The process and where we are....

Many of you have asked what the next steps are. I will try my best to explain the process from receiving a referral to bringing our child home.

                                   

 

Step 1: Our agency sends all the documents that have been gathered to show that our son is a true orphan by international standards and is adoptable. These are sent to the the Ministry of Women and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA).

Step 2: A family is issued a MOWCYA/Birth Parent court date for their case. On that date, MOWCYA is subpoenaed for an adoption recommendation letter, and a birth parent is requested to appear to give their consent for the adoption. (this will be N's Aunt )

We were assigned a MOWCYA date yesterday

for May 29th !!!!!

Step 3:  if MOWCYA writes a favorable letter (which we believe will happen the first time) a court date will be assigned within a week. These dates are usually 2-4 weeks after the MOWCYA date.

Since our MOWCYA date is at the end of this month that means we will most likely have a court date and travel to Ethiopia to meet our son around the middle to end of June!!!!

Step 4: Receive our Court Date then Fly to Ethiopia on a Jet Plane... don't know when we'll be back again,  Yes I'm know I am a dork, moving on....

Step 5: Return home while we wait for post court paperwork submission to the US Embassy. (Things like passports and court decrees- this usually takes 3-5 weeks).


Step 6: Get cleared by US Embassy in Addis Ababa and receive a VISA interview date for our son.

Step 6: Travel for the Embassy appointment and bring N home to his new forever family!!!!

If you do the math the shortest timeline would be court in Mid-June

and bring him home Mid-July.

 

The longer part would be court first of July and

 bringing him home  mid to end of August.

 

Either way we trust that God's timing is perfect and are anxiously awaiting meeting N!

We received a few more pictures that I wish I could share in their entirety but until then here is a cropped pic :)

 

           

 

Wondering what his hand is on?

          That is a trace of my hand...we are holding hands folks!

                   Miles apart but close together. 

                             I wish I could show you that beautiful grin too !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

In the next post I am going to share some of the work we intend to do while we are on our court trip and our hope for you to partner with us to bring much needed supplies to Ethiopia.

DTE Update

Today we are officially 9 months DTE. We started our adoption journey a little over 16 months ago and started the official wait in April of 2012. Some days it seems like just yesterday we sent of our dossier with months worth of documentation. Other days it seems like we have been waiting years.

If anything through this process we are all learning more and more about ourselves, our relationship with God and what it means to follow him.

I am still in awe the amazing events that have occurred these past months and just how much we have grown.

This month we saw two very special families bring home their children and become forever families. Watching their gotcha moments reminded me that this waiting time that seems so long will eventually end. When it does our real journey will begin as we get to bond and parent our little guy.

 Our family will become one of 6 and I will be a mom to 4. We will have to communicate with hand signals and attempts at rough translations until he learns English. (my attempts at learning amharic are pathetic- however we may be using some flashcards for communication) . Our children will have to learn how to show patience with their new brother and set an example for him.We (and by we I mean I ) will have to learn how to juggle four children in the morning before getting to work and teach the new guy how to brush his teeth and where the dirty socks go.

But most importantly we will teach him to love and remember his birth parents and his country while showing him what it means to be in our family and part of this family. As crazy as we may be!

DTE Update and some Fall Fun

So I completely missed our 6 months DTE update and we are almost to our 7th. I think I was wallowing in a little in denial over not being matched with our new child(ren) yet and I thought somehow if I didn't post then we may get "The Call".

A few months ago Gene and I really felt even more at peace about raising our age range and together decided if we had not received our referral by 6 months then we would feel comfortable increasing our age range to 0-7. So a few weeks ago we sent in an e-mail to our coordinator and up-ed the age (again). Now, you may be thinking "You started off this journey requesting 0-2 and now your 0-7, in a Joey from Blossom voice: Whoaw- big jump! " 
And yes, you would be correct! For those of you that know me really well, you know I love babies and would love to have like a million of them another one. However, God gave me this amazing husband that has really had his fill of the baby days. In the amazing way that God does things, he has helped both of us acknowledge that He has a plan for us better than our own...

So, trusting in him, we know that we continue to leave our age range open, knowing that he will give us the child (or children) that are for us. So with that, here are the numbers, knowing that God is the ultimate mathematician...


  For an Infant Boy

    For an Toddler boy

   For Siblings (still hard to predict given the variety of  
                                                  ages and gender)

                 For a boy child age 4 or older.

