Can It BE?????

The family infront of us received their referral yesterday, so that means we are NUMBER 1!!!!! :D The next baby girl will be OURS!

Adoption: What can I ask?

Here are some articles to read for anyone who will come in contact with adoptive families:
www.emkpress.com/whygrandma.html
www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=746
www.ivillage.com/adoption-basics-family-and-friends-ivillagecom/6-a-128042
www.adopting.org/question.html

:)

One of the families ahead of us received their referral of a baby girl, which means we are unofficially number 2!

NUMBER 3!!!!!

Our new number is ........................drum roll, please..............#3!!!!!
I announced that our new number is 3 tonight to my husband and 3 year old son; our son just started jumping up and down and yelling, "We are ALMOST to ONE!!!!" I have to say I felt just as excited. :D
Now we wait for our referral. The possibility of a referral call is very soon. It could be next week, or it could be next month. With the courts currently closed, the assigning new court dates are not happening; it is just hard to predict when our referral will happen.
A referral is when we will been matched with our daughter. We will receive some photos of her and any other information regarding her birth date, weight, hair color (ha,ha) and anything about her life before us.
We are so excited! It won't be long until we will finally see our daughter's face.

The Ethiopian Courts are closing....

We received the news on Friday, which we were expecting. The Ethiopian courts are closing for the months of August and most of September due to the rainy season. The good news is there are already court dates set for the end of September, so they have a date scheduled to re-open, this isn't always the case. Referrals will slow down at this time. We are still praying that we will be able to bring our daughter home by Christmas. Keep praying!

Adoption Timeline

Timeline August 2009 -January 2011 = just under 17 months
August 24, 2009 - Our application was approved by AGCI!
September and October - We are finishing our homestudy and all of the other paper for our dossier.
November - #46
We sent in all of our USCIS info!
December - #43

2010
January 2010- #36
February- #32
March - #27
April- #22
We were finally fingerprinted!
May- #14
June - #12
We finally recieved our USCIS approval!
July -#9

August #3

August 19th - Unoffically #1

September 2nd - OFFICIALLY #1 !!!!!!

September 18th - REFERRAL!!!!!

October 11th - We have a COURT DATE!!!

November 8th - Baby's court date was passed!!! (We were NOT be present for this.)

December 4th - On a plane to Ethiopia!

December 6th - We met Baby E for the 1st time!

December 8th - We passed our COURT! E is "legally" OURS!!!!!

December 9th - We had to tell our baby goodbye.

2011

January 4th - AGCI called our case has been cleared. Now waiting for a confirmed embassy date.

January 5th - We HAVE an embassy date for MONDAY

January 6th - We are on a plane.

January 7th - We are still on a plane.

January 8th - We have our daughter in our arms!!!!!

January 10th - Embassy date

January 12th/13th - All 3 of us are on a plane and heading home!!!!

January 13th, 2011- We are all home for the first time as a family of 4.

We are officially #9.....unofficially NUMBER 6!!! We are so close! :D