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!!

Baby stuff

These are their first bibs Their cloth diapers and baby legs

Sleepers I got on clearance at Target=$2.08/piece

I bought these on etsy.com(just in case you can't tell the ribbons are pacifier holders)

Just thought I would show you all what I have been doing while we waited on our paperwork to be done. Internet shopping is the DEVIL I tell ya. I don't know what I am going to do while waiting on our referral, I have no money left now. Oh well I can always use Christmas money. HeHe! I do need to stop buying stuff though, it's going to get to the point where there won't be anything left to by for our baby shower. Actually there is always something cute to buy. Plus I'll leave all the really expensive things for friends and family. LOL;0) Just kidding. I haven't bought anything that is on my wish list so there are plenty of things left and they are not all expensive just a few things. In fact I think the most expensive thing on my wish list is $80.00. I have been extremely blessed in that our big ticket items have been given to us by great friends. Our cribs, a double stroller, some great toys and books have been taken care of and I found a good condition changing table at a baby consignment store for only $30.00 earlier this year. So all in all we don't need too many big ticket items. The $80.00 item is the bedding. I can't wait to start really decorating the nursery. It's going to be so fun. It will definately be the best looking room in the house. Well that's all for now. Have a great weekend.

Cloth diaper contest

On the sidebar there is a link to "Free Diaper Friday". Click on that and you could win $300 in free diapers from Diaper Junction. Of course if you win you have to buy me two diapers. LOL;0) I know I am going for it, we can use all the help we can get. And cloth diapers are definately what our mom's used they are much easier and cuter. Go and check it out and Good Luck.

Our Dossier has left the building

We finally, after over 9 months since our first home study meeting, fed ex'd our dossier to our agency. I'm so freakin' excited. We just rec'd our 171h today. When I went to the mailbox and saw the envelope on top I started jumping up and down and ran into the house. As I was texting Matt to let him know we rec'd it I was dancing, laughing and crying all at the same time. I'm sure I looked ridiculous. I went and picked up Matt from work and we drove 1 1/2 hours away to get it certified with the sec of state, spent 8 minutes in their office and then drove 1 1/2 hours back home. We laughed at how silly that sounded, but it was totally worth it. When we got back into town we went and fed ex'd the entire dossier to our agency, it will be at their office tomorrow afternoon. What's kinda cool, or nerdy take your pick, is that the Friday before my birthday, which was on a Sunday, we rec'd our DCFS approval letter and today on Matt's birthday we rec'd our 171h. Again take your pick, cool or nerdy;0) So where we go from here is: After our dossier gets to our agency they will send it to Washington D.C. to be federally certified, then it goes to the Ethiopian government to be translated then registered, once it is registered with the Ethiopian government we are officially a "waiting family". Hopefully this will all happen with in a month to a month and a half, more than likely will be the latter with all the holidays coming up. Either way the awesome thing is it is finally gone and we are much closer to getting our referral(s) than ever before. I can't believe that this time next year I may know who our children are. How cool is that?!

Here are two pics of the paperwork.

Our Dossier & 171H "Golden Ticket

Diapers & stuff

So I bought our first cloth diapers today. I bought 2 soft bums, 2 gro baby, 3 smartipants and 2 bum genius 3.0. I never thought I would be excited about diapers. I have been researching cloth diapers ever since we decided to adopt (that is a long time to look into diapers). The hardest part is that everyone has something to say about each one of them good and bad, and not until we use them on our children will we be able to decide which are best for us. So far the concensus is "yay" for bum genius. I will more than likely go with them and the the soft bums, they seem like they would fit our lifestyle the best, plus I have heard great things about them from many other cloth diapering mom's. But until we have our little ones we will not know what will fit them the best. I decided to go the cloth diapering route when I found out that disposables stay in landfills for 500 years. That is crazy. I am not a "green" person by any means, but 500 years is an awful long time to sit in a landfill. Plus the cost is also a huge factor in wanting to go with cloth diapers. Since I will only be working part time, I am trying to find ways that we can save money once our little ones come home, for example I also want to make our own baby food. Not only will we save money but it will also be better for our children. If I make their food we will know what is in it instead of all the preservatives in store bought food. Same goes for the diapers. Cloth diapers don't have the ickys that are in disposables. Now I know that more than likely if our children come home with Giardia (sp?), which is a parasite that causes terrible smelling and water like poo, we will probably use disposables, but I will try and use a earth friendly version. I'm hoping that in a year and we, hopefully, have our children home, and I look back at this post I still feel the same way. Only time will tell.

