Now the real fun starts! Called the Dr. today to check about starting our immunization shots for traveling to Africa. I looked on the CDC website and saw there were many. Now I'm not a baby about getting shots, however that last one I got (penicillin when I was sick) kinda hurt! Does the the doctor still give out lollipops??????

It has been a week since our referral. We excitedly accepted our referral and look forward to the day we can share pictures with our friends (not until after our court date). I have been busy the past few days finding out about this next and final stage of the adoption process.

Our dossier was sent to Ethiopia yesterday. Wooh Hooh! When it is received there, it will be translated and then several things happen before we travel. Among them are various approvals and it all culminates with a successful court date. A power of attorney was sent with our dossier, and someone from CWA will actually attend the court date for us. It will likely be a 3-4 month process for this to occurr. After our court date we will receive a date at the American Embassy in Addis Ababa. I am told that this is approx. 5 weeks after the court date. This is when we travel!

So I guess that means we are waiting for 4-5 months. I hate waiting. Especially when I have these cute photos of our adorable little boy and all I want is to be the one taking care of him! I guess God's not finished teaching me about patience....not one of my better traits. So for now, I will just do what I have been doing the past few days....carrying my little pile of pictures with me downstairs and upstairs and keeping little baby Hall close to my heart.

Referral!

Well I am shocked and amazed to be writing this...but yesterday afternoon, around 4:30, we received a call from our case worker and she had a referral for us! We can't say much about it, but I will say it is a boy... :)

Please pray that paperwork and court dates will go smoothly, and whatever else. I hadn't looked too closely at this step yet, because I thought we were just finishing with the dossier and were settling into a little wait time. But, we KNOW that this is all a part of God's timing. We certainly weren't expecting this so soon, but are OVERJOYED and will keep you posted!

Dossier on its way

We mailed off our dossier today! We overnighted it to Caring Hands, a courier service that will actually walk our dossier to the US Department of State, wait for the papers to be authenticated and then take it to the Ethiopian Embassy for authentication there. They will pick it up when that is finished and send it back to our case worker, who will send it to Addis Ababa. We are very excited that all our paperwork for this phase is finished!!! Now the wait for our referral begins.

One more time

Well, those two documents that we had to get authenticated at our state office in Raleigh were given the wrong paper! Thankfully, this is a mistake on their part, and not mine. It does mean that I had to send them back to the Secretary of State to get re-processed. Hopefully they will be just as quick as they were the first time and we will get those back next week.

Our case worker is sending us our final two documents to put in our dossier, so when we get both of those, and our correctly authenticated documents, our dossier will be off to the US Dept of State and then the Ethiopian Embassy, both in Washington D.C.!

Almost there.....