The boys are excited

Both of the boys are so excited about the prospect of having a younger sister. They can't get enough of looking at pictures of her, and hugging and kissing her pictures. In fact, both boys wanted to sleep with a picture of her tonight. They are going to be such great older brothers.

Here is Parker sleeping soundly with her picture.


Although no adoption is guaranteed to go smoothly, the process moving forward should go something like this:

Our dossier has gone through the US Department of State and the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington and is currently en route to Florida, where our agency is located.

For those unfamiliar with adoption, the dossier is a compilation of official documents about our family including tax returns, employment letters, bank statements, a home study, pictures of our house and neighborhood, medical reports for Sara and I, marriage certificates, birth certificates, letters of recommendation, criminal background checks, and the list goes on. The Ethiopia dossier, although cumbersome, is much easier to put together than a dossier bound for Russia (example: Russia would not accept our dossier until we provided them with a certificate for obedience training for Max).

Upon arrival in Florida, it will be FedEx'ed to Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, all of the documents will be translated into Amharic and then submitted to court. There is a quite a backup right now for court dates, as the court system shuts down for the rainy season in Ethiopia, so our court date will probably not be until at least the first of the year. The court date is the one of the major dates to write on your calendar if you are adopting, because if everything goes as planned in court, that is when you officially become parents of your child.

So the wait for a court date has begun. We have plenty to do around the house, so this time should go pretty quickly. My best guess is that if everything moves as it should, we could travel to pick up our little girl in March or April, but we shall see.

Our fingers are crossed again...