The girls with their new African doll

maggie's soccer pictures

So Maggie is done with her first year of soccer and loved it. I wanted to post a couple of pictures for everyone to see. She had an awesome time and can't wait to play next year.

I took this from some elses blog, but it gives you a little info about our agency and the process

All God’s Children (AGCI); our international agency has it’s own orphanage in Ethiopia called Hannah’s Hope. “Hannah” is the name of the founder’s daughter, adopted from Romania a decade and a half ago. It is directed by a woman named Almaz Asresahin, an Ethiopian who lived and studied in the US for 14 years. The orphanage houses 65 children ages 3 months to 15 years. At Hannah’s Hope, all children are screened for HIV/AIDS, syphilis, and Hepatitis B and C prior to being referred to families. Under Ethiopian intercountry adoption law, HIV/AIDS positive children are not eligible for international adoption. We have to wait because, although there are over 4 million orphans in Ethiopia, Hannah’s Hope has room for only 65 at a time. After making our way through the waiting list we will receive our “referral”. This is the moment families wait and hope for. These days a waiting family will receive a call and then an emailed picture and history (both personal and medical) of a child. The family has a set amount of time (usually 3 days) in which to except or not except this referral. AGCI requires that parents speak to an international physician about the child’s medical history to make sure they realize what they are signing up for or are comfortable with the unknowns. Our international pediatrician gave me his cell phone and wants me to contact him as soon as possible. He too has adopted internationally and is eager to help us accept our referral a.s.a.p. If the family excepts the referral the staff at Hannah’s Hope begins the court proceedings to adopt this child on their behalf. There is a request for a court date and then we wait for the Ethiopian courts to review our case and approve the adoption. Some...to many...don't pass court the first time for a variety of different reasons, almost always out of our control. After the adoption is official, parents usually travel within 6 weeks to pick up their child. The issue that we will encounter is the yearly summer break the Ethiopian federal courts take. They completely shut down in the months of August and September. This creates a huge backlog of cases waiting to be seen. AGCI estimates an average of 3-5 months from the referral date to travel, but clearly this annual shut down adds months to that time frame. Barring a speedy referral and a trouble free court date, it seems we will be effected by this delay. Each country is different- some require parents to come to the country and visit the child before excepting the referral, then leave again for 6 + months before returning to bring the child home. Ethiopia only requires one trip, and only one of the parents is required to travel. All of the legal proceedings are rapped up before the parents travel so it is a relatively efficient system. Our little guy will travel home on a IR-4 Visa and then be re-adopted here in the states. Even though he is officially ours without doing this, the re-adoption will make things much, much more easy in the future for him and for us.

for those of you who are wondering...

I have had a few people ask if we were adopting a boy or girl. We chose to leave that decision up to God. We didn't get to pick with the girls, so it just feels like the right thing to do. We really would love to have a boy. The wait list for a baby boy is shorter than a girl, so chances are we will be having a son. We haven't decided on names. We will just wait and see...

update

I haven't posted anything in about 10 days, so I thought maybe I should. Last week I applied for my passport and I took some documents for our home study and dropped them off. We have completed 4 out of our 6 adoption classes. Once we are done with those and get our physicals done on the 1st we are done with our part of getting everything together for the home study. yay!

For our Dossier we have to get back our power of attorney that is being "state certified", our physical and TB test, and our people that are writing our letters of recommendation need to get us those letters and we have everything together for our Dossier. Also the home study has to be completed as well.

I think we are doing REALLY well getting all of our "stuff" together.

We also are getting ready to apply for our I-600A.

We are going to be leaving for vacation in about 11 days, so I plan on finishing up classes and everything before we leave. We also have to complete a 20 chapter workbook for AGCI called With Eyes Wide Open. We will be doing this on vacation when the girls go to bed at night.

So this is what has been going on.

We are so excited to get this process moving along. We think about and talk about our baby everyday!

Home study appointment

Today we had our home study appointment in our home. It went really well. We had to answer bunches of family history questions and so on and she had a look around our house. We really had a great time during the appointment and the girls were angels! I am so happy that they were so well behaved. They usually are, but you know kids...

We are getting lots of stuff done that needs to be done for both our home study and dossier. I think we have gotten an excellent start. The biggest problem we have ran into is our doctors office and trying to schedule physicals and tb tests. They have to squeeze us in somewhere and I guess can't figure out where because they keep telling me to call back or if they say they will call back they dont. We will get it figured out.

For our home study all we need is our physicals and pick up our criminal history letters next week. And we have to finish all of our adoption classes online.

For our dossier we only have a few things left as well. I have to figure out when we can apply for our 1600 A. Which is an immigration thing.

So things are going well. I just wish we could pick our baby up next week! I have to be patient!!!

a few statistics...

• Ethiopia's doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000
  
• One in ten children die before their first birthday
  
• One in six children die before their fifth birthday
  
• There are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia
  
• 720,000 children have been orphaned by aids alone
  
• 1.5 million people in Ethiopia are infected with HIV
  
• 60 percent of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition
  
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school
  
• 88 percent will never attend a secondary school