have visa, will travel

After our very long, very busy day including 3 hours and 15 minutes of nail-biting in the U.S. Embassy and a 10 minute dash to get new pictures of Emerson because she was too pale in the ones we brought - we have the infamous brown envelope of immigration visa paperwork!!!

We weren't sure how things were going to go at the Embassy because when we finally got called in for our appointment, we realized we were meeting with the grumpy Serbian guy who gave us a hard time the first time we were there. You know, the one who insisted "there are no orphans in Serbia" LOL. Matt and I were both silent as he read very, very slowly through every scrap of paper we gave him. I didn't even dare mention that we were scheduled to go home tomorrow morning and would really appreciate if we could get the visa the same day... of course that was partly because they had tons of signs with huge lettering all over the Embassy that proclaimed IT TAKES 1 BUSINESS DAY FOR VISAS - DO NOT ASK US IF IT CAN BE READY THE SAME DAY!!!

Well after tons of waiting and dashing out for new pictures when they asked for them, we finally went in and did the swearing to everything, the Consulate seemed a bit shocked we were adopting this kid with DS and said, "I could never handle a handicapped child." Geesh. At this point we still had no idea if they were going to give us the visa immediately or not and when she finally asked when we're leaving and I said tomorrow, she said "Hmm...cutting it close."

We went out and waited some more (and bit some more nails LOL) and finally they called us again and there was the envelope, all ready to go!! Longest 3+ hours of my life, but Emerson was an absolute angel the entire time - she sat upright on Matt's lap happily playing with her little toys, only fussed a few times and was easily calmed. :)

And best of all - our family will be back together in just over 24 hours!!!

Next post from me will be tomorrow night from Binghamton! :)