Urgh....

When I started this blog I thought I would keep it very impersonal, just state the facts and give updates, but today I must vent. I am starting to feel like this is never going to happen, we have been done with our home study for almost a month and we have yet to sign off on it because every time I think we have everything we need we are waiting on one more thing, urgh!! I thought we could sign off on it and get our appointment to get fingerprinted and begin that long wait but so far nothing has happened. Our agency also just lengthened their wait time from 6 to 9 months for a referral to 12 to 15 months, that seems like forever since we haven't even sent our dossier off yet. Yesterday I was so optimistic and felt like God was totally in control and some how today I have totally lost sight of that. I know in my mind that God is still in control but I am longing for my sweet babe and 10 weeks for our I-171, 12 to 15 months for referral, 2 months for a court date, and 1 month to travel = FOREVER.

Friends

This weekend we got to go to a dinner with other families that are or have adopted from Ethiopia and a family from Ethiopia. It was so much fun. It was great to hear the stories of the families that have already adopted and to meet their adorable children. Seriously, it was a little ridiculous how cute these kids were. We also go to eat Ethiopian food for the first time. It was delicious. Kevin and I loved it and Oliver actually really liked it. Kaden was too busy playing with the kids to stop and taste it. I was a little nervous about the injera, which is basically a thin bread that you eat your food with, I have heard conflicting reports on this but I thought it was really good. I also like the fact that it was spicy, yummy.

The Ethiopian family that was there is so sweet. They were speaking to all of the kids in Amharic (did I spell that right?) and telling us as much about the Ethiopian culture as they could. It was great.

On Sunday night we went to my sweet friend Heidi's birthday party. We drove up to Denver and went to Dave and Busters. I had never been there before, but we had a lot of fun. Kevin and I were rockin' it on the Deal or No Deal game, mainly Kevin but I did help. It was so fun and now I am determined to get him on that show for real, if he did as well on the show as he did on this game we are a shoe in for the million dollars. I of course have no pictures to post of our fun weekend because I can never remember my camera, but it was fun.

Dossier continued...

We are moving along with our dossier. We have dropped off our police clearance letters at the police station, and they should be back in 7 to 10 days. We got a notarized bank statement. My passport came back in the mail the other day. We dropped our medical letter form off at our doctor's office, this is our second attempt because the first time there was a problem with the notary. We have some friends working on letters of recommendation for us (Thanks!). We are waiting on our employment letters. So, we have gotten quite a bit done, but we still have much more to do. This whole process is a constantly teaching me that the control I think I have over my life is false. God is the only one that is in control and knows what the outcome will be. We just have to continue to trust that he knows where we are going, who our child is, and how he wants to bring us to them. I am trying to rest in Him and trust that truth.

Dossier Here We Come!

We had our dossier meeting yesterday to go over all of the paperwork that we need to gather to send to Ethiopia. It is a long list of to do's but I am pretty motivated so hopefully that will help the process go quickly. There is nothing that seems like it is going to be too difficult to get but you never know where you are going to run into bumps. The last piece of paper, the USCIS approval, can take 10 weeks after we get fingerprinted (again) and since we haven't even sent in our paperwork requesting our fingerprint appointment we still have a little wait before our paperwork will be heading to Ethiopia. I think all of this paperwork will keep me busy for a while so hopefully that will help the time go by quickly.

I have also met a couple families here in Colorado Springs that are in process of adopting or have adopted from Ethiopia, I haven't actually met them yet, just e-mail and blog met them. Anyways, one of the families is having a dinner next weekend and has invited us. I can't wait to meet these families and have a traditional Ethiopian dinner. Since we have started this process I have longed to have a community here in town that we can connect with. It makes me that much more excited to bring our little babe home!

Final Homestudy

This is Kevin and I after our final homestudy meeting... okay not really but this is exactly what we did when we left the office. We are done!!!!! The only thing left for our homestudy is to wait for our social worker to write it up and then we will meet with her to review it and sign off on it. And.... our background checks are back, and have actually been back for the last two weeks, that means it only took a month and half instead of the estimated 2 to 4 months! Yeah. So we are meeting with our social worker next week to go over the dossier (the paper work for Ethiopia) and she estimated that it would take about two months to complete. We could potentially have our dossier in Ethiopia sometime in June or July. This is all very exciting for me since I thought it was going to take forever. I am fully expecting some setbacks, but I am encouraged that the background checks came back so quickly since they can hold up the process quite a bit. Ahhh, it feels good to have one more thing to check off our list.