Gladney Update

Hey Everyone!

We had our phone orientation with Gladney today and it went great! Even better than we had expected. It is a large organization and we were worried that the process would feel impersonal and that we would be largely doing the massive amounts of paperwork on our own. We will certainly be responsible for a lot, but today we were given the name of our caseworker and the woman that will be helping us complete our dossier - all of the paperwork that will be mailed to Ethiopia. So that took a load of worry off my back just knowing that there will be someone for us to contact with questions that knows us well.

The time frame we are looking at is roughly one year total. Meaning that we might be able to travel around this time next year to pick up our sweet baby! That is a HUGE relief because the smaller agency I met with last week gave me an estimate of 18-22 months just for the wait alone. (Meaning after the American paperwork and before the wait time for travel.)

Here is a rough idea of what our next year is going to look like:

Now - Jan/Feb (4ish months): Working on our CIS (Citizenship and Immigration Services) approval, which includes the completion of our home study, fingerprinting, background checks, etc.

Feb - Aug/Sept: Then comes the 6 or so months of waiting for the "referral" - the name, picture and medical info of our baby. (And for those of you that are wondering, we will most likely change the baby's name.) That is the average wait time they are giving us for the youngest available child. The baby will most likely be between 6-9 months by the time we travel.

Finally there is about a 2-3 month waiting period before we will be able to travel to bring the baby home.

So that brings us to a grand total of 12-13 months. It is possible that the process will move faster than that, and it is unfortunately possible that it will take longer. The courts in Ethiopia break in August for the rainy season, so we are hoping to get our end of the paperwork done ASAP so that we can get our referral before that time. If we get on the wait list in January there is a good chance that we will beat the August break. However, I have to say that knowing that the baby and V will only be about 2 to 2 1/2 years apart is really giving me peace about how long the process takes. After talking with the other organization we were preparing ourselves for a 3 1/2 to 4 year gap. Most of you know that we want a large family and that large of a gap was definitely more than we had planned on - at least between our first two.

So here is what we are dealing with for the time being... Now we have to send in our preliminary application to Gladney to receive the full international adoption application. We should be able to complete the necessary paperwork for that tonight and mail it tomorrow. It will take about a week for them to process that infomation and send us our full application packet. In the meantime we are waiting for copies of our birth certificates to arrive in the mail. Once we receive those we can mail in our I-600A - the form that we send in to CIS in order to be approved to bring the baby into the US. (Eventually we will also send them our home study.) From there we will work with our caseworker to complete our application and our foreign dossier.

Please be praying:
*That our paperwork goes as smoothly and quickly as possible - that we don't miss steps, loose anything in the mail, etc.
*That V will continue to be healthy and feel loved and secure.
*That our living situation doesn't create any obstacles or major setbacks.
*And most of all, please pray that this experience draws us closer to the Lord and closer to one another.

Thank you SO much for all of your love and support. We love you all very, very much.

Maggie Valley trip number 4

We just returned from Maggie Valley, NC. My grandparents have a summer home up there. It is probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. This was V's second time up there, and our 4th time since we got married. The best part of the whole trip was taking V for his first amusement park experience. It was awesome! He rode five different rides - two of which I was sure he would be too scared to even consider. He was so brave!

Enjoy the pics!

Making Progress... We Hope

So we are officially adopting. I'm not really sure that I have the emotional energy right now to explain all that I am thinking and feeling. I will simply say that we are VERY excited.

We are going to have a phone orientation with someone from Gladney on the 25th of this month. And as awesome as it is to have that on the calendar, I'm already feeling like we could be moving faster. By the time we have the orientation a month will have already passed since we filled out our information sheet. I was really hoping to get through this initial stuff a lot faster.

During the orientation they will explain the adoption process to us - including the massive amount of paperwork we have to fill out and send off. So I guess now we are just praying that our living situation will not be a major obstacle. We are planning to explain everything over the phone during our orientation, though I would much rather deal with it in person.

I will continue to post updates when there is any new info or progress. Thanks to everyone that is keeping us in their prayers and will stand beside us through this long process.