Moving again!

Yeah! We are now officially #12! It is a good way to end the year. I did have a dream the other day that our coordinator emailed us and said they have babies for the first ten families and we should get prepared. That was a great dream.

Here is a picture from the other day. Believe it or not, Texas actually had snow for Christmas! I heard this hasn't happened since 1926. Here is a picture of Cole and his first experience with snow. You notice he isn't touching the snow and was very worried that his shoes were messy. He didn't move an inch.



Adrian wanted a room makeover for Christmas. It was sad to take out the dollhouses and stuffed animals, but I guess my little girl is growing up. Here is a picture of her new room.



Here's a couple of pics from a holiday car ride:



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Received our I-171H

I-171H? What is that? That means we are officially Grade A approved by the US government to adopt. This also means that our fingerprints were clear and we are not criminals. (I was starting to wonder about Mike and his love for Mafia Wars on Facebook.) Now we just need to make a little movement up the list :) I've been trying to guesstimate when we might receive our referral. If we move at the same pace they did last year, it will probably be May. That would be a great Mother's Day present. An "early" Mother's day present would be even better :)

Fingerprinted!

Today we had our official appointment at the USCIS immigration office for fingerprints. It was super cool how everything was digitally saved and passed - makes you feel like you are on CSI or something. I was surprised to find out it was located in the food court of a Hispanic mall...not what I was expecting. Made me hungry for Pancho's ;)

Now we just have to wait and find out if we are criminals. Not that I remember doing anything bad - but who knows who could have stolen our fingerprints and used them for some international scandal. I sure hope not because I don't look very good in penitentiary orange. Plus, I have a good feeling they don't serve nachos in jail. So, hopefully we will get a letter in the mail that we passed.

And...no movement on the wait list. I'm starting to get pretty antsy about that :)

Tick Tock

Well, it has officially been one month since the last referral from our agency. I bet some of you were thinking I was just lazy and hadn't posted in a while :) Very good guess if you know me well. Actually, I heard a few things from one of my yahoo groups that made me start to worry. They said Ethiopia closed their adoptions to Australia. Those poor people on the wait list!

So, I emailed the nice lady at IAN and asked if everything was ok. She said not to worry. It seems that Ethiopia requires agencies to give humanitarian aid in return for being able to adopt. Australia is not run by agencies but works government to government. They are not willing to pay humanitarian aid to Ethiopia so they pulled the plug. She assured me that it would not happen to America because several thousand dollars of our agency fee goes to help the orphanages.

She also explained that every year, the courts in Ethiopia close for a few months for the rainy season. After they have opened, we have tons of families that have passed court and are waiting to travel in December or January. The orphanage and care center are full and not able to bring in new children. I heard sometimes the orphanage will sleep two or three in a bed. Once the families start picking up their children, then our list should start moving again. We are with a very, very small agency and I've counted 15-20 families that are waiting for the embassy date to travel. I'm really hoping this slow time will be followed by a ton of referrals!

I am very excited for all the families at IAN that are going to see their new children soon. I can't wait to be that close!