Our Holiday Email Blast!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS to ALL!

This weekend, we are sending out a holiday email to let all of those important people in our lives know of our plans to adopt a baby from Ethiopia in the coming year. Anil and I are very excited to share this news officially with all of our friends and family! Some of them have heard, some haven't, so it'll be a fun way to bring in the upcoming year.

We will also be letting them know about this blog, so that they can follow along on our journey if they'd like. Since I'm hoping that means that we will see more visitors curious about what we're up to, I was planning to post something here explaining a little bit more about our decision to adopt and our process.

We're adopting because we want to be parents. And we are following our hearts to Ethiopia. Anyone that really knows us knows that we don't jump into any decision, especially one that is this important, without very careful consideration, research and planning. So here we are, in the midst of the greatest experience of our lives thus far! And we couldn't be happier!!!

Adoption is a roller coaster ride for sure. We are doing our best to take it all in stride and even with all the mixed emotions that come with our decision, we are incredibly hopeful and feel like this path was meant for us and will only lead to greater, more amazing and life-changing decisions down the road.

Adopting internationally, and specifically adopting from Ethiopia, has opened up a whole new world to us. We have made many great friends through this process already, and know that we will meet many more cool people who share our experiences and passion and who have children for ours to play with! Please take time to check out the blogs I have posted on the right side of this blog - and let those blogs lead you to other blogs. The community is endless and it's incredible to be a part of it. Adoption and adopting can feel like a lonely road at times, since not many have experienced it, and it's difficult to understand the journey unless you're in it, so we are beyond grateful to have met some wonderful people with whom we can connect, to learn from and share with as we continue on our path.

The blogs are also a lot of fun because as you will see, getting that referral call, when you learn about your baby for the very first time, is truly the most surreal and emotional experience - and many of these bloggers have already received that call - those posts are the BEST! Loads of pics of some BEAUTIFUL children!

Tomorrow marks 4 weeks waiting for us...so far, so good. We are going to ring in 2008 with a bang, knowing that we will become parents to a beautiful baby and start a whole new adventure. We look forward to sharing it with everyone!

2 weeks down!

Not much to report lately, just hard to believe that we already have 2 weeks of waiting behind us...it has gone by fast. I think we were fortunate to go on the wait list just before the holidays, it's helping us get a quick start on the wait.

I'm constantly following everyone's blogs and hoping for referals for all of those families that are close. I think I have yet to NOT tear up upon reading a 'referal call' story. They are just so emotionally charged, it's hard to even imagine what that must feel like. I guess one day we will know, for now we can truly only imagine and feel the elation for all of these great people learning of their son/daughter for the very first time!

My husband and I have decided to send out an 'announcement' over this holiday season to let our friends & family know of our adoption. Many of them already do but many don't. We've been apprehensive about 'going wide' with the news for fear of something going wrong or getting messed up, but we've found enough strength and encouragement that we're ready to spread the great news!

So expect to see another blog entry from me shortly. I want to post something for the new visitors that might come to the blog after seeing our email announcement, letting them know a little bit about our plans and our decision. I hope some of you won't mind if I link to your blogs...I've found that others have said it much better than I think I ever could on topics such as 'why Ethiopia'...'how it all works' and other important topics. Rather than fumble through it myself, I'll likely just borrow from my wise blogger pals.

In fact, if you have tackled one of these topics and feel like letting me know where I can find your entry, I'd love to hear from you! Otherwise, I'll be searching far and near this week to find those posts I've seen in the past to help me out!

I hope everyone is having a great HOLIDAY Season! :)

Small World

Here we are in our first week of waiting and we are really enjoying it...it's just weird not to have to think about which piece of paper to chase next or who we can call to try to get things moving quicker. I'm not sure what to do with myself at this point. Time to focus on other things, clearly, but what??

Well, for me, I think it will be my husband, friends, family, Georgie, work, play, the holidays, reading, educating myself as much as humanly possible for our new arrival, and this amazing community that has been formed by the commonality of international adoption. I am seriously and constantly just floored by this awesome world of internet groups, blog pals, regional get togethers, and the outpouring of support that comes through all of this, making me feel like I'm not alone. It's incredible, invaluable, and truly something I'm still a little baffled by, but could never take for granted. It's wild to me that not even a year ago, I had no idea that this world even existed...and now I'm immersed in it and enjoying it and appreciating it more than I can even describe.

