Mission Accomplished

We have been tracking our dossier, and it is in Ethiopia!! In the mail yesterday we received a letter from AW with copies of the federal authentication. It was so cool to see Condaleeza Rice's signature on the copies; although my husband's only comment was that her handwriting is too messy. We are now in the big wait of receiving our referral. The AW website says we will wait 3-6 months for this. My friend Kristin says that my feet look swollen and that I need to buy more "pregnancy" outfits... I like the way she thinks!!

Godspeed, Sweet Dossier!!

I got an email yesterday from Duni saying that our dossier was shipped off to Ethiopia!! From reading posts from the YG, I think it will take about a week for it to arrive in Addis. I'm starting to feel more official now that the paperwork is now working for me instead of me working on it. I also am getting those funky baby dreams I got while pregnant with Hally and Brady. Last week I dreamt that we received our baby ( in my dream it was a girl) in the mail!!! Oh, if only it were that easy!!!

Bittersweet Goodbye!!

Monday afternoon I took my first trip to the Secretary of State branch office in Springfield to get my 20 some documents authenticated. I got there at 2ish and by 4:30 they were complete. The good news was that all but one came back authenticated. The bad news, of course, was that one had an error on the notary section. The notary who notarized our I-171H put the current year as 2009, so I had to get it re-notarized with the correct year of 2008. I did this on Tuesday and then went back to Springfield to get it authenticated by the SOS. In the scheme of things that was a very minor hiccup. It could have been a lot worse!!!!!

Yesterday at around 4pm I said goodbye to our dossier at the FedEx store in Springfield. What a variety of emotions that I was feeling. I didn't want to let it go, but I certainly did not want to keep it either. It just seemed so weird to hand off almost 5 months of paperwork (not to mention the thousands of doallars that was required to compile them) to a complete stranger. Right now I am so glad to know they are almost in Virginia, and I am excited about what the future holds due to the perseverance and work that went into our dossier will produce. We are getting a CHILD!!!

The Best is Yet to Come!!

We were absolutely stunned last Friday to check the mail box and see that our I-171H had arrived. We are in total gratitude to God for having grace with us in that He is speeding our journey along. The last post I left, I titled "Godspeed", and I meant it as whatever God chooses as far as timing goes. From the title you would think I meant lightening speed, but I think God works a little slowly at times too. Godspeed is all I want. His perfect timing. As far as our I-171H goes, we certainly got the speedy timing!! This form was not supposed to come until March, and I was mentally preparing myself to turn in our dossier in at the end of March. Now it looks like we should be able to turn it in at the end of the week.... WOOO HOO!

Godspeed

We're getting a little closer every day. On December 27th we went to KC to the USCIS office to turn in our I-600A application and get fingerprinted. This is just about one of the last things we have to do (on our part) as far as paper work is concerned. We should hear back from the USCIS anywhere from 3-9 more weeks. We then will take all our documents to an office in Springfield where they will be authenticated. After we do that, off our dossier will go to McLean, VA where it will be authenticated by the federal government. That my friends (as far as I know) will complete our dossier. It will be shipped to Ethiopia, and we will begin the real wait for the referral of our child. Since the last time I wrote, Kevin and I decided not to request specifically for a female. We thought if God truely wanted us to have another daughter, then that's what we would get. Just in case God chooses for us a son, we have come up with the name Jude Baruk. Baruk is an Ethiopian name that Leoul was going to use for his own son, but never did. It means "blessing".

Progress

What a busy time of the year!! So much has happened in the last few weeks. Just recently we have had our last home visit, and our home study is just about complete. We received an email today with the first draft of our home study attached. We should be completly finished and ready to send it off to the USCIS within a couple of weeks. Really we don't have a lot to do except WAIT. I am getting used to that word!! Whenever we send something off, we wait until we get it back and then send it off again somewhere else and wait again. Right now we are waiting on my birth certificate and the agency recommnedation form to come back from being certified.
On a more interesting topic, a couple of weeks ago, Kevin's roomate from college came with his lovely wife and three kids. His roomate, Leoul and his wife Koni are native Ethiopians. They were very excited and encouraging over our decision to adopt from their homeland. Leoul and his family are excited about embracing our family as we all will try to help Scout learn about her cultural heritage. Leoul belongs to an Ethiopian Christian church in St. Louis where they live. This is exciting to us because there is an established group of believers that we can network with while raising Scout. Leoul also gave us some ideas of traditions we could start in our home to tie Scout's heritage into our family. Evidently, Ethiopians celebrate just about every holiday seven days after we do. Kevin was pretty enthused about the idea of celebrating Christmas two times this year. I need some time to think about that!!

Our Home Study Application

This week we should be able to turn in our home study application and schedule our home visits. I've been told that compiling the paper work for the home study is the most time consuming, so it is definitely good to be almost finished with that! I am hoping that we did it correctly and won't need to go back and do something over!!