WE ARE OUT OF PGN AND COMING HOME!!

Hallelujah!! Blake's adoption was FINALLY approved on Friday, Dec.28 at PGN. He is officially our son and we will be coming home to Washington at the end of January or first of February. We are still in shock that this actually happened AND happened 3 weeks earlier than expected. This is what happened. Chris, Blake and I were getting ready to go to the city for our monthly formula and diaper run when we received a phone call from our agency. Apparently, Barrios' secretary had called them asking them to call me to come to PGN to meet with Barrios. This is usually unheard of so of course, we thought the worst. We did however, submit the "special consideration" letter before Christmas so we wondered if it had something to do with it. So we rushed to PGN and went right into his office upon arrival. He sat us down and was very nice (compared to last time) and had our file with the letter attached on the table. He also brought in an interpretor for Chris which we thought was a nice gesture. He wanted to know if we had indeed written the letter ourselves first of all. We said "yes" of course and I told him that we had it translated by a translator to ensure the letter was written in Spanish correctly. He then proceeded to say that he was giving our case an exception and approving our case 3 weeks early. The letter worked!! We were amazed and thanked him up and down. Can you believe I actually hugged the guy?!! What was I thinking? We plan to write him a letter thanking him again and asking him to please consider other families that write letters in similar situations. He told us he loved children and reached out to hold Blake who immediately screamed (I had to laugh inside) and reached back for me! Our agency representatives Lourdes and Alex met us at PGN shortly after and physically came to pick up the file. I asked (of course) to see the approval letter with Barrios' signature just to be sure. It was there!! There is no way we can go back into PGN ANYMORE! The file is OUT OF THE BUILDING!
The next steps will be: Wednesday, January 2 (after everything opens again) the adoption decree will be picked up at Civil Registry in the city.
Thursday or Friday our birth certificate will get picked up (as we were told it would only be a day to obtain which is VERY lucky as some cases take 3 weeks to obtain), and then the following Monday we will get Blake's Passport and 2nd DNA test. We should be submitted to the embassy by the 2nd week of January and have our Visa appt hopefully 2 weeks later. Our agency swears we will be going home by the end of the month, although we're estimating the first of February around Blake's first birthday as one month usually ends up being longer here. We feel so lucky to be out of PGN now and this will save us a whole month. It's a miracle!! Get ready for one of the biggest welcome home parties you've ever seen when we return to town!! You are ALL invited!!