One letter down, one to go...

Well today the long awaited letter from DSS finally arrived. We have been waiting on this letter for several weeks now. I have gotten used to going to the mailbox and not finding anything but bills and junk mail so when I went today I almost overlooked the letter. I had to look at it twice before I realized that it was from DSS. This is a letter from South Carolina's Department of Social Services that states we are approved by South Carolina to adopt Madison. We are now waiting on the approval letter from Immigration. I have been told that typically it takes about 2 weeks to get the letter from Immigration after the DSS letter has arrived, but I am not holding my breath. This letter just puts us one step closer to the time when we will get to bring her home. In the mean time we are working on getting her room ready. We ended up having to do some repair work to a wall in her room which has postponed us from painting but hopefully I will be able to get started painting next week. I am also in the process of getting things together for a yard sale to help raise money for the adoption. I am not a yard sale person (I don't do mornings) but this is something I felt led to do so we are having a yard sale on July 21.
Below you will see some pictures of the "ziploc of love" care package we sent to Madison. We were able to send a small package with someone who is going down tomorrow to pick up her two little girls. She was gracious enough to save room in her luggage for several families to send the "ziploc of love" care packages. We were only allowed to send items in the ziploc bag due to someone hand carrying the packages. I am just grateful we were allowed to send her something. I know she is really small and won't even really know who the package is from but Wayne and I will know as well as her Foster Mother. We sent some photo books with pictures of the Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins. Again she is too small to really look at them but we are hoping that the Foster Mother will look at them and show them to her. I wrote the name of each person in Spanish and English so that there would be no question as to who each person was. For example, Wayne and I are listed as Papa, Mama, and Daddy and Mommy.