August 11 - finally home! and IT'S OFFICIAL!!!

Sat Aug 11th email:

We thought getting to Taiwan was long at a 28 hour trip.  But coming home it took us 48 hours - had to spend a night in DC bc of bad weather and several canceled flights. So we didn't get home until August 10th at night  (instead of Aug 9th) after a difficult few days of travel home.  Talk about exhausted.  So glad it was just us two for the very long return. Hoping next time goes much more smoothly. 

We heard from our social worker on Fri  (8/10) while we were traveling home. Well, to be precise, we had a conference call with her in the middle of the DC airport amidst lots of noise and chaos (but what are you gonna do? - it worked). The judge we saw in Hs*nchu definitely approved our adoption of Eli. Papers are signed and set.

It's official he will be our son!  :) :) :) 

And not only did she indeed save us 3 months of time, but she also pre-approved the final court ruling too.  So, we really truly are all set now. We won't need to return to court on our next trip to Taiwan (and worry about a ruling). Woo Hoo!  

Our agency let us know that they have set up his passport date and our custody hearing date for the second week in September - even sooner than we had been shocked to find out last week!!!  Some of our paper work isn't current b/c we weren't expecting to travel until December-ish and were advised to wait to update it until closer to before we left, so we're really going to have to scramble to get things together in order to make it for those dates in Sept. We'll see how things go. We'll plan to keep in close contact w our SWs and hope it will all work out.  

We may be bringing Eli home by mid- Sept - what a blessed surprise!!!  He could be home in a month (if they are able to help us expedite our last set of fingerprint updates)! WoW!!! We're stunned and now trying to think of all we need to get done in 3-4 weeks - next trip airline and hotel tix booking included. WOW!!!  

Can't wait to see you soon and show you photos. I can hardly wait to post photos of our cute little guy! He's such a darling!!!  :)