in? Kerry from our agency! I about screeched in Jacque's ear and said "It's THEM! I gotta goooooo!" She started screaming and when I clicked over to Kerry, there was MORE joyous screaming because our TA had arrrived!!!

They said Jacque was getting a call just a few minutes later....

The tentative dates of travel are around Oct 17/18, meeting our girl on October 24, and our Consulate appointment on Oct 31!!! Whaoooo! Can't wait to tell Madeline tonight!