And now, on top of all that, just this week, Anil and I discovered that there is another couple in our area, whom Anil has known for many years, who is also adopting from ET through Gladney and they are very close to us in process also. He had not spoken to this couple in quite some time but happened to have lunch with someone that works with them. And the subject came up. So wild! And they are fantastic. Since finding out, we promptly made a plan to get together this past Saturday night. We went to see a documentary in Irvine about an Ethiopian adoption and we had such a good time, marveling at the 'coincedence'...

And on top of that on top of the other stuff, my friend who lived here and worked with me just a few short months ago who has moved back to Chicago emailed me and said that he just found out that a couple he knows is also adopting from ET and he had told them about us and asked if I would email them. Well, of course I did and found out yesterday that her parents and brother have moved down to the SMALL town near St. Louis where I grew up and where my parents and sister and most of my aunts, uncles and cousins still live! WEIRD.

It's a small world. It just is. And getting continually tinier with each day.

WAITING!

Here is the email we received from Gladney on Friday:

Dear Anil and Angela,
Kate has informed me that your dossier is ready to be sent to D.C. for final authentication! This means that you are officially placed on waitlist to receive a referral! Currently, families have waited anytime up to three months to five months to receive a referral on average. Please keep in mind that this timeline is subject to change at any time. Congratulations on making it through the tedious dossier process! You made it! :)
As you know, I will be in touch with you as soon as a referral is ready for you. I ask for your patience during this time and completely understand that “waiting” is probably the most difficult (yet exciting!) part for most parents. While you are waiting, it will be a good time for you to complete your required continuing education requirements for Hague. You will only be required to watch Ethiopia Training, Parts 1 & 2, as the rest has been covered through Adoption Learning Partners. Please visit www.haguetraining.com for this course that is available to you through Video on Demand. You may put the code: gladfam.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
I am so excited for you!

Best,
Mary
Ethiopia Program Caseworker
The Gladney Center for Adoption

So we are officially waiting and officially excited to know that somewhere out there, our baby is also waiting for us! We hope upon hope that this baby is doing well, and his/her family is doing well too, and everyone is cared for and safe and sound.

It's HERE! It's HERE!

We got it! Our I-171H letter arrived in the mail yesterday! Of all days, I did not expect it to show up on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I was guessing the CIS offices must have been closed on Thursday & Friday so thinking it was very unlikely that the letter would show up just after a 2 day closure, since mail generally only takes a day to go from point a to point b in LA. I had a tiny it of hope on Friday, but next to none on Saturday...well, happy to say, I was wrong!

I heard George barking and knew the mailman was outside. I was in the shower and thought to myself what IF the letter comes today but then I thought nah....The next thing you know, Anil is knocking on the door to let me know that the mail had arrived and there was a letter I might want to know about...I started screaming and jumping for joy. I'm sure our neighbors must have thought I was nuts. We are just so happy to have that final piece of the puzzle and hopeful that we will join the waiting families very soon.

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

New Nephew!

Should have posted this a few weeks ago...we have a new nephew! What we can't get over more than how cute Jayan is...is how GROWN UP Arianna is in this photo! She's like a little woman holding her little bro. Since we don't see our East Coast siblings as much, we are shocked at how much she has changed since May, when we saw them last. And suddenly I'm remembering my childhoood when people we didn't see often would say 'my how you've grown...why i remember when you were this big...' and i'm making a mental note not to say that to our goddaughter when we see her next, which will hopefully be SOON! We have to meet Jayan after all. Cutie!

Still no letter from CIS...even though I did speak to someone there the week before last who said we'd been approved and should receive our letter last week...well now it's this week and of course Thanksgiving week and still no letter. Oh well, I will be grateful to know that it's coming and it won't be long now til we can add to the cousin pool. We do have SO MUCH to be thankful for...maybe I'll write more about that on Turkey Day. For now, off to bed.

Hook us up, CIS!

Just putting this out there...We're on day 10 waiting for our all-important 171-H from CIS. As I think I've mentioned, this is the very last piece of paperwork (barring any unforeseen catastrophes, haha) that we need before we can get our dossier off to ET and officially be added to the coveted wait list!

Although I've read that CIS approval can take 3-4 weeks or longer, I of course can't help but excitedly check the mailbox every day, hoping upon hope that we might get lucky, like other PAPs whose blogs I've read, and get that thing early! We've got our notary standing by, a FedEx envelope ready to be stuffed and we're on pins and needles.

