Today is a very special day. As you all know, for almost a year now we have been patiently waiting in a long line of families to be processed and finally be able to travel to Korea to be united with their child. Little by little, month by month, our file has been slowly moving to the top of the line.
Today we were notified that our file has been requested by Korea to be prepared for submission to the government to get Grant's exit/emigration permit (EP)! So what does this mean exactly? It means that today we enter the first stage of processing to bring Grant home. We filled out some additional paperwork, our file will be translated for the government and Court and the biggest step of all- they will be attempting to contact Grant's birth mother to relinquish her rights for a second time due to the new law. Please think of her and pray for her this month as she has to go through this again.
So, what happens next? This process is anything but predictable right now and you can breeze through one step just to get hung up for weeks on another step. But right now, this is how the timeline is looking:
1) File requested to prepare for EP submission (TODAY!): 1-2 months
2) File submitted to the Ministry of Health & Welfare for EP: 2 months
3) Approved for EP, waiting for court date to be set: 1-2 months
4) Notification of court date to arrival in Korea- 1-1.5 months
On average, agencies are telling families from the point we are today it should take 5-6 months until we are in Korea. So, we have our eye on being in Korea in March right now! It's too hard to predict for sure but every time we get through another stage of the processing we will get a better idea of when! As long as we are there before Grant turns 2 on April 20th, I will be a happy Mommy. But March would be even better:-)
I must say, luck was on our side today! We knew we were on the edge of making the cut-off for this "prep" group they announced based on how big the last two groups have been. We didn't tell anyone this could be happening soon since we didn't know what way it would go. Since they base it on the date they received your referral acceptance paperwork (11/7/12 for us), I kept thinking of Cody and I standing in the FedEx store last year and Cody saying he didn't want to pay for overnight shipping! Lucky for Cody we made this group's cut-off by ONE day, it was 11/8/12, so no overnight shipping was needed, ha. We were the last family in our agency to make the cut-off. Sure, we will probably get the shaft at another point in the process the next few months but you have to celebrate the small victories, right?!
Hang on Grant, Mommy and Daddy are coming for you!
My friend in Arlington recently got her court date in Korea for October 30th and this Saturday night is having a "court date party!" It will be fun to celebrate our good news with all my Korean adoption Mommy friends this weekend:-)
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