Home Study is wrapping up

Our home visit went really well last week. Now, our home study report is being prepared and now we are working on our Dossier....the official paperwork that the Ethiopian government will review to approve us and get us on the waiting list. We're starting to see the waiting list creep up to 11 and 12 months with our agency. It's a little discouraging, but there are families that have been waiting even longer with other agencies and there are families waiting a shorter period as well. It just varies on the agencies. I'm so impatient so this is very trying for me to imagine waiting a year or more just on the waiting list because after that, we aren't even able to travel to pick up our baby until 4 months after we get information on who they are. One more training session tomorrow night and that should wrap up our required training!

Tuesday is our home visit

So, we have our home visit schedule for this Tuesday. It will consist of a social worker coming to our house to see where we live and conduct interviews with us together and one on one. We'll let you know how it goes!

Completed Parenting Class

Well, we have completed our parenting class at the hospital this week. I made Josh get to class 25 minutes early with me just so we could have the 1 black baby doll in class. He thought I was pretty ridiculous. ;)

We have news from our international agency that the Ethiopian courts will not be closing for the rainy season this year. Normally, they are closed from Aug - Oct and any adoptions that are to be finalized during that time have to wait until the courts open back up again. This is great news for the families that have a pending adoption that is in the Ethiopian courts now! Hopefully, next year they will not close either, as that's when our adoption should be close to being in the hands of the court system there.

Still waiting for our home visit to be scheduled....

Waiting for our Home Visit

Hi there. As many of you know, we are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. I thought this would be the best way to keep our family and friends updated on where we are currently at with this adoption process as we are getting lots of questions. I'm excited everyone is asking what's going on and where we are at with things! It's going to be a long road, so I hope to be able to update this every couple of days.

Right now, we are going thru several different required training courses. We completed an international adoption workshop this weekend. It was a 7 hour workshop! However, we learned a lot and met some other couples going thru the same thing and realize we have a lot more to consider and figure out for our adoption. Not to mention things down the road that we realize we will encounter & our child will encounter. The amount of information being thrown at us is completely overwhelming, but it is necessary to keep our focus (and sanity) so we can just work thru the steps together.

Our first round of paperwork is complete (and was exhausting) and are awaiting a call from our social worker so we can conduct our home visit and interviews in person. Once we get this process under way, we will be able to focus on getting our 2nd round of paperwork together...the DOSSIER, which will be what the Ethiopian government will see once we have a "referral" (child).

So, our focus this week is to attend our 2nd parenting class at the hospital and watch some videos. So much training! :)