On the adoption front. We are still waiting on our 171h. I am hoping it will be here very soon. I have learned not to hold my breath in this process. The worst part is that we still have a lot of waiting in front of us. Right now with our agency the wait times for infants is 5-6 months, hopefully they are still at this range by the time we get our paperwork in. My Christmas wish is to have our dossier sent off before Christmas. That is the one and only thing on my Christmas list this year. Please Santa, I have been a very good girl this year.

Fun weekend

On Friday Matt and I went to get our second HEP B shot. We then went to Springfield to get all of our paperwork state certified. While we were in Springfield we went to White Oaks Mall, not much to write about on that though. That mall used to impress me, maybe I'm too old to be excited about malls. I would have loved to go to Babys R Us while we were there but it took all the sweet talking I had to get Matt to go t0 the mall. Saturday we had Christmas with Matt's mom's side of the family then Matt and I went to St. Louis with good friends of ours. We just went to St. Louis for the night but it was a lot of fun. We went to eat on the Landing then we went to the 2 casinos there in St. Loius. Matt and I didn't do so well at the the casinos though, but it was still a good time. I unfortunately have a very bad cold and it hit with a vengenance on Sat. night so I didn't get to have as good of a time as I would have liked, plus I lost my voice so it was hard to have a conversation. We went to a couple of bars on the Landing after the casinos then back to our room to pass out. The great thing was that because of my cold I didn't drink too much and was the only one who didn't feel like death the next day, well atleast I didn't feel like hangover death. I thing we all realized that we are getting too old to be partying like we used to. I'm glad we don't do it that often. Sunday I really didn't feel that well. Matt and I just layed around at home and slept off and on. Watched the Bears lose, yet again and went to bed. I felt so bad, Matt ended up sleeping in our guest room cause I was coughing so much he couldn't sleep. He's such a trooper. Now I am just ready to these next three days over and have a four day weekend. Not to mention all the delicious food on Thursday.

HAPPY THANKGIVING EVERYONE!

Oh Happy Day!

This could possibly be the first happy day in this journey called adoption. We received our approval letter from DCFS today and it has now been Fed Ex'd to USCIS and should be arriving in Chicago on Monday morning. What this means for those of you who don't know is that now we wait, yet again, but this time we are waiting for our I171-H, which is our approval to bring orphans into the U.S. This is the last piece of paperwork we need to complete our dossier so we can become a waiting family. Who says that Friday the 13th is a bad day, to Matt and I this was a Good Good Day. And my birthday is Sunday so Happy Birthday to me, the best birthday gift I could get, at this stage of the game anyway. Hopefully next years birthday will be meeting our children for the first time. Of course if this were to happen before my birthday that would be okay too. Okay so now we need prayers that we will get our 171h soon, definately faster than we got our approval letter that is for sure.

Still no approval letter

So in my last post I was all excited that our home study had finally been read and approved by DCFS and that we should have it by the next week, but alas no approval letter. Our social worker said that if he hadn't seen it by Friday (Nov. 6th) that he would call DCFS and find out where it was, but I called our S.W. on Friday and had to leave a message with no call back and then today I find out he is out of the office today. I'm seriously past my patience stage. I am no longer wanting to be nice. I just want our approval letter and I want it now. We have been in this process for 8 months now and we haven't even gotten past the home study stage, which BTW is the first stage. It is ridiculous to say the least. Hopefully I will hear from our S.W. tomorrow, in fact I had better hear something or someone is going to hear from me and I can not promise that it will be nice. So here is to tomorrow.