Extremes

This has been the worst week of my life...with a happy ending.

On Sunday, I arrived back in Boise at midnight from a wonderful weekend in New Orleans. I met another mom (and friend) that is adopting from the same province. Our files arrived in Vietnam on the same day and have been held hostage by the same officials for ten months - a process that the head of international adoptions for the country said should be completed in 4-6 weeks in a recent interview. Needless to say we needed a stress releasing adventure and the French Quarter was more than suitable. We even received a call from the agency on Friday saying the the head of the People's Committee (top level of government) in the province was going to meet with the officials to encourage them to complete our files. That provided a glimmer of hope.

On Monday we both learned that if the officials didn't approve our files by September 1 we would lose our referrals. Brian and I have been looking at pictures of An and dreaming about our life with her since June 7, 2007. To lose her now was more than I could bear to think about. Our agency was fairly confident that the approval would come, but they weren't going to guarantee anything until it was done. Tuesday afternoon they told us that some of the approvals were complete but they didn't yet know which ones. Nothing on Wednesday. Nothing on Thursday.

Thursday night at 8:12pm a message came through on my BlackBerry:

Hi Wendi,
Just wanted to let you know that all is well - the DOJ provided the needed letter. Will update you more next week, but wanted you to relax.

I am able to breathe again.

This means we have DOJ approval. While we have three more approvals to go, we anticipate that we will travel by the end of the year. Christmas in Vietnam is likely.

An - we are almost there!

Wendi