Oh boy…it is getting harder and harder to “not hold my breath” and “not get my hopes up” about traveling earlier!!!!!

I knew last week that the woman at the CDC in Atlanta, the one who has to review our waiver before it can be sent back to Africa to be approved, was out of the office for several weeks. I knew she was returning to work on Monday, Sept. 25 (yesterday). I assumed that she would be very busy and a lot of catching up to do (her voicemail message said it could take her up to 10 days to return messages!). I assumed this would negatively impact our wait. I worried our paperwork would get lost in a giant backload of work.

I emailed last week and asked a few questions, and left a phone message yesterday after trying unsuccessfully several times to get through to her. This morning I awoke to an email message saying that she had received our waiver yesterday via DHL (I have NO idea why…the Embassy had said that they would be faxing it to the CDC???) AND that she had already reviewed it and faxed her response to the Embassy!!!!!!

She did it in ONE DAY.

We’re not even two weeks into this waiver wait, and we are already down to the very end of the process…the waiver now needs to be approved by the Department of Homeland Security in Nairobi, Kenya, and then they will tell the Embassy in Addis that they can go ahead and issue her visa. This step has taken almost exactly three weeks for the last two families I am aware of.

Three weeks!

Of course that is assuming that the woman who has to approve the waiver doesn’t go on vacation or any other such unexpected delay…but it is really starting to look like we will be traveling in October instead of November.

I haven’t been willing to tempt fate enough to move our tickets yet, but we have an itinerary planned leaving on Oct. 21 (which gives the waiver 3-4 weeks from this point, and allows us not to miss Shane’s birthday or Halloween). We’re hoping to hear something encouraging in the next week so we can feel confident about changing the tickets.

I have been sort of in a fog today…part of me wants to scream and shout and jump up and down…part of me doesn’t dare believe it…part of me wants to freak out and bust my butt and my hurting foot to get that bedroom done downstairs (although I doubt she will sleep in it in the beginning!)

It has been an exciting day though…we are down to one last “stamp of approval” and we can finally be on our way to our sweet Belane.