Soooooo now what?

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Well we continue to move forward on the adoption front. The comment I get most often is "now what"? Well here is the latest....

Our dossier was received by Dove on Friday, June 25th. We have received the "next step" email from Dove. So here it is... our Power of attorney form and I171-H (the forms that Len and the girls had authenticated by the State of Illinois in Chicago) are now in Washington DC being authenticated by the US state department and the Ethiopian Embassy. Those should be returned to Dove at some point this week.

Next thing that happens...Dove will write a letter to the SOS EE introducing us to the Board of the Orphanage. That letter as well as the one we wrote to the board will be emailed this week to them.

Once the documents return from DC....our dossier will be on a DHL airplane to Ethiopia. We will have a tracking number and will keep an eye on our papers from Hoffman Estates.

The thing we are most looking forward to is a Travel training session with Dove and our referral/travel packet to arrive. The bad news....shots and lots of them are in our future! UGH! My arms hurt already!

Very soon we will be an official waiting family. That means we are waiting for the blessed phone call that states that our family has a little one waiting. When we are officially on that list there will be a new ticker on our blog. 4-6 months is typical for that wait. Our agency does not do things numerically. They do it based on the child and the family. So look for the ticker!

Thank you for your prayers and positive thoughts. Happy birthday America!

It is off!

Well we did it. Our dossier was sent to our agency, Dove Adoptions International, in Oregon, yesterday. We have extra copies of everything. Thank you so much for all of your prayers for our patience. We managed to assemble everything and get it to our local mail box store. It is now on its way!

NOW WHAT?

Well we are waiting to hear from our agency in the meantime. Hopefully, we did everything correctly and can move on to the next step.

As for the home study agency drama...well Glenkirk closed...the agency they sent us to was requiring us to start over again with more fees too!
Len spent lots of time on the phone and found an amazing and compassionate social worker, at Adoption Link. She will provide us our post placement visits. She has been awesome in getting our file transferred and the required documents for our dossier.

So now...we wait to hear from Dove. When we know...we will post info on the blog here. :)

Thanks for your prayers and positive thoughts. They are a blessing to us as we prepare to move from a family of 4 to a family of 5!

Blessing to our friends Anji and Steve as they travel on Friday to pick up their little ones from Ethiopia!