Acting pregnant. and a Day Spa promotion in Melissa's honor!

Okay, so I'll admit it.  I pulled a pregnancy move the other day.  I held out on all of you for a bit. In a very pregnant move, we got big news and I felt like we had to personally deliver it to a few people before we posted it in the blogosphere for everyone to see! 

So here it is--on Thursday, our dossier got submitted to the State Department of Adoptions!!!

This is a huge milestone in our process!  It means that their government officially has all of our documents in their hands!  Now we wait for the dossier to be approved, which usually takes about 2 weeks.  After that, we wait for our SDA appointment--in her country!!  It usually takes about 2-3 weeks after approval to get the appointment.  That's right, after some quick math on my fingers and frantic page flipping of the calendar that means we are leaving to go get our little girl in 4-5 weeks!!!

The process happened way faster than we expected!  After all, our dossier had only arrived a week ago.  In fact, we were actually writing our stateside helper to see if she'd found out any additional info on Melissa like her name (still no, by the way).  I was tempted to copy and paste the whole email exchange to illustrate what a blubbering fool I was and how excited we are to have this news!

Along with the excitement came a touch of panic.  We were expecting to have an extra 2-3 weeks while the dossier was translated and put in order before it was submitted.  We have a lot to do to get ready for her! 
We are in the process of assembling the room.  We still need to completely guess what size of clothing she'll be in so we can pack for her.  We need to pack us.  We need to get everything arranged for Lily.  

Another great thing that happened on the same day that our dossier was submitted was we found out that a local Day Spa has agreed to do a promotion in Melissa's honor!!  The Shirodhara Day Spa is selling $75 gift certificates right now for just $50!  AND they will donate $5 for every certificate purchased!  This news came with perfect timing as we are now in the home stretch of raising funds before we head over.  So, that being said, if anyone in the Salt Lake City area can spread the word to anyone and everyone about that promotion, it would help us SO much!  Besides, Christmas is just around the corner!! :)