Quick Update

We had our first of two visits with our Social Worker for our Home Study on Wednesday evening. Maybe we are just "seasoned" adoptive parents now after jumping through so many hoops for Alina Jayne's adoption-but that visit went so well. Absolutely no pressure. It was actually a nice visit! The kiddos had to be present for this one, so now that is out of the way. One more to go and a few more documents to paperchase after, and we can submit our I-600A (AKA Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition ) to Immigration (now known as USCIS or United States Citizenship and Immigration Service). Once this application, supporting documents (i.e. completed Home Study, marriage/birth certificates, employer letters, etc) are received and reviewed, we then get our appointment to have our fingerprints taken for FBI/Immigration clearance. Once those are processed (and in this State, the process can take 3+ months), USCIS will issue the coveted I-171H. This is formally called the "Notice of Favorable Determination Concerning Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition." What it means is that the United States Government has deemed us fit to adopt a child from Ethiopia. In other words-the dossier (the hundreds of pages of papers gathered to send to Ethiopia) will be ready to send to our adoption agency-then ON TO ETHIOPIA!!

One more bit of news to report. We *had* planned to adopt one female aged 0-30 months, but were also open to a sibling group of two girls or a boy/girl sibling set of the same age range. On Tuesday night I asked Matt what he thought about modifying our plan a bit, and requesting either gender, or a sibling set of two children aged 0-30 months, either gender. I was SHOCKED when he said he had been thinking the exact same thing! So, now we have no gender preference. We will be truly surprised when we finally end up receiving the referral! We are both sooooooo excited about the unknown!

Take care and check back often :O)

From Our Garden

Alina Jayne After Coloring Her Face With Sidewalk Chalk

From Our Garden