"USCIS has provisionally approved your Form I-800, Petition to Classify Convention  Adoptee as an Immediate Relative."  We are so excited to get this approval.  Now we work towards the Article 5 so we can get a court date and then travel to Poland.

I do think it is interesting that the U.S. Government still uses snail mail.  The approval date is listed as August 19.  We then receive it five days later.  Wondering how many trees and stamps they use in a typical year using this 1980's way of doing business.  Has anyone told them about the internet and email?  :)  Again, loving our tax dollars at work :) 

Vehicle options for a family of nine?

We test drove a Chevy Suburban.  You can get one with the bench front seat so that it does have seat belts for nine passengers.  However, the middle front passenger does not have an airbag. 

I test drove a 12 passenger Nissan van.  Very nice - not much of a church van feel to it but the head rests blocked being able to see out of the rearview mirror.  The dealer did say that could modify the backup camera so you could see behind you while driving but it is not a good viewing camera.

So, we did find a third option that we are going to order for our Ford Expedition EL.  You can add a four row or a jump seat (or two) in the back. www.littlepassengerseats.com  Each seats is specifically designed for mounting in a specific vehicle and complies with the Department of Transportation Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.  So paying about $700 for a jump seat versus buying a new or newer vehicle. 

So after we receive the provisional approval from USCIS (hopefully soon), here are the next steps in the process:

-wait on the National Visa Center (NVC) is forward the provisional approval to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. 
-then Sasha, our Polish representative, files the DS230 at the Embassy in Warsaw.  The DS230 is the Visa application.
-The Article 5 is then written by the U.S. Embassy and then Sasha hand carries it to the National Adoption Center (NAC - central adoption authority in Poland). 
-The NAC then notifies the local court that all the paperwork is complete and ready for court.
-The local court then must decide if we need to be in Poland for the first court date and the second OR just for the second court date.  The time frame between the first and second court date is a couple of weeks. 

The family that is about 4-5 weeks ahead of us in the process was just notified that they will be required to attend their first court date on September 1. 

WAIT - so my math mind quickly calculates that we could be in Poland in October!  Wow!

Receive a I-797C update on our documents.  They have to sit in a "lockbox" for two weeks to make sure they do not contain anything dangerous (sounds weird to me but that is our federal government).  So the documents are now leaving the lockbox and can now be reviewed by an actual person :)  that hopefully will approve it quickly. 

We are able to modify the POA to limit it to those matters relating to the adoption.  So we signed the revised document and send it on to Lifeline. 

Lifeline needs a Power of Attorney authorization from us so we can have a facilitator in Poland, that speaks Polish, represent us in court.  I forward the document on to our attorney for his review because the document does not specific limit the POA to those matters relating to the adoption.