USCIS officially received our I800a application on 2/23/11. Next we will receive a biometrics appointment notice about one month later. We can drive to OKC early and try to walk-in once we have our appointment letter but not before. However it is unknown if they will let us. Some parents have been sent away with orders to return on their appointment date. So D and I have been watching the mailbox for our fingerprint appointment letter. I just saw that two of the AP's on my paperwork group have receipt dates of 2/23 also and they got their letters by the 5th & 8th of March. Their appointments are 3/30. What!!! Where are ours? Is it likely that some helpful child got the mail from the mailbox, came inside and threw it down somewhere? I've been looking high and low for any unopened mail and did manage to find some but not that important paper. I'll be calling USCIS I guess if it doesn't come the the mail tomorrow.
It seems like we have plenty of time but in reality I have charted our possible timeline and if we plan to travel in 2011 our schedule is very tight. And we really need to travel in 2011 for big financial reasons. We definitely cannot allow ourselves to be fingerprinted a month later than necessary. I keep telling everyone we hope to travel in October, and I still do. But it could possibly be as late as December. I hope not. Besides the weather, plane tickets are much higher in December. 40% of the fees for this process are for travel just for two parents and one child coming home, does not include our boys. (around $10,000) Travel will cost even more if we have to travel during higher fare times. The last 2 weeks of October hotels and planes are both higher due to a huge trade fair.
My mom has expressed her opinion that we shouldn't take the boys with us to pick up lil sister. That decision is still a few months away. Many online blogs of APs who take their other kids say the new child is more relaxed and bonds better with the entire family at once. Since the largest cost of taking the boys is their airfare it will probably depend on how the financial situation looks this summer. China's money is kept artificially low by the government. There is speculation that China is allowing the value to increase slowly. Last year the yuan was 8:1 and now its more like 6:1. The orphanage donation of 35,000 RMB is our only fee to be converted before payment so conversion rate matters for that. Last summer it was $5100 US and this month it is approximately $5400 US.
If it seems like I'm concentrating on not so important details when we don't even know who lil sister is you would be correct. We don't expect to get a referral from our agency until LID so I'm spending this time preparing by researching things we need to know later in the process. I can tell you if we are LID in June and the CCAA releasing of new shared lists continues on the same pattern they will release the June list on the night of the 20th. That is the first chance we would have to be matched to lil sister from the shared list. Like I said that does depend on us being LID before June 19th. I'll post a projected timeline on the side of the blog if I can figure it out.
One step at a time. I'm going to continue to search the house for misplaced mail.
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