The Journey

We want to start this post by expressing so much appreciation for all of you who have helped us in this paper chasing process! Some of you have written letters of reference, answered questions, helped us find documents, allowed us to use photos of you, ran errands for us, and so much more! WE CANNOT EXPRESS HOW TRULY BLESSED WE ARE TO HAVE SUCH WONDERFUL FRIENDS AND FAMILY! This post is very exciting to write! Hence my obnoxious capital letters and exclamations! We are excited to tell you that our documents have been sent to US Immigration Services, and we are now waiting for their approval. Once we are contacted by the FBI and fingerprinted, we will received a letter from Immigration stating that we have the approval to bring an orphan into the US. As soon as we receive this letter, our dossier (massive stack of papers that go to Ethiopia) is ready to be sent to our adoption agency for a final approval and then translated. Once we send these papers, we are told it will be somewhere ...

Wow! It has been a month since I last posted anything. The month of September has been the month of getting papers, and having people notarize them, and going back and getting them fixed, and then usually going back and getting them fixed one more time! The great news is we are pretty much done with the major paperwork! Have nothing more to collect for ourselves. We are currently waiting on the notarized copy of our home study. It should be in sometime this week. As soon as we are able to pick it up, we will be shipping one of the copies along with a few other documents to US Immigration. This is when we petition to bring a foreign orphan into the US. Once we send the documents, we wait for the FBI to contact us about fingerprinting. Once we get the okay from immigration, WE FINALLY GET TO SEND OUR DOSSIER! Our dossier is a extremely large stack of precious papers that will be translated and shipped to Ethiopia. The end of the paper-chase is definitely in sight! I can't wait fo...

As much as we love being a family of two,WE CAN'T WAIT TO BE A FAMILY OF THREE!         Jeffrey and I are so blessed to have such awesome friends and family who want to stay updated on how the adoption process is going. I am sorry I haven't posted lately, but summer is over and real life (going to work, taking two classes, grading, and planning) has returned. Here is what has happened since we last posted.         Tomorrow, I am going to review the home study draft. As long as everything looks good, I think it will be sent off for approval and then our home study we will be complete. We are still waiting on Jeffrey's doctor's letter and physical forms; I am growing very impatient with them. It has been almost four weeks since we were in for his checkup. Next week, we have to attend adoption training Wednesday night and all day Saturday. We have already done 10 hours of training, but the state of Illinois won't ac...

Home visit was a success! Besides the fact that Atti (our 3lb yorkie) wanted to growl at the social worker the whole time, our home visit went very smoothly. Thankfully, we were able to leave our office the way that it currently is and not change it into the nursery yet. We just had to show that our house was large enough for our baby, safe, and clean. Many people think the home study is just a one visit thing, but it is so much more than that. The home study is basically a huge document that tells the state of Illinois, the government of Ethiopia, and everyone else who has to approve us who we are and every little thing about us. It is more of a short biography if I had to describe it. Our home study is currently being composed. We are still are waiting on Jeffrey's doctor's exam, and Jeffrey's employee letter (YEAH! JEFFREY GOT A NEW JOB!) This past week has just been a whirlwind. We have been praying and believing that Jeffrey would receive a full time job in time to s...

Jeffrey getting fingerprinted Our first visit with the social worker was yesterday, July 27, 2012. We had requested a certain social worker due to a friend's referral, but they assign you to a social worker. We were so pleased with the social worker we were assigned to work with. Susan not only knows a lot about international adoption, but she adopted her three children internationally. It was nice to know that the person working with us had went through a similar experience. She did tell us that adoption is much more time consuming and challenging then it use to be. I figured so, because I have spoke with many older people who have adopted children which are now my age, and they make it seem like it was an easy process. We were first interviewed (I don't know if that is really the right word, but I kind of feel like that is what we were doing) together and then she divided us up and asked us things individually. I honestly thought the questions that we were asked togethe...

We are currently in Delaware spending the last day of vacation visiting family. As we told you in our last blog that we were waiting for the social worker to contact us, but she was on vacation. Of course, she is now home and ready to meet with us, and we are hours from home. We will arrive home late tomorrow night. Next week, we both have doctor's appointments to have our medical exams done for our home study and for our dossier. We both have to meet with the social worker individually, and then she will come visit our home and speak with both of us. We are hoping we can have this all done before Rachel goes back to school. This is the last big thing besides the FBI finger printing that has to be done before we can send everything to Ethiopia. We are also still waiting on Jeffrey's birth certificate so please pray that it comes soon! We just have a minor things besides passport photos (we already have our passports but we still have to get passport photos). Even though w...

Our last post was mentioning how we are currently in the process of waiting for the social worker to contact us. Jeffrey contacted them on Monday, and they told us that the adoption social worker would be on vacation till next Monday! We have been trying to do the things that we can to prepare for the home study. We are trying to do little things around our house. I have been trying not to think about how nothing has really moved in a while. We are still gathering and creating information that we need for our dossier which goes to Ethiopia. Even though the home study process is taking a little longer to get started than we planned, we will have almost everything ready to ship off when it is complete. Please keep us in your prayers. The other night it really hit me hard that my baby who may not be born yet is not going to have his/her mommy and daddy at the beginning of his/her life. I just began to weep as I thought about this. Oh how I can't wait to meet him/her. Even though we ...