What a summer it's been!

Long time, no update. But, in this case it's for a very good reason. We're making steady progress on the adoption, but the process has been pretty labor intensive and time consuming.

What have we been doing? Well, we've each written (not typed, hand written) a fifty page personal profile, completed a 200-page workbook on international adoption, done 12 hours of online education, and run all over town getting multiple levels of government officials to say that we have no criminal record or history of child abuse complaints. Notarized letters from employers saying we actually have jobs, from the bank saying we actually have money, from our doctors saying we're all healthy, from our vet saying that the dog has all of her shots.  Phew!

Last week we started our home study visits. We love our social worker, and the conversations were actually pretty enjoyable. We have two more visits, and then she has to write up the home study. Once that's done, we have to start dealing with the US government in order to set up immigration/citizenship stuff (that's the technical term) for our child. Once that's done, I think we can say that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then we wait. How long? No one seems to know exactly; Ethiopia has been doing some funky things with court closings and adoption proceedings and orphanage closings so it's hard to say for sure. Anywhere from 12-24 months. We've heard that waiting presents it's own challenges, but at this point we're kind of looking forward to letting someone else do the work while we wait:)

So that's what we've been up to. Next Saturday we're going to a picnic for All God's Children, and we're looking forward to connecting with other families at all different stages of the adoption process. We'll try to be better with updates in the future. I'm sure we'll have more time to write once we're in the waiting phase!