So hook us up, CIS! We'll be forever grateful.

Surprise!

My hubby decided to throw an impromptu SURPRISE bday dinner gathering for me at one of our favorite Tex Mex restaurants on Friday night. What an awesome guy he is! It was so much fun, certainly unexpected since it was 6 days after my birthday,and really great to see everyone that came out. It reminded me that I need to get out more. We have been so consumed with the adoption process, the chasing down of paperwork and organizing of files and trips to the post office that we had kind of forgotten how important it is to 'live a little'...I plan to use our 'waiting' period catching up with friends, celebrating life and practicing patience. Wish me luck! :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Anil and I had a great day today, getting our approval from Gladney on Halloween will certainly always be memorable. :) We decided to stay home tonight in the hopes that we would get a few trick-or-treaters at the door, and we had prepped a BIG BOWL of candy for our visitors. Well...this is our first year in our new place in Santa Monica, and although as you can see from the pic of George (that wasn't posed at all by the way!) we have a very inviting front door, we do live on a major street in SM that doesn't really have a lot of houses on it, so I guess the kids went elsewhere for their candy. Ah well, next year we'll have to make some calls!
Luckily, we did get 2 cute dressed up little girls at the door - our neighbor and her friend - near the end of the night - so we gave them as much candy as they could carry! And got a cool pic before they went. I'm not sure what they were 'supposed to be' but I never ask, just appreciate the effort!

We had a great night celebrating our news and hanging out together, the 3 of us. HAPPY HALLOWEEN, everybody! I can't wait to see more costume pics of all the little ones tomorrow.

Gladney Approved!

I'll write again later hopefully with some pics of cute trick-or-treaters that may come to the front door tonight...but just wanted to share the news that we received an email a few hours ago stating that we are officially Gladney approved! We are so excited as this is a big step, and every step closer to the end result, adopting our beautiful little baby and bringing him/her home, truly feels like a milestone on our path that is worth celebrating and being grateful for...YEY!

Birthday!

I had the best birthday on Saturday. My parents are in town. We hung out, did some shopping during the day. Then late afternoon we headed over the valley to see an old friend of mine, Chantal. I've only seen her once in the last 15 years and my parents hadn't seen her in longer. It was fun to hang out with her and introduce her to my hubby, who hadn't met her at all. We've known each other since 3rd grade so even without staying in the best of touch, it's so wild how it feels like time doesn't matter and we're right at home after all these years.

Then we went to Julie's - I know a lot of you know Julie - as I refer to her as blogger royalty, which I'm not sure she digs. But it's true! Anyway, Julie and her kids (her husband was out of town at a wedding) were incredibly kind and invited us over for the evening. When we got there, they had decorated on TOP of all their really cool Halloween decor, a birthday extravaganza for me. And Julie had a "happy birthday" flashing light magnetized pin that she forced me to wear all night...I didn't mind! It was so much fun. She is awesome and her kids rock and it was so cool to hang with them. Julie showed my parents the videos Marshall had made of them picking up their daughter, Marlie, from Ethiopia and some other cool travel videos/montages. Haven & Seamus had a face-making contest with Anil and Marlie was just adorable as always knocking everyone out with her smile. It was such a great birthday!!

AND we got our finalized homestudy in the mail on Friday (or I guess technically yesterday morning) - I was expecting it to come on Monday so that was a little gift on our doorstep! That means it also arrived to our placement agency and USCIS today, all notarized and official. Sweet! One tiny step closer to the tiny one we are waiting for...

Almost, Almost...

First off, HI to Gladney Families! I just learned that I am now posted on the site with all of the other awesome blogs that I have been following for a few weeks now, since I learned of them. I am so excited to be among the group and thrilled for all of you, wherever you are in your journey, and have shed more than a few tears of happiness for you already. :) I hope to get to know you and share experiences. All of your stories are individual and unique and yet we all share a common bond that is so amazing! I'm in awe of it every day.

We are adopting an infant of either gender from Ethiopia. My husband, Anil, and I live in Santa Monica, CA with our dog, Georgie, who you will come to know well through this blog. This will be our first human baby, although G is if you ask anyone likely to be considered our first child, also adopted at 4 mos. old from The Lange Foundation.

And in other news...

I almost changed my blog title today. My friend Julie pointed out to me that I'm going to be a Mom in a very short time (wow, really???) and at that point, she wondered if I would keep the title or change it. That got me to thinking - she's right. Once I AM a Mom, I don't want anyone to think that I am only 'almost'.

