New timelines to ponder

I have received a lot of questions about the timeline with our new agency. Because AA is so small (they have a lot of experience, but are very selective with the amount of families they have in each program), their time-lines are MUCH shorter than other similarly situated IA agencies, or at least others we investigated.

Since we received our Golden Ticket last night, we are now just awaiting on our State Police clearance (9th set of prints, and 2nd time for this, but State will not certify if the clearance is over 30 days old -- I guess Gregg looks "shifty" and "dangerous" after all!), my IN birth certificate, and that's it. Once we have those documents, I'll get everything IL State certified and will send the original dossier out to Oregon. AA had us set up a FedEx account, so everything travels within a 24 hour period (NICE!!) Our dossier will get Wash DC certified, and then will go out to ETH. I anticipate our DTE will be sometime the first 1/2 of January. Then, we are a waiting family.
The "official" timeline at AA for a referral (no matter singleton or sibs) is 1-5 months; however, the actual time is 6-16 WEEKS. Yes, weeks. With that in mind, we anticipate a referral sometime in March or April. Yes, March or April, but let's say April to stay on the safe side. You are immediately assigned a court date after you accept the referral, and that is 2-4 weeks after the acceptance. So, if we get a referral in April, our court date will be in May. Then you travel about 1 month later. So, again, if we get a referral in April, we would travel for our Embassy hearing in June. Of course, it could be a little sooner or a little later, depending upon our referral date. But this gives you a general idea.
Basically, SAM IS COMING HOME THIS SUMMER!! SAM IS COMING HOME THIS SUMMER!! SAM IS COMING HOME THIS SUMMER!! SAM IS COMING HOME THIS SUMMER!! SAM IS COMING HOME THIS SUMMER!! SAM IS COMING HOME THIS SUMMER!!