Jamie just cussed me out for not posting for a while, so here goes!

There really isn't much new on the adoption front. Still tackling the initial massive amount of paperwork! We have been meeting with quite a few people that have adopted from Ethiopia and/or are in the process of doing so. Just last night we had dinner with a family that adopted twin baby boys about 2 years ago. They were seriously the most joyful and adorable little guys I have ever seen! This Friday we are going to an Ethiopian dinner with a whole group of adoptive and prospective adoptive parents. We'll have good food, dance, etc. It is exciting making new friends and every day we get more and more anxious to have some little guys of our own running around this house!

On a little bit different front, when Brando and I talk about the adoption and our children, we always speak in twos. I think we are both picturing adopting 2 children at once. We always talk about "the twins" or "the kids", never "the baby"...Tonight I mentioned that maybe we need to explore this further and maybe request that we receive 2 children, twins or young siblings, and not only 1 infant.......Hmmm Can we handle that? I hope so!!

The process

Quite a few people have been asking me about the adoption process...steps involved, paperwork, timeline, etc. In response, I have decided to post a bit about the long road ahead.

Below are the main steps our process:

Ø We apply to the Ethiopia program (Done)

Ø Upon acceptance, we have a huge list documents to prepare for our home study. Once the home study is complete and we have had our required social worker visits, the documents are reviewed by our agency and approved for Ethiopia (Working on this part now)

Ø File I600A immigration form (This is a form letting the government know that we are preparing for an international adoption and will be requesting to classify a child or children as immediate relatives and therefore US Citizens)

Ø Prepare dossier (The dossier is a large packet of information i.e. police and medical records, financial information, etc. that is sent overseas to the Ethiopian government)

Ø Agency reviews dossier and obtain state certifications and forwards the Dossier to the US State Dept. & the Ethiopian Embassy for authentication

Ø Dossier is forwarded to Ethiopia representative in Addis Ababa who has dossier translated and prepared for court

Ø Child is referred to family (This is the good part)

Ø Paperwork is submitted to Ethiopian court

Ø Court order is issued, subsequently the birth certificate is issued

Ø Child is issued visa and we are ready to travel!!!!

Basically, in the end it looks something like this:

Wish us luck!

A bit about me...

I am an archaeologist.

Wikipedia defines archaeology as:

Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from Greek: αρχαίος, archaios, combining form in Latin archae-, "ancient"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, features, biofacts, and landscapes. Because archaeology's aim is to understand humankind, it is a humanistic endeavor[1].

But in reality, it looks something like this:



Not as cool as Wikipedia makes it sound....is it?

Well, in a nut shell, I work for the U.S. Government, so I get paid to review all energy projects in the northwest, dig things up, and then write about them.

The pic above is me last Friday....hard at work, sitting in the woods, recording a historic can dump...Simply fascinating!

Parents in Process adoptive parenting classes

We received a letter confirming our first required parenting classes today! December 7th and 8th.

This is starting to become so real!

Just because...

Just because I think blogs get really boring without any sort of pictures...here is a great one of Zulu enjoying a nice warm day at the park...

Seriously?

16 pages of questions!

Yes, you read that correctly, 16 pages! This is just the start of our home study and we have 16 (can I say it again) 16 pages of in-depth questions about our marriage, childhood, parenting skills, etc.

Wow!

On a more serious note, Brando and I did start working on our questions today and it proved to be more difficult than we expected. It is hard to put our thoughts and feelings on paper, and even more difficult to have it make sense! This is going to be a good exercise.

Let's get this party started...

Today we received our first packet of information from Holt. The packet included what will be the beginnings of our adoption home study; i.e financial statements, medical evaluations criminal records check, employment verification, immigration forms, and the most cumbersome of all, something called "personal data information" which is a HUGE questionnaire designed to provide our social worker with written data regarding our backgrounds and experience.

Home study, here we come!