(Want to know where we get these numbers- see the post DTE month 4)

So we continue to pray, study, prepare and celebrate with each referral that creates a forever family! (More to post on a specific family soon!)



While we wait, we decided to take some nice fall family pictures. Enjoy!

We heart Ethiopia!

Can you believe we got the two big ones to hold our hands!

Love this man!

Wherever you go...I will follow

Our three home grown

Off on an adventure

         

Month 4 DTE Update

As school went into full swing this month we have been one crazy busy family. We had fun with my cousin Ray and his wife Dessa and thier hansome 10 month old son Baby Ray, so sweet to see the kids play with him. Of course Kellsie was in heaven! I am grateful for the rain we have this weekend and the peace in our home that only a rainstorm and baking cookies seems to bring. 

When you check out the numbers this month you will see it has been really slow for referrals in our agency, only 5 this month so our numbers barely changed a little this month...with the exception of the last number! But, what that doesn't show is the 20 children that passed court and the 20 children that came home this month. It was so exciting to watch week after week as families announced their new children's beautiful faces and celebrated forever families being made. There is some more great news about a referral (not ours but amazingly awesome!) but it will have to wait until the next post, man I can't wait to share with you!!!   

So here are our numbers this month:






For an Infant Boy

        For a Toddler Boy

    For Siblings ( There are only a few families open to a child above six so this one is still kinda tricky)

 For a Boy over 48 months! And this is the best part

We are Number........

For a Boy age five or six!!!!!!

Can I get an Amen!!!!

So how does this happen....well some numbers go down because a family receives a referral and some numbers go up because a family changes their request (for example changes request from 0-2 to 0-4 ) or announces themselves on the America World Yahoo group that maintains an "uunofficial-official waiting list" and have a DTE (dossier to Ethiopia) date before ours.   

So how much longer? Lord knows! and I wish he would tell me! but really only God knows. It could be a week from now or it still could be months from today. Whatever the time frame is, we continue to wait, learn, enjoy the way our family is right now and know that somewhere out there we have a son (or two) and we dream.

1 Month DTE and Fundraiser

So in the controlled chaos whirlwind of a weekend with the 5K fundraiser and fun with family visits, I just realized we are one moth DTE today!



It seems to have gone by so quickly and yet I know that it will most likely soon feel as if it is dredging on at a snails pace for a while. Probably since we have been preoccupied with work and finishing out the academic year it has made this month go by fairly fast.

So how are our numbers looking now??? We have moved up two spots to #84 for an infant boy, up two to #36 for a toddler boy, Still #13 for an older sibling set and #20 for a child over 4
         To make a long and confusing story short...we still have no idea if our boy will be an infant or five and if he will have a brother or a sister as well. To some people this may sound crazy, stressful, crazy, scary or well did I say crazy? To us, we are letting God choose who or whom is best for our family by keeping the doors open for adoption. Numbers still say it will most likely be a sibling set, but still not sure on the ages. Since our request is fairly broad ( one child 0-5 or two 0-5 and 0-10) we may receive a sibling set before someone with a early DTE date but requesting a younger age. Clear as mud? Well, I could ramble discuss numbers and probabilities all day long but I'm sure you may be kinda tired of my number guessing.

Onto the Fundraiser.... 

The 5K  Runners starting to line up...
they had their work cut out for them!

The Openedheart 5K fundraiser was awesome and we raised close to $1,000 to help bring our little guy(s) home! Thank you so much for your love and support that you showed.  We were so blessed by everyone and my heart was filled with love and encouragement! My next post will have some good video and pics of the race and will show the winners as well. Here is a sneak peak pic until I have the video made...

Some of our walkers for the 5K. Way to go Trish, Gib and Amber!

DTE Date- Woo hooo!!!!!

So I blogged a few weeks ago about our interesting weekend for our fingerprints and how we were waiting (seems like that is a common thread in the adoption world- hurry and wait, hurry and wait- Im going to have patience like a Saint come next summer!)

for this precious letter....

Took me another two days and an e-mail from our family coordinator to realize it had this on the bottom...

Which means we can complete our Dossier which looks like this ...

Then we took it to Page Printing and the sweet lady there made

 2 copies of the 60+ pages...

This is a family event so we took our homegrown three 

who looked like this ....

Then off to the post office to wait in line...

Before we all gave it a kiss and a high five...

And said Good bye Dossier...

