What next?

What next, indeed...our house has a little while before we add another level of craziness to it.  :) 

How long before that happens?

Although we've done this once before, that doesn't seem to be speeding up the timeline much.  We will still need to get our homestudy updated, get all the paperwork, etc., etc., so we are looking at traveling to get our son some time in 2016.  I'm scheduled to teach in the fall (I think), so I hope we're not traveling earlier than Christmas!

What all do you have to do?

We follow the same set of steps as last time.  For those who missed the first time (or have forgotten), here's a brief run down:

Phase 1:  Paper paper paper
--Get all the paperwork together for our homestudy and dossier (the documents sent to China)
--Get initial permission from US immigration to adopt
--Submit all the paperwork to China and get "logged in."

That all takes about 6 months--maybe a little less because we are just updating our homestudy instead of starting from scratch, but not much. 

Phase 2:  Wait wait wait
--Match with our son!  Our agency is expecting to receive twice the number of files from China this year, so we don't expect to wait long at all.  It's even possible we could have a file on hold before we get logged into China's system. 
--More immigration approval
--More approval stuff from China
--Travel!

And that takes about 6-8 months as well. 

Why now?

The short answer is that David and I are both ready.  The long answer is going to take another post...