The Steps

Just to summarize what the next steps are in our adoption and what the approximate timelines will be:

1) We have to wait for our passports to return from the passport office in Quebec before our file can move any further.

2) Once we have our passports our file goes to the Ethiopian Embassy in Ottawa for authentication. This takes around 2 weeks.

3) When our agency gets our dossier back from Ottawa, they send it to our provincial government who then sends it to Ethiopia. Hopefully they will do this within a week.

4) Once our dossier is in Ethiopia then the Ethiopian social services approves us to adopt. Then we get our referral. The time line varies greatly based on how many children are available and how many families are waiting. The shortest timeline for this step I have heard happened recently. The family I mentioned in yesterdays post had thier dossier in Ethiopia only 2 weeks and they already have their referral of a one month old baby boy! But it can take a few months depending also on what exactly the family is asking for in terms of gender and age. We are requesting a boy or girl under the age of 12 months, so hopefully it won't be too terribly long. But who knows.

5) The referral info is sent to our provincial government who then contacts us and sends us a picture and all of the relevant information on the child. We send this info to a great doctor in Edmonton who specializes is international adoption and she looks over everything in detail and if all looks good we sign an acceptance letter and send it to the province. (This last stage is optional, not everyone has their prospective child's info checked out by a doctor, most do though)

6) We then wait for our court date, usually about 4 to 6 weeks from our proposal being accepted. Once the court date happens then the child is legally ours! Yay! Obviously this will be a big day around here! Now if our referral comes in late June or worse July then we are in big trouble. The courts close in August for 2 months and then our court date cannot happen till October. Not as bad if you do not have a referral yet, but absolutely TORTURE if you know who you are adopting and everything is essentially frozen for 2 months. Ugh! We have to pray that this will not happen.

7) The last thing is the the child's visa is prepared for them to travel and we wait for word of when the child is ready to travel (1 to 3 months or more) and then all three of us (and hopefully Mom if she can) fly to Addis Ababa and pick our new addition up!!!

So as you can see, the passport thing is VERY annoying as we were getting a lot closer to our referral. Basically the next thing I was expecting in terms of any contact from anyone was that our file was athenticated. Then I knew we were only a few weeks away from knowing who our child is. So now to indefinately have to sit and wait for our passports is very frustrating! But I know there will be a lot of frustrating things along the road, so this is probably a good thing to get me ready.

I can't wait until the day we announce who our new addition is, that he or she is legally ours and that we will be leaving to go get him or her. Honestly, it feels like a dream!

Anyway, HAPPY EASTER YET AGAIN!