Adoption Update

So some of you might be wondering how the process is going with our adoption. Well, we have officially completed all the paperwork for our agency, Gladney. We have not sent it all in yet, but that will be done by the end of the week, hopefully! We have also started the paperwork for our dossier, which is MUCH more complicated. This will take about 3 more months to be completed because this stack of documents must be authenticated (signed to make official) many times. Here is the levels that the dossier must be authenticated: 1) notary 2) secretary of state 3) United States Department of State 4) Ethiopia Embassy.

As you see the paperwork for international adoption takes about 4 months to complete if you are going at a relatively fast pace. After we complete our paperwork/dossier, the dossier gets shipped to Ethiopia where it will be put on the bottom of a stack. At this time we will be assigned a number and this begins the waiting period. We will wait, and wait, and wait for a referral. It will take approximately 8 months to receive a referral. Once we get our referral of a child that they think will fit into our family, we will either accept it or decline. After accepting the referral, we will wait for a court date and then make travel arrangements to go to Ethiopia for the court date (usually about 8-13 weeks after accepting referral). We will travel twice to Ethiopia. Once for the court date (where we will get to meet our child for the first time) and then again to take our child home (about 3-6 weeks later)! In summary, from the time of the referral to the time we take our child home, it will be about 3-5 months. Overall, from the start of this process (August 2010) we hopefully will be able to bring home our son in 16-18 months (December 2011-February 2012). It definitely could take longer, and most likely not any shorter...

I know there might be a lot of questions you all have about this process. If you would like to ask a question for me to answer, please leave a comment!! I would love to inform you of how all of this works.