And then there was last night

An email from our first agent has turned everything, once more, on its ear. But it is a good turning upon an ear...maybe a two plus two.

Praying for guidance....praying for a path...praying for wisdom...

Progress report

8 documents notarized this morning, and 12 certified by the County Clerk 10 minutes ago.

The beats are starting to hit a rhythm.

It is almost ready!

Amy and I have all our documents in order for our dossier. We now have five files of paperwork: For Notary; For County Clerk-Fayette; For County Clerk- Franklin; For State Authentication; and, Ready for Dossier. After lunch today, we will have four, and, hopefully, after tomorrow or Wednesday we will only have one--Ready for Dossier.

One of the final items we needed for the dossier was our picture together. After 69 exposures we got one with smiles, lighting, and framing all concordant.

We are beyond excited at the prospect of sending this to Chris, our Intl Agent.

We are so close!

We made some very good progress on the dossier last night. We have a few remaining questions for our international agent, but got an auto-reply message that he out for a conference until this evening...so, hopefully our e-mails will be read soon....

More papers and more notary publics...

WE GOT IT!!!

Our I-171H was waiting in the mailbox for us today. I called Amy with tears in my eyes to tell her!

Now off to finish the last two documents for our dossier!

Oh my gosh....this is awesome!

Passports!

I had almost forgotten about those pesky little things. This article reminded me of the fact that we are still waiting. We sent off our applications in early May, so we should have those, hopefully, sometime in August.

I keyed in on one part of this article, that fact that Rep. John Salazar from Colorado was able to light a fire under the State Department to expedite a constituent's passport application. We need our passport information to finish our dossier paperwork, so I wonder if I would have the same luck with a call to Rep Ben Chandler?

New York Times article

Surge in Adoptions Raises Concern in Ethiopia

Do not let the headline give slight palpitations as it did me.

However, I do agree with the tenet that the sharp increase of adoptions from Ethiopia should indicate that government and adoption agency oversight should be bolstered to accommodate and monitor the rise in adoptions. If any process is allowed to grow so quickly with no checks in place to monitor compliance, then we all fall victim a glutted program now more vulnerable to misdealing and fraud.

The other part of the article is focuses more on families, children, and the agencies that care for the children. The highlight, for me, was how one particular agency is taking proactive measure to combat "institutionalization symptoms" in the children.

Definitely a timely article and subject we should stayed tuned to.

Adoption picnic

Adoption Assistance (our home study provider) hosted their annual picnic. Amy and I had a great time--my parents went with us and I am glad they were able to share it with us. Boy, we had baby-fever before, and now it is even higher. Their setup was pretty good. Once people signed in and made name tags, they migrated to a large circle of flags from the countries of choice they have serviced. We found our way to the Ethiopian flag and set up camp.

We were the only ones for awhile. We ran into someone Amy knows through her hair stylist (they adopted an adorable baby girl from Texas, so they moved on down to the USA flag). It wasn't until we were getting ready to leave (we were hungry and the rain was threatening) that we met another couple in process to adopt from Ethiopia. They are getting ready for their home study--gosh, that seems so long ago. I hope that we both make our way back there next year, and that our little ones can play.

Watching the families, the kids playing, running, riding the ponies, made the inevitability of having our baby home even more solid. Even the bills don't dampen the joy and hope of fetching the mail to find our 171H.

Dossier -- the final leg

Amy and I hammered out some good work on our dossier last night--there are only two documents remaining. That really felt good. We had a few questions for our international agent, so we sent off another email in hopes of a quick response.

In related news, we are still waiting for our passports and I-171H. We need the passport numbers for one of the remaining documents for the dossier, so I hope those arrive before the 171H.