Our official DTE date will be April 20th 2012!!! It has taken 5 and a half months to complete the paperwork from sending in out application to AWAA, getting all the documents, completing our homestudy and addending our request.

You ask what now???

Well, We work on our Openedheart 5K and Family Fun Walk (http://www.active.com/event_detail.cfm?event_id=2023988 ) to help fundraise for our adoption and

we wait for a referral....

God calls again!

With prayer and soul searching and talking with eachother Gene and I have decided to....

      INCREASE OUR AGE RANGE AND
ADD THE POSSIBILITY OF A SIBLING!!!



*Gasp* Yes, you read that right we may be adding TWO children to our family!!! (Enter shock value word here) So you may be asking yourself right now why we decided to do this??? Our answer is God. 

Our decision to adopt was originally based on the idea that we wanted to adopt an infant or young toddler. After an only God designed mesh of events which include me hosting the His Little Feet Choir and hearing stories of older children adoption, crazy road signs, and family comments, we knew God was showing us something and we had to follow it. My three very American worldly children opened their hearts and their eyes to Detcho and Nahagi and the other children in His Little Feet Choir. We read the journey's families are going and have gone through to adopt older children and show them God's love. How they are just as in need as a tiny infant. And everywhere we went were signed God was telling us to open our hearts.

You may also be thinking all the scary thoughts that were going on in our heads when it comes to trauma and grief, language barriers, sibling rivalry, health problems, and the list goes on. But we know that God has called us to do it and he will not let us go through this alone. And in our wait time we are researching and learning and preparing our lives for the what ifs. So.......

Our official approval is one Boy 0-6

or siblings one 0-8 and Boy 0-10. 

      (It's fairly broad to allow wiggle room. )

Our official request to Ethiopia: one Boy 0-4

or siblings one 0-6 and Boy 0-10. 

  

         What can you do to help?  

                          That will be the next blog .....  





USCIS Fingerprinting- Check

Last night Gene and I drove up to Saint Louis to stay the night for our fingerprint appointment this morning. I was petrified of being a few minutes late for the appointment because somehow if you miss your appointment you may be scheming evil plans and then your application is kicked out and you start the request to bring an orphan home all over again...not going to let that happen :)

This morning bright and early we drove to downtown Saint Louis. When we got there we realized we did not have any cash to pay for parking so we parked on the street, hoping our car would not be towed away and looking like lost tourists, headed towards the Federal Building, a nice police man even stopped us (I looked extra lost so we didn't get a ticket for the car) and pointed us in the right direction.

Inside were the usual security procedures and as we walk through the scanners Gene gave me a near heart attack when the security office yelled at him to stop and wait his turn to walk through the system. (I thought for sure we were going to be thrown out and our car would be towed and we would have to walk to the police station or something- hey maybe while we were there we could get a background check)

We had to wait about 10 minutes and then took our fingerprints aka biometric appointment on a computer scanner and then we were done. Apparently Gene has a scar on one of his fingerprints but mine were perfect! I tried taking pictures for our life book but apparently that is against some federal rule...I did sneak a few that I will see if I can post.

On our way out we thought maybe we could at least take a picture outside the building...that nice police officer, well he became not so nice when we started taking pics....apparently you can't take pictures on Federal property at all.Oops!

Anyway, we drove home, stopped by the police department and thanks to name dropping our friend Officer Edie, we got a local police check and then stopped by Commerce bank for notarization then on to Walgreen's for some passport photos- yes, we already have our passports but we also needed two pictures for the dossier as well, passport size.

All in all a very productive day!

Fingerprints....

So.....we should be getting our notarized finalized homestudy sometime this weekend and then we will send in our I600-A. This is a United States Imigration and Citizenship document requesting to bring an Orphan to the Unites States. That document gets sent to Texas that then gets logged and sent back to Missouri. Once they recieve it we are put us on a list to have our fingerprints taken in Jefferson City. Then we get a "biometric date" (sounds like something off an 80's love story) we drive to Jeff City, have our "biometric time" and wait for the results to come back. The expected time is anywhere from a few weeks to two months.....-note to self time frames are very subjective in the adoption process :)

 Once our fingerprints and background checks are all done we put our Dossier together!

Paper here...paper there....

Gene and I have gotten all our documents now. I have been busy this weekend color code tabbing all the homestudy documents and am now onto organizing the dossier documents. I am built for this but even I am a bit on the intimidated side! Thank God he gives me strength (and cofee) Phew- ready...set...gather papers !!!!