See for me, Almost has a good meaning. My BFF Shannon and I are big into the idea of all of us being almost lots of things. We love being almost anything, almost lots of things, almost everything.

But I am also concerned that in this particular instance, with all of the stigmas attached to adoption, that if I leave my title "Almost Mom" once we have our child, people might get the idea that I am somehow saying that I'm not a 'real' mom to a 'real' kid, all the way, completely and totally. And then I got to thinking...what makes a Mom a real life, certified, bonafide Mom...

Well, I remember being asked that around Mother's Day every year as a kid, and what I remember writing are things like "she loves me unconditionally, she feeds me my favorite foods, she makes me feel better when I'm sad, she fixes my booboos and makes me feel safe and sound." The pic below is of my real mom. What made her that were the above mentioned things and so much more. I am excited to join the ranks, and I think I can fit the bill.

And let's not forget the greatest Almost Dad there ever was...that's my hubby, Anil. He is just about as real as real gets, and seeing the excitement in his eyes, hearing it in his voice and watching him go through this process along side of me, is probably the most unbelievably surreal experience I have ever had. The joy that I feel in his joy is inexplicable.

I decided to keep the blog title for now, because it signifies our journey, our quest, our way. And down the road, there will hopefully be a redirect to REAL 'RENTS. Woohoo!

Niece, Nephew, George and Finger

We babysat for my nephew, Callan, on Saturday. Had a blast. As you can see, he's easy on the eyes and a pretty happy kid to boot. It was a good practice session. He's 3 mos. old and enjoys playing, eating, sleeping and pooping. Typical dude, I guess.
We were very pleased to see George warm up to Call and although he mostly ignored him, there were moments where he seemed to actually enjoy his presence. And even when Call accidentally punched him (baby punched you know but still) in the face, George did not react. Wshoo!

And I couldn't post pics of Callan without posting one of our beautiful niece and goddaughter, Arianna. I love this pic. I think it was taken in NJ where she lives, but it somehow ended up on my computer, I think because I downloaded it when Anil's parents were in town. We don't get to see Arianna as much as we'd like, but she is in our hearts...and her mommy is due with another nephew in a very short time!

As for us, we had a great time with Callan and then things went South a bit on Sunday when we played softball - at the last minute, a guy from my team bailed so Anil had to come and fill in, even though his team had a bye week. I had a bad feeling about this game for some reason. It was the first time I really didn't want to go. Well, call it intuition, but I wish I hadn't now. Not only did we lose by 14 runs, but Anil went to field a ground ball at shortstop and somehow the ball fielded his finger instead. He has a broken finger now and had to have his nailbed drained (gross, don't ask) and he'll be in a finger splint for 4 weeks! I feel so bad. Poor guy can't type, can barely shower and certainly can't play softball for HIS team these next few weeks...and they are actually going to make the playoffs! Tragedy!

In adoption news, our homestudy has now made its way to Gladney and they are in the process of reviewing it. It sounds like we should know within a week if we are approved by Gladney, which is pretty awesome!! Then the homestudy will be sent to USCIS and we will await their approval. Then the USCIS approval will be sent to Kate notarized, and she will get it authenticated and sent to D.C. and at that point, we will officially be waiting! I can not wait to be waiting.

Almost Orange

Oooops...

I broke my promise. Luckily, I haven't told more than a handful of you about my blog at this point, so there won't be too many people to hold it against me. Sorry, but we have sure been busy. Since I last wrote, we have been all over the place trying to get all of the necessary requirements aka paperwork completed...and I'm very happy to say, that we are almost finished!!! We got fingerprints, medical forms, bank statements, employment letters, insurance info, tax forms (that was a tough one of all things), notarized letters, notarized passports, and on and on. And we filled out housing statements, financial statements, HIPPA forms, PCR forms, Authorization forms and miscellaneous forms galore. And then we had our final homestudy, 3 weeks ago tomorrow. And yesterday...well yesterday...we received our homestudy report. And we passed!!!!!!!!!! We have been officially recommended for approval by our homestudy agency. And while this is just the first of 4 approvals that we will ultimately need, it's a HUGE step because first off, this recommendation only comes once you have ALL of your homestudy paperwork in, which is the bulk of the paperwork overall. AND all other approvals are based largely on this homestudy report! So we are very excited and relieved and HAPPY.

