Officially Awaiting TA

Yesterday we got the following email:

Dear Sturgeon Family:

Congratulations on receiving your Article 5! You may already have received notification directly from the U.S. Consulate that the Article 5 was ready but our China staff confirmed today that they sent it to Beijing so the CCCWA can process your travel approval.

Your travel approval, sent by the CCCWA in duplicate to our Eugene office via express international mail, should arrive within three weeks and we will notify you immediately when it does.

Even though the average time to arrival in China from getting the Article 5 averages six weeks, now is the time to start travel planning. We strongly encourage you to contact Lotus Travel now so they can start a record for your family to make arranging your trip easier when your travel approval arrives.

In a nutshell, our Consulate has said everything is in order for this adoption and now we are waiting for China to say we can go get Ethan. It. Is. HAPPENING! The timeframes given above -- 3 weeks to TA and 6 weeks to actual travel -- are actually on the very conservative side! Now, that's not to say we won't wait the maximum for both, but many TAs are coming in 7 - 10 days, and that gives us very real hope to be traveling in the mid-August group. Before I had stated that that would be a very inoportune time to go (start of school, missing in-service money, higher airfare costs, etc), but then I got to thinking. Inoportune time? To go get my son who is waiting in China? Who we have been waiting to go get since we first saw his face December 22, 2011 -- and before? Like when we started this whole crazy process back in August, 2011! I got to thinking, who am I to second guess His timing anyway?! If we get to go August 15, I will be ELATED!!!! Freaking out, but elated! **Have I mentioned I don't have my lesson plans started for my substitute yet.....**

Ethan, my beautiful little boy, we are almost on our way!