Moving on up

To my own web domain!

Check me out over at CJ's Daddy

I'm keeping the blogger site around for a while as the kinks are worked out. All the new stuff will be over at my new web site. Look forward to seeing you over there!!!

Back in the Ring

Looks like the KO was short lived - we're back in PGN already!

As things go with Guatemala Adoptions, updates pass through several hands sometimes, so the reality is that our KO came last week, only took a few days to correct, and we're back in as of Tuesday. The KO update implied that the objections were trivial, so I guess that turned out to be the case. I guess you can stop chewing on your fingers now!

What can we look forward to?

Probably an medical update with pictures next week.
We'll get ourselves on the package list again and send one more of those.
Eventually, we'll get out of PGN clean and move forward with the rest of the steps (check out the timeline along the right)
How long does PGN normally take? About 8 weeks, then it's on the the final steps.
Still praying/hoping/fingercrossing/woodknocking/etc for a Christmas homecoming. Thanks again for the continued support out there!

What to do now? Just sit back, kick your feet up, and enjoy the rest of the ride!!!

Down for the count... A crowd in our corner

The red-head defines this as one of those good news - bad news situations. I'm more thinking it's a wait and see situation.

Just backtracking a bit - Pre-Approval is required for the PGN(Guatemalan legal authority) to approve the adoption. Because PA sometimes takes a while, our lawyer submitted our case, knowing it would get kicked out, hoping also to find any other potential problems. So, once PA arrived, we actually needed the KO.

Today, we got word that we were indeed KOed. Unfortunately, there were 2 other apparently small issues that will also need to be corrected before re-entering PGN. So, it turns out, the early submission was a great idea, but it's unfortunate that PA wasn't the only issue. These are both Guatemala side problems that we have no control over. Our lawyer is known as a good one, so we're confident these will be corrected and we'll be back on track soon. This kind of thing is par for the course, and part of the reason this process can be so stressful. Now we just wait for things to happen, which is actually not much different than before, but with this new dash of "fun".

The obvious question will be: "does this mean it will take longer to bring CJ home?" The best answer right now is, maybe - just a little. Does it dash our hopes of a pre-Christmas pick up trip? Not ready to say that yet. We'll know more in a week or two. We were a little ahead of schedule considering the early submit, so we can still make it.

So, why don't I seem a little more down in the dumps about all of this?

Because we've got a huge crowd of "Rod Chairs" in our corner pulling through the KO. The most obvious here (in the blogosphere) are the many well wishes we've received on this very blog in the past few weeks especially. Thanks so much for those!

This past weekend we had our Guatemala Night at church and it was a huge success. The night started with all kinds of Guatemalan cuisine - tamales, black beans, tacos with avocado sauce. There were all sorts of displays of Mayan crafts, pictures of Carmen of course, and several auction items. Then the red-head and I tag teamed on a presentation to show what we've learned about Guatemalan culture and our adoption experience. Our dear friends even compiled a moving video that gave everyone their fist video glimpse of us spending time as a family of three. Between that and the Mission Guatemala video we should have put tissues out instead of salsa verde!

If you're the praying type - keep it up. If your a finger crosser or wood knocker, that'll work too. Or, if you just like so chew on fingers - that's an option also...

Pre-Approved!!!

OK, now "Pre" Approval sure doesn't sound by it's name to be as exciting as it really is, but believe me, it's by far the biggest step we've achieved to date as far as the legal process goes.

PA - consists of the US immigration process that is necessary to bring CJ home. It's literally pre-approval of a travel visa to bring her into the good old US of A!!! They call it Pre because they await final approval of the Guatemalan Attorney General's office (PGN) to finally issue that visa. Fittingly, the PGN will not approve the case until the US Embassy issues it's PA. So here we are, the first step in the fun back and forth now completed.

As I mentioned earlier, our attorney in Guatemala has really been on top of things on our behalf. He actually submitted our case to the PGN weeks ago, knowing it would be initially sent back to him (KO'ed) due to the lack of PA. The advantage of this is that he should know at that time exactly what other problems might be identified (PGN requires a boatload of info - not just PA). Chances are that file has already been KO'ed, and will hopefully be resubmitted soon. Often times, we just don't know about it until a couple of weeks later.

So, we keep truckin along!!! Unfortunately, this still does not give us an answer to the lingering question of "when can we bring her home". But it does provide much greater certainty that our initial goal of traveling at least by January may come true. I've been saying a lot more lately that we're hoping and praying to have her home by Christmas. Not getting hopes up at all, but I can no longer deny that it's a real possibility. But the way this process goes, we won't know that for sure until closer to Thanksgiving.

That's it for now - hopefully we'll see more updates in a couple of weeks letting us know we've been out then back in over at PGN. It's been a great couple of weeks - we're due for a lull in activity!