Officially Ethiopia...

Woo Hoo!!! I overnighted all of our papers to WACAP and tomorrow we will officially be in the Ethiopia program! Our revised homestudy has been sent to USCIS because they need to give us a new I-171H for Ethiopia. I hope that will be done by next week, then we can officially receive a referral. Now we are back to hurry up and wait. Oh yes, the wait for the referral! So difficult, but so surreal when it finally comes. OMG! I just realized this post is exactly 30 days since I posted the decision to pursue Ethiopia...a goal achieved!

Almost On the "List"

Well, WACAP got our homestudy last Wednesday for review. There are a few things they needed the homestudy agency to correct, but WACAP said we should be receiving the final copy very soon. As long as my Dr. got my medical form notarized on Friday, I should be able to get all the documents authenticated on Monday and then off to WACAP to be put on the list. They just received a bunch of referrals, wouldn't it be something if one of them was matched to us?! I don't know how many people are ahead of us though and if they are looking for the same age/sex we are. It hasn't even been two months yet, but it seems like we've been doing this forever.

Closing in on the paperwork chase.....

Well, I think I am going to make my 30 day goal to have all our paperwork into WACAP. We have sent out all of our out of state paperwork to be authenticated and should be ready to get our local paperwork autheticated next week. We did find out that we have to send our homestudy back through the courts since we changed countries and age of child we are requesting. I am hoping the courts will do it quickly and not require a re-certification which is $350. Arizona is one of the few states that requires the courts to be involved in an international adoption. We are sooo anxious to get our paperwork to WACAP, so we can be considered "waiting". Kenny has been working on the second captains bed to prepare for our hopefully quick referral and then I can put the finishing touches on the surfer theme room. I hope I can blog next week and say, "Our paperwork is on its way to WACAP!"

A journey defined...

We have finally decided that Ethiopia will be where we will find one more son. We requested and received our dossier back from Vietnam. We were hoping to reuse some of the documents, but they were all stamped up, so we will have to start over with those. I was able to order a certified birth certificate from Maryland online which is really convienent. Maryland has a longer process because I have to then send it to two different places and inbetween returning to me. So it will take several weeks to get that taken care of. Unfortunately, Minnesota is not so convienent and we have to mail in notarized forms to get Kenny's birth certificate and our marriage certificate. We will be meeting with our socialworker this Wednesday to update our homestudy from Vietnam to Ethiopia. It is very exciting to have the hope of another child again, but also very daunting to go through this process all over again. Once our homestudy is updated, we will send it to USCIS to have our I-171H also changed to Ethiopia. We also need to get new medicals and employment letters, which isn't so bad, except I hate inconvienencing people with having to get them notarized. My goal is to have all of our dossier documents together in 30 days.

A File to Review...

We received some brief infomation on a very cute boy from Thailand today. We hope the video will arrive tomorrow or Saturday because that will be a lot more telling. The agency is also still reviewing the information they received from their recent trip to Thailand to see if there are any other boys that would be a good match for our family. Although I know it is probably a good thing to have several files to review, I am worried that it will be hard to choose!

Choosing a country....

We requested information on 4 waiting boys from Thailand through WACAP, 3 had already been matched to families. They will be sending us a DVD on the other boy. They have staff in Thailand this week and will probably have more referrals available next week. If we can't find a good match from them, then we will focus on Ethiopia and hope for a quick referral. It would be neat to have a child of similar heritage as our daughter, but I have always been drawn to having an African American child too. It is hard to choose where to go. We are soooo in the "add a child mode", that it's hard to start again and have to go through that wait process all over! It will all be worth it in the end though!

A New Begining....

After several weeks of searching and researching we have determined our next move since we failed in Vietnam. Even though it was hard to walk away, I am so happy with our decision to work with World Assoc for Children and Parents (WACAP). We are planning to adopt a Promise Child. This means he will most likely be a boy 7-8 boy from Ethiopia, but we could also be referred a child from India or Thailand. Now we need to redo our dossier, update our homestudy and change our I-171H. WACAP said this could take 3 months or longer, I am hoping alot less! After a year with Vietnam, we are so ready to have a child now! Once we are done with that step, we will be ready to send our dossier over and expect a referral in 4-10 months....again we hope less! This will be slow updating, but we will be working hard to get everything done ASAP! All is not lost. Hopefully this time will go much smoother, like our first adoption.