Adoptive families...

Matt and I met for the first time with some families adopting from Africa this afternoon. We met at a park in Greensboro for lunch and a time to meet. It was kind of like the first day of school in a new place...where you don't know anyone and have all of this nervous energy. But it turned out great as we got hear everyone's stories. The families are in all different areas of the adoption process. Some already had their kids, one family was traveling to Ethiopia in a couple of weeks, others were on the waitlist and then there was us who are still in the paperwork phase. I thank God for this group of people. Because they truly know what it is like. The stressors, the waiting and the complete awesomeness of adoption. I look forward to getting to know them all and having our baby grow up with others from his country.

Conference call

Just got off the phone for the monthly Gladney Ethiopia program update. Currently the wait time from Gladney approval to referral is 8 full months for families wanting a child 0-12 months. That's us..except we are still not on the wait list yet!! I still have not heard if the agency received Matt's court report from his speeding ticket that was sent in last week. Once they get that then they can send our homestudy to the Immigration office. Well that is all for now.

I found out today that our adoption agency, Gladney, received our homestudy. YEAH!! There was one problem though. About a year ago Matt got a speeding ticket and not only did he get a speeding ticket but he didn't have proof of insurance in his car!! Keep in mind that I regularly tell him to slow down, especially in that area because it is down hill at 35 mph. So Matt had to write a letter of remorse for getting his ticket to the adoption agency. I told him he should put that he would listen to his wife from now on because she always tells him to slow down. Of course he didn't. But now I found out that we also need the police report from that incident :( I thought we were done getting papers, but hopefully it will be easy to get and that can be sent in. Once that is in they can send our information to CIS so we can get a letter of approval to adopt!! And then be put on the wait list!

Another very exciting thing happened. I was put in touch, by our home study social worker, with some local families who are adopting from Ethiopia. They are having a get together on the 30th at a park in Greensboro, so Matt and I are going to try and go and meet some of the families. Hopefully there will be some families who already have their beautiful Ethiopian kids!! How exciting!

Being patient

No adoption update to report. We are still waiting for our social worker to send in our home study report. She also sends a copy to the immigration office and then they have to send us a letter. Then our adoption agency has to approve us. Once we get this we can be put on the waitlist!! It is so hard to be patient as she sent us the draft of the report over a week ago for us to look over. And I immediately sent it back with our ok. So just waiting...

Well...

So I am super excited. I am pretty sure that Matt and I are done with our paperwork!!! Well I better correct myself, we are done with everything we have to do. On Friday we had the last of our paperwork notarized and I was finally able to get my medical form situated. Actually I made Matt handle it as I have had it up to here with them...and it took him 3 hours to get the form filled out. It is such a relief to know that the medical form is completed, for the third time, hopefully the last time. So anyway I plan on sending all of our remaining forms (my medical, passport copies-we had to redo as we did not sign our full name, FBI results, and two references) to Kate our Dossier service, on Monday to be looked over to make sure that the forms are good to go.

We are only waiting on two things. First, our homestudy report to typed up (I just found out that the woman completing our report had to be with her sick father, so please pray for healing). And second our Immigration letter..but they can't send that until they have our homestudy. So that is it, that is all we are waiting for until we can be placed on the wait list!!! Once on the wait list we will wait for around 9 months until they give us a referral for our child. The referral will include pictures, medical info, and any background information that they know. After we accept the referral we are given a court date in Ethiopia. The court date is usually about 2-3 months out after you accept the referral. Once they approve us on that court date we make plans to travel over and pick up baby E in Ethiopia!