Almost...

Well, I know many people have asked us if we have sent in our dossier yet. And our answer is.....almost. Unfortunately, we had a little hiccup at the same time. One of our very important papers in our dossier just so happened to have an upcoming expiration date on it. This was not anything in our control, but our adoption agency was waiting for their renewal of their license (or something else similarly official) and this date is on our POA (Power of Attorney). SO....we had to wait for their new one, which now doesn't expire until 2012, re-fill it out, then have it notarized, then send it to our state for Authentication. So that is where it is. I expect it should get back to us by next week and then we should be ready to move on. Hooray!

Quick explanation of what moving on means. (And this is all according to my understanding of it, every time I read my directions I seem to pick up on something else!) I will then take all my dossier documents (minus two that CWA sends me) and make two copies. I then send the copies (and that all too precious big check) to our Case Worker and she reviews for any mistakes, etc. Then she sends us the two important papers needed to officially complete our dossier. From there we courier our dossier to the US Dept of State in D.C. Then they authenticate it and whatever else they do to it and we have it couriered to the Ethiopian Embassy in D.C. Somewhere in that process it is put in a really pretty binder and looks all official! Then it goes back to our adoption agency, CWA, where it is FINALLY sent to Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia). Also, somewhere during that process it is translated into Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. Although I have also learned that there are actually over 80 languages spoken in Ethiopia, with hundreds of dialects - Amharic is the official.

Hope that clears it up for those of you that are following this. From there we hope for a "two to four month" wait time for a referral. We'll see...we know God has His hand in all of this, so it's really up to Him.