Timeline

Lots of people have been asking me about the timeline for our adoption. Considering the number of kiddos needing a home it has been shocking to people to hear how long it takes. Don't worry, I was shocked at first too! But here is where we stand and here is what we have left to do before becoming a family of 3!

DONE:
Locating an agency we feel comfortable with- check
Initial paperwork filled out and notarized- check
Initial phone interview with agency- check
Initial acceptance into the Ethiopia program- check
Location of an out of state home study agency (our agency is based in Alabama so we were on our own here)- check
Initial paperwork filled out an notarized for home study agency- check
Social worker matched with us- check
Location of all marriage licenses, birth certificates, passports, income tax returns, and photos of our home- check
Three letters of recommendation sent to home study agency and three letters sent to us for dossier paperwork- check
First home study visit- check

In process:

*Gathering financial statements from both of our jobs
*Guardianship forms if we were to die in Ethiopia (kind of made me laugh imagining betho with our little cutie)
*Gathering good standing letters from our bank( this has been a chore! I actually lost it a teeny bit with a bank of America rep and told her I was disappointed that such a large agency was not supportive of helping orphaned children find homes. Dealing with the bank has been the single most difficult thing yet as far as paperwork goes! And it's not bc our credit is bad or we have debt or something. They have just been SO hard to deal with!)
*i600 application (form allowing us to travel to become the legal guardians of an orphan- it takes 5-12 weeks to process)

Still to do:

*letters proving health coverage
*letters proving life insurance
*new passport photos
*bank letter notarized ( this may literally take an act of God)
*lots of finished paperwork notarized (no biggie)
*final homestudy visit
*8 hours of education
*2 hour Internet seminar
*2 books to read
*have dossier finalized and home study finalized and notarized and sent to agency head quarters and to Washington DC
*send in completed i600a and wait for approval and fingerprinting appointment
*physicals

SO once this is all completed, and our goal is Dec 10th, we will send it all in and wait for approval. This should take around 6 weeks. Once we are approved we will get fingerprinted and this will take around 4 weeks to be approved.

THEN we are officially waiting for a referral!!!!! This takes around 3-6 months. Once we get our referral( which is a pic of our baby and any history they have) we say yes or no. Of course we will say YES. Once we say yes, we wait for a court date in Ethiopia. The wait for a court date is around 2 months right now. We will then go to Ethiopia and meet our baby and deal with some legal stuff.

We will then very very very very very sadly be sent home and await another court date to return to Ethiopia and appear in court one more time and pick up our baby and finally bring her home!! They wait between court dates right now is 8-12 weeks.

Many have asked me how old our baby will be. We are hoping for an infant and feel pretty confident that we will be referred a young baby. However, as you can see there are several months tied up in legal stuff so some time will pass between the time we see our babies first picture and actually have her home I Sugar Land. Likely 5 months or so. We are guessing she will be closer to 8-9 months old when we get her home.

So in a nutshell (ha!), we are about about 2 months from being on the waiting list and then we will be about 9 months from baby Agan being home. We hope we will have her in less than 12 months, however I think that 12 "ish" months is a realistic estimate. But what's a year in the big scheme of things right!?

Happy week everyone!! It's almost time for Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for?? I know what we are thankful for around here!!