This Stop... Article 5!!!

It finally came, our Article 5! We are now down to waiting for this last step in the process (the last "official" step, that is, before we travel). We are now... finally... waiting for Travel Approval.


The official date our Article 5 was obtained and transferred to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) was actually Thursday, April 29. It has taken me a week to finally update the website... sorry! With one week behind us though, we are hoping that we are only 2-3 weeks away from approval (of course I am hoping for the sooner date in the time-frame!). And, after approval, we are hoping and praying that we will be able to travel by the middle of June. However, Consulate appointments are filling up quickly, so that possibility seems to be slipping through our fingers very slowly.

When we travel to bring the Butterfly home, we plan to have some very special people accompany us, similar to our last trip when we brought home the Ladybug. In 2006, my husband and I traveled and we were accompanied by my parents, and my husband's mother. It was a wonderful trip for all of us, and having them there meant so much to us, and them. It made the trip so much more special to share our special moment with our family, and to this day we all have such amazing memories of our time in China when the Ladybug became a member of our family.


This time we hope to travel again with some special family members. Of course my husband and I will travel, and we cannot wait take the Ladybug back to her home country to meet her baby sister. Also hoping to make the trip are my mother, and my husband's mother and father. The only issue that we are dealing with is that my husband's parents have previous plans for the month of July, so we need to be home by the first of that month. So, at this point we are hoping and praying for everything to work out for us.

Typically, after travel approval arrives, parents frantically make travel arrangements and tend to leave within one to two weeks. However, because of the recent trade fairs in China that lasted nearly one month, there is now a one-month backlog of parents just starting their journeys. These families received their travel approval one month ago, but because of the trade fairs, most waited until after that busy and expensive time (the cost of the hotels nearly triples during this time). The first of this month is when many adoptive parents finally started traveling again to China. So, the people who have recently received their travel approval are now having to wait longer to travel than usual because of these other families who have waited nearly one month to travel (Seriously, if you are confused with my explanation, I would totally understand!).

We are hoping that this backlog of families waiting to travel doesn't push back our travel plans into the month of July, but only time will tell. In the mean time, we are slowly preparing for our baby Butterfly, and eagerly awaiting her arrival. As you can imagine, we are crossing our fingers that everything works out for us, but we would still greatly appreciate your good thoughts and prayers for a speedy travel approval and travel arrangements for mid-June travel.

~~Aloha!