More movement

We had another eventful week regarding the adoption. Tuesday, the third family accepted their referral, and Wednesday the pregnant family took themselves off the list. This officially makes us #2!! Although we knew that this is where we were "unoffically", it is nice to actually have it official, but I still can't believe it!

I also saw on another blog that a family who had their fingerprints taken 3 weeks before us, just received their I-171H. This leads me to believe that we should have ours in about 3 weeks. Because we cannot receive a referral before this comes, I am not expecting any movement until at least then, so things should be slowing down. Everything has moved so fast up until this point, I have gotten a little spoiled. Now I am going to have to get used to just waiting.

Finally, our dossier was reviewed on Wednesday, and I spoke with Allison on Friday. She said everything looked good, except for one small thing. She forgot to tell me that one more document needed to be state certified. So, she is going to send it back to me and as soon as I receive it, Paige and I will head back to Austin. It was such an easy trip last week, that it is worth not having to wait the ten days it would otherwise take in the mail.

I will keep you updated...

Hurry up and Wait...

We had a very eventful week this week, regarding the adoption, and we finally have great news to share...

We are officially #4 on the waiting list!!

I finished gathering and notarizing all of the documents for the dossier, on Monday, and planned to drive to Austin to have them state certified Tuesday. However, I learned Monday night that the Secretary of State's computer system has been down. I tried to call their office on Tuesday, but of course could not get anyone to answer, so I decided I better wait before making the trip. Needless to say, I was very disappointed.

Wednesday morning, we had our appointment with the Office of Homeland Security to have our fingerprints taken. I had read on several blogs that this was a quick appointment, so I told Robbie we would be in and out in no time. Well, of course this was not the case for us, and for those of you who know Robbie, you know that he does not have the most patience for sitting and waiting, especially on a workday. To make things worse, they will not let you bring cell phones in, so he was completely out of commission (work wise) for well over an hour. However, he made it through it. Now we just have to pray that our fingerprints take so we will not have to go back again. If everything does goes well, we should receive our I-171H in a few weeks. This again is our paperwork that allows us to bring our little boy back to the U.S.

Before going to the appointment Wednesday morning, I got online to check the Secretary of State's website. There was a message that their system was still down. I checked again after our appointment, and...still down. Finally, I told Robbie that I was going to make the trip anyway, hoping that they had some way of getting our documents certified. Our adoption coordinator only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I knew if I didn't get the documents to her on Thursday, I would lose several days. So, Paige and I packed up and drove to Austin, praying the whole way. When we arrived, everything was running fine, and we were in and out in thirty minutes, with our documents state certified.

Once we returned home, I drove straight to FedEx and overnighted our dossier to Colorado. I probably tracked the package 100 times between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, until I saw that it arrived safely at IAN. Then, I just waited for Allison to call. I waited until probably 2:30 and was just about to call her, when the phone rang, and I saw the Colorado area code. It was Allison on the other end of the phone telling me that she received everything and that they are going to go through it all next Wednesday, before sending it on to D.C. In the meantime, she had good news...we were officially added to the wait list at #6. Right where we thought we would be!!! But wait, she had more good news. #6 was deceiving, because they just received three referrals and one family already accepted one of them, so by 4:30 we were already #5, and Friday another family accepted their referral, so we are now officially #4!!!
She also informed me that #1 on the list is unexpectedly pregnant, so as long as she doesn't have any complications in her pregnancy, they will skip to the next in line. So, if the third family accepts their referral and the #1 does not have any complications in pregnancy, we are unofficially #2!!! Can you believe it? Already, that fast? As I said earlier, there is no rhyme or reason to how often they receive a referral, but after looking back several months it is about one a month. So, I am hoping to know something by October. Maybe for my birthday we will find out who our precious little boy is. I also learned that our dossier says we will accept a little boy up to 24 months. Allison asked me if there was an age in which we did not want to accept, but I told her that we were just going to pray for God to send us the right little boy for our family, regardless of age. I just feel like everything happens for a reason. There is a reason that we agreed to putting 0 - 24 months on the dossier, and there is a reason that we are where we are on the list. I just want to leave it all in God's hands. With that being said, please pray with us, that we receive the perfect match.

In the meantime, I guess we will just have to wait...

Learning Process

I obviously still have a lot to learn about adoption, and are learning new and different things everyday. As I mentioned in the last post, we were waiting on the I-171H before we sent in our dossier in order to get on the waiting list. Well, I was incorrect! I was reading a blog the other day, and the couple was already on a waiting list, but just now getting their fingerprints taken. So, I called our adoption coordinator, and she said I do not need to wait for the I-171H, and to go ahead and send the dossier.

YEAH!!!

So, I am going to head to Austin, Tuesday, to get a couple of the documents state certified and then I am going to put our dossier in the mail. Allison told me that there are still only 4 families on the infant boy waiting list, so we could be number 5!!! I will let you know as soon as we hear something.

By the way, we also received our fingerprinting appointments and will do that Wednesday morning, at 10:00. Everything is moving right along. I cannot believe it is going so fast. Faster than I can keep up with, that's for sure. We better get some things ready around the house, we are not quite prepared for a baby.

Please keep praying for our little one. Now that things are moving so fast, I feel like he is probably already born. Thanks so much!

Progress Report

I have not updated in so long, because we are having major computer problems at home. However, a lot has happened since I posted last.

We received our notarized copies of the homestudy Tuesday, July 28th, and I had it, along with our I-600a, in the mail to The Department of Homeland Security that afternoon. Again, this is our application to bring an orphan to the United States. On Thursday, August 6th, I received a letter back requesting more information, so I have spent the weekend gathering the items they requested, and will put it back into the mail tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a fingerprint appointment soon. Again, this process usually takes approximately 6 weeks and then we will finally be put on the waiting list.

I also spoke with our adoption coordinator, Allison, and she asked up to raise our age from 0-12 months to 0-18 months. She said that we do not have to accept a child this old, but that in the event that the paperwork gets caught up in court while our child turns one, it will save us time amending the documents. Does that make sense? In other words, if our child turns one, before we are able to process the adoption, we will have to go back and change a lot of paperwork, thus prolonging the adoption even furthur. So, this is just a precautionary step to save us time, in the event that we needed it in the future. With that being said, we could end up with an older child than we first expected. Robbie is excited, because he would prefer an older child, but I am hoping for as young as possible. Either way, we are just praying for the right child for our family, regardless of age.

Allison also said that there are only 4 families on the little boy waiting list right now. So, at this point the wait may not be as long as we had originally expected!! I do not think there really is any rhyme or reason to how the referrals come. I believe there were two little boy referrals in June and one in July, so that could mean two to three months waiting, as opposed to the original five to six I was anticipating.

On the other hand, I also learned that the courts in Ethiopia are closing August 21 until late September for the rainy season. This happens every year, so it is really no surprise, and hopefully this will not affect us too much, since we are not on the waiting list yet. However, I think that this will mean two things. One, that there will not be any referrals during that time, thus the wait list will not change; and two, we may not be able to actually get on the wait list until the courts open back up. I had hoped to be on the wait list by mid September, but since there has been a hiccup with the I-600a, I anticipate that that will push us back on time anyhow.

So, what does all of this mean? It means that things change daily, and it is so difficult to predict anything. I am just trying to keep an open mind about everything, and trying not to get my hopes up about anything, but if I was going to get my hopes up and predict, I would guess that maybe we will be traveling closer to the beginning of the year, as opposed to early Summer. : )

I will post again, as soon as we receive new information. Thanks for checking back.