We actually heard in early August that our case had been approved and signed off on in the courts, but we could not get our official typed and sealed documents until this past weekend. I'm not sure of the dates on the document as we haven't seen a copy yet, but sometime around August 25th, we officially became a family, even with an ocean between us.
After those are collected and our Certificate of Non-Appeal is issued, Jonathan will be moved to the agency transition house in Kinshasa. This will be a very exciting step as it means that we are in the final stretch of our process and it also means very frequent updates on Jonathan. As the transition home is run by our agency, I can be sure he'll receive our care packages and I should often receive health and personality updates. We expect he will be in the transition home for 6-8 weeks, after which we are able to pick him up!
I never thought we would be looking at November as a pick-up time frame (my worst case scenario time frame was always October), but I don't see any possible way that we could make it any earlier than mid-November. Fingers crossed that the remaining documents needed come through much more efficiently than our other court documents.
So, like most every other step in the adoption process, we wait. And Jonathan waits (though he probably has no clue who or what he's waiting on). To celebrate our court news, Adam and I are painting and re-decorating the kids' rooms for Jonathan's impending arrival. I've been waiting on this step, but I feel like we can now confidently say we'll be a family of five very soon!