Now the homestudy report will be emailed to our placement agency (Gladney) and we will wait for them to review it along with all of the letters and forms and papers we sent them separately, and hope to get approval from them very shortly (approval #2)! At the same time, our homestudy report will be mailed to USCIS and we will wait for government approval (approval #3). Once we have those (fingers crossed!), we will send everything off to Kate, the dossier expert, and she will prep all of this paperwork along with the notarized letters, notarized passports, notarized references, notarized FBI clearances, photos of us, the house, family, etc. and then send to Ethiopia for translation and down the line, again (fingers crossed!) approval # 4. And then it's baby time!

We are getting so excited, it's a little crazy. But my dear friend Julie just said to me the other day that she believes that adoption can make even the sanest folks crazy...so since I was a little nutty to begin with, it's no wonder I'm a little over the top right now.

Anil and I have decided to go with an orange-ish nursery, since we won't know boy or girl til very close to travel time. I found this orange rug at JCP and purchased it last weekend. We weren't sure about it at first because it wasn't quite the orange we were imagining, but now we really like it - and so does someone else in the household! We already envision George lying on it in front of the crib, protecting the little one from things that go bump in the night. He's going to be a great big bro.

A Promise is a Promise

I promised you all (my millions of adoring blogger fans) and myself and George that I'd write in this thing daily this week, and a promise is a promise.

I'll have to keep this one short because I am exhausted from this Tuesday that felt like a Monday, getting back to work, being really busy and trying to squeeze in a moment or two to push this adoption journey one tiny step closer to its grand finale.

I did manage today to ask some pretty important and hopefully time saving questions. I asked questions of all 3 entities we are dealing with - Gladney (placement agency), Partners for Adoption (homestudy agency), and Kate @ KBS (the woman we hired to help us complete our foreign dossier, which is the all-important document that will be sent to ET).

I asked them about our employment verification letter. We received from each of them a sample letter of what they wanted to see, and they were all slightly different. So I had to find out if we truly needed to ask our bosses to write 3 letters, or if 1 covering all the bases would suffice. I got an 'almost definite' answer that 1 should be good, as long as all questions are answered. One of the forms even asks them to break it down to yearly, monthly and weekly salary - I'd have thought they could do the math on that one, but I guess not.

I also asked about our medical forms. Same question. I think I got the answer that our physicians need to fill out 2 of the 3 forms. Not quite as simple as the j-o-b but better than all 3, I suppose.

So I've fulilled my promise and reported in, and now I must go to sleep! G'nite!

Catching Up

Our anniversary was this past Tuesday, our 3rd, which is apparently crystal, so my parents & siblings sent us this beautiful vase. Thanks, guys!

I haven't been incredibly diligent about posting here. I'm going to make it a point to post a little something daily this week, because I want to keep up with this and plus it will help keep me on my toes. I'll need to accomplish one thing each day in order to have something to report.

Since I wrote last, we have moved into full speed ahead mode. We have sent off our official application to Gladney with our first part of the fees and a bunch of other paperwork. Now we're working on Round 2 for them.

And we sent off our first set of papers to the woman who will help us prepare our dossier, which is the document that will ultimately go over to Ethiopia, get translated into Amharic (the native language in Addis Adaba, the capital of ET) and then go to court there and hopefully convince a judge that we are fit parents for our baby.

Last but not least, we had our first homestudy appointment/meeting yesterday! We were very nervous and excited but mostly nervous, but it went really really well. Our social worker is great, very sweet and insightful. She made us feel comfortable, even when asking the 'tough' questions. It was about a 2-hour visit and mostly an interview. Often times, it just felt like a conversation that just happened to be focused on us, as a couple, as potential parents, as adoptive parents and just as people in general. I think (hope) we passed that portion. We were both very happy when it was done, and our sweet families called us to check on how it went. So good to have support, as this process can feel very long and lonely sometimes, without those people caring enough to ask. We're very lucky.

Anyway, this week our goals are to get our employers started on the employment letters we need, which will hopefully also serve as proof of insurance for the baby. And we just took our first class on "Conspicuous Families" this afternoon and plan to take at least one more before the weekend (there are 4 total, plus a book and test we have to take). Also, we're going to try to round up and get our reference letters finalized. And we have our LiveScan fingerprinting scheduled with the FBI as well. I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking of, and all of this amidst one of the busiest times for both of us at our jobs.

