TA at last!

Last night we received news that we were officially issued our Notice of Travel document, also known as our Travel Approval or TA. It took about 19 days to get after our Article 5 was picked up in October. Now all we need is a confirmation of our Consulate appointment in Guangzhou, which we should have by tomorrow....which means we will have definite travel dates, FINALLY!
Then we can book our flights, arrange our hotels, & get an intenienery for our two week stay in China. But most importantly, we'll finally have an actual date of when we will get our little Madeline! In the adoption community, they refer to this day as "Gotcha Day". This is so surreal especially after so many years of waiting, to actually get a date soon of this very special day. Our consulate appointment will determine how soon we can leave. It is possible we can still leave as early as next week, but I highly doubt it just from the info I've been hearing in our Sept.'06 LID group online. Apparently they are booking late November & December appointments, which means we could leave on the 15th or the 22nd ( really hoping its not later than that ). Typically the way it works for adoptive families is they leave on a Thursday & have a few days to rest or sightsee, then fly to the child's province on Sunday  where the official adoption will take place, and get the children on Sunday or Monday. For us it will most likely be on a Monday ( so we have been told ).   

-That's all for this post....hoping to be able to post news about our travel dates by tomorrow ( which is Halloween btw ). -We are so excited to finally be at this phase!