Guess our Referral date

So by the suggestion of a friend, I am going to have a little contest for you all. I'm going to have a guess our referral date contest. Let's see who can get the closest without going over. Now we know that our dossier has been registered but we do not know the exact date of said registration so I am still going to count down to referral from the day our dossier was in the hands of A.A.'s Ethiopian office, which was January 4, 2010. Good Luck to you all. Just leave your guesses in the comments. I will put the winner out to the side. (Sorry no actual prizes, just the satisfaction of knowing you were right or atleast the closest.)

"Waiting Family"

So I just got the news from our agency that our dossier has been registered! What does this mean you might ask? It means we are Officially a "Waiting Family". Next step in this wonderful journey: our referral(s). WooHoo!! The parenthesis around the s is because we are waiting for one referral for twins or two referrals to unrelated children. Oh my gosh, we are there. We are a Waiting Family. Wow that sounds great yet terrifying all at the same time.

This weekend we found out there is a change that needs to be made on our 171H. It is a big deal but it is not something that will hinder our progress thus far. The main thing is that it will need to be fixed before we travel and have our embassy date and that will be quite a few months from now, so we are okay. I found out Saturday that there was a problem so needless to say I was a bit frantic not knowing what it all meant to our paperwork already in Ethiopia. But after talking with our agency director and our social worker today I am a lot better.

Matt and I talked about changing our request to only one child and then adopting another in a year or two after. But then after talking about we realized that we asked for two children for a reason and we have known for 10 months that we were going to be adopting two. We have, as a good friend of mine put it, First-Time-Parent-Jitters. It is getting a bit more scary now. We are no longer waiting for important documents, no longer stalking the mailman for that all too important envelope, we are now waiting for the all too important email telling us that our children are waiting for us. Our children, gosh that sounds awesome. I can't wait to hear mama or mommy coming out of our babies mouths. That will be a very special day for sure. But one step at a time, we need our referral(s) first. So the praying for our referral(s) begins. Thanks for all the prayers thus far. We truly appreciate all the prayers and support from all our friends and family.

Our dossier is in Ethiopia

So according to our FedEx Account our dossier has arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and is being delivered to our agency's lawyer today. So now it needs to be translated and registered, which we were told could take around 3 weeks. Once this is done we are officially a waiting family. I am, however, going to start counting down as of today for our referrals. I don't want to bother our agency to find out when our dossier was registered. Three to four weeks doens't mean that much in the whole scheme of things really. So now we wait, as of right now the wait for a referral is 4-6 months, because we are asking for a boy and a girl infants it might be closer to the six months, but we are prepared for this. We are hoping to be traveling by the end of this year. If it just so happens to happen sooner that would be okay too. I am going to paint the nursery in February. I will post before and after pictures. I bought more diapers and more baby legs, but alas my shopping must stop. We now need to start saving and paying off debt to be able to pay for when we travel. Yes I know it is still a ways away but the travel expense is not cheap, so we are starting now. If I found out when our dossier was registered I will let you all know.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!