Timeline

Right around the time this picture was taken was when we made the decision to pursue adoption. However the original discussion of adoption happened many years before this. In fact both Pete and I talked about our desire to adopt "someday" after we had only been dating for a few months. Two years ago in February 2008 we officially made the decision to pursue adoption. By April we had decided on an agency and we started working on the process to adopt from Vietnam. We were only a few weeks into the process when we were notified by our agency that the Vietnam program may cease their adoptions to the U.S. By September it was confirmed that Vietnam was no longer an option and after considering many other options including U.S. adoption, foster/adopt, and several other countries we decided on Ethiopia.

I won't bore anyone with the paperwork list but let's just say there was a lot! It took us two sets of fingerprints, six referral letters and numerous documents (all of which had to be notarized AND approved by the Secretary of State) to prepare our dossier. We submitter our dossier on April 3, 2009 and were officially put on the waiting list as number 108.

We are currently around number 32 on the list. We don't know when we will receive our referral but we are hoping maybe sometime around April? Receiving our referral means that we are matched with a specific child from an orphanage that our agency works with in Ethiopia that meets the criteria in our homestudy, specifically a baby girl 0-12 months old. Even after we accept the referral we do not travel for several months while the paperwork is finalized. Finally, if all goes well, we will travel to pick up our daughter. Ideally that would be about three months after the referral but we've seen some families have delays of six months and longer.

So, that's it in a nutshell. For now we are just waiting... sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently.