Another Application mailed today!

I haven't written in awhile because I've just been super busy, so here it goes.  We received our paper work for our home study agency and after doing some investigating and talking with the Director at the adoption agency we have chosen, I decided to go ahead and put in our adoption application to the agency we decided to go with.  The adoption agency and home study agency are completely independent from each other.

Drum roll please...Celebrate Children International!!  (http://www.celebratechildren.org/) Let me tell you, this was a super stressful decision. I literally toiled over this for the past 3 months.  There are a lot of agencies but ultimately I kept coming back to this one.  Mostly because they have two options (Ethiopia and Congo).  A lot of the other agencies, although bigger or more reputable, didn't have a back up plan.  Adoption can be unpredictable and scary and if for whatever reason Ethiopia were to suddenly have problems or stop their programs all together I wanted another program to transfer to within my agency.  A lot of other agencies only had one other program that we would be eligible for and that is China, which has a SUUUUPER long wait.

The home study paperwork and the adoption paper work (also known as a dossier) is very similiar so it's commonly recommended that you do the pape work for  both at the same time because it saves a lot of effort.  We are talking about getting copies of our birth certificates, marriage certificate, back ground checks, finger prints, doctors evaluations, etc.

So that's where we are right now.  Our adoption application went in the mail today along with our application fee, a family photo (the new photo I just posted to the right!) and 5 reference letters.  I will wait to hear back from the agency on whether we were accepted as clients and they will then send me the paper work to complete.  It could take anywhere from 2-4 months to complete all of this so stay tuned folks...