We love the challenge - and we live for the day we leave for Africa!

Almost September

We've past the halfway mark toward September and I think Anil and I are both feeling a little behind the 8-ball with the adoption quest. His parents have been in town for most of the month and since they are staying with his sister in Pasadena, the weekends are the only chance we have to spend time with them and we love spending time with them. Hence, our inability to get much done and move forward with our paperchase.

Today though, Anil is taking them down to Bellflower to visit with some other family members. I was going to go along but we decided it was better if I stay here and get started on the organizing (as I sit here writing in my blog instead). Since they will spend the night there with them, we will spend the afternoon locked up in his office trying to play catch up with all of the many papers and forms we need to fill out, track down and mail off. I'm looking forward to feeling in control of all of this again. I'm excited to make nice, neat little files with all of the papers neatly tucked away inside. It's going to be so liberating! I never thought I'd be this exciting about filing in my life!

I took our little man, Georgie, to the vet this morning to get a shot he was due for...what a treat that was. He absolutely hates the vet. It doesn't matter which vet or where vet or when vet, he can sense them a mile away and he can't stand it. Our new vet just happens to be directly across the street from our house, which is very convenient. And since George loves to go for walks, I thought I'd just stroll him over casually and get done what we needed. We got across the street and as we entered the parking lot of Pet Medical Center, he froze. He would not move an inch. I tried to prod him forward, beg him to come along, but ended up having to scoop him up and carry him in the door. He shook like a leaf the entire time we were inside and luckily, the nice vet tech came out and had the shot right there with him, didn't even force G to go back to one of the dreaded exam rooms, and quickly slipped the needle inside and voila - done! I was impressed - no yelping, even with all the shaking, G took it like a man...and proceeded to shake all the way through paying the bill and waiting for printouts of his vaccination records (which we needed for the adoption)...poor lil guy.

Let's hope our baby doesn't hate the pediatrician as much as Georgie hates the vet...

Almost Applied

Oops...it's been a while since I wrote in...I guess the ball is officially rolling now. We have now begun the paper chase. It's sort of unreal to me, that even though we are still very early on in our process, that we have already come this far, this fast. It's been a whirlwind of emotions, work, research, talking it out, and fun.

After we sent in our information sheet, Gladney set up a phone orientation with us and also sent us a "Request for Application"...once we finished with the phone orientation, we sent in our request to apply for our adoption with another check - so get it, here it is - info sheet, request for application, application. 3 steps just to apply! That gives you a basic idea of what the process of adoption is like. And truthfully, we don't mind one bit! Of course, it's time-consuming and a little stressful and it can seem silly at times, but it's just the way it is, not just for us, but for everyone wishing to adopt, so we will not be the ones to complain! After all, it's a labor of love, the best kind.

Today we also mailed off our application to our homestudy agency, Partners for Adoption, who we will be using as our state-licensed agency to complete the homestudy and post-placement visits (Ethiopia requires 3 in the first year)...We are very happy with our choice in the end. We did a lot of research and narrowed it down to 2 great agencies, and in the end, this one just felt right. So that is an exciting step!

In our spare time (haha), we are tracking down birth certificates, marriage certificates, police clearance letters, and all kinds of nutty things you never thought you'd need, til now. We are just trying to keep the momentum going and stay on pace so that we can try to actualize the wait time between now and when we would travel to pick up our baby. According to Gladney, in 7-8 months we will have a baby, but for now we have almost applied!

Almost Begun

Anil and I mailed off our info sheet today to Gladney, our choice for an adoption agency that will 'place' a baby with our family, hopefully within the next year. This info sheet is I've learned separate from the actual application, which is a much larger document that we will fill out in the next step, once our info sheet is received and reviewed. Let the fun begin!

We are getting very excited. I have met some really great people who have already adopted or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia, most of them over email at this point. But I am constantly amazed and humbled and thrilled that I have found such terrific people through the Yahoo groups I joined - all of them so willing to share their experiences, advice, opinions, and support. It is truly a blessing. Thanks to all of you who have responded to my numerous emails, you are an invaluable part of our process.

As we look forward to really getting this ball rolling, we envision a long and winding road and at the end, we will be sitting here in our living room, holding a beautiful little bundle of joy - that will be the bright light at the end of our tunnel and push us through all the paperwork, the ups&downs, the stress, the waiting. We will enjoy the journey that we have almost begun.