First Post

I have never blogged before, so please be patient. We are setting up this blog to tell the story of our journey to adopt. We have chosen to adopt from Ethiopia and are well into the process which started all the way back in May of 2007. That was the point when we started attending open houses to decide which adoption agency we would use. After attending AAI's open house we were both drawn to their Ethiopia program for reasons that were somewhat unexplainable to us but as we sat in the car, after hearing about all of their available programs in the meeting, we looked at each other and in unison each said "I am thinking Ethiopia."

From there, we went through an international adoption awareness meeting, transracial/transcultural adoption training, and submitted our formal application in August of 2007. This began a very busy period in the process of gathering paperwork for our home study, application for a foreign adoption and dossier. Our home study was completed in October of 2007 and we sent in our application to USCIS. During all of this time, we were still tracking down all of the paperwork for our dossier. After a three and a half month wait we received our I-171H approval on February 14th, 2008. This made for a wonderful Valentine's Day gift and milestone in our process. We finalized all of the notarizations and authentications for our dossier and after bundling at the US State Department and Ethiopian Embassy it was sent to Ethiopia on February 28th, 2008. At this time we officially became a family "in waiting." This was another huge step in the adoption process.

While attending a travel expectations meeting in Grand Rapids, where our agency's headquarters is located, we learned that our dossier had arrived in Ethiopia on March 3rd, 2008. So we have officially been waiting for almost one month now. They tell us to expect a four to six month wait from the arrival of our dossier in Ethiopia for the referral, but of course we have high hopes that it will happen sooner than this.

Up until now, we have been very busy filling out forms, going to meetings and classes, completing online courses, tracking down paperwork and educating ourselves about Ethiopian culture and history. From this point on there is no more paperwork to chase down so we will try to patiently wait while we further educate ourselves on Ethiopian culture and raising our child. Hopefully working on this blog and posting will be therapeutic.

For now, I am overwhelmed by the thought that our daughter is living somewhere in Ethiopia and I hope she is being well cared for. I worry about the events that are unfolding within her birth family that will bring her to our family and am sad for all of their loss. All we can do is hope and pray for the best and for our journey to bring us to our daughter soon.