On-deck!

We received our "On-Deck" e-mail this morning. This is an e-mail from our agency just letting us know that we are getting close to a referral. It also goes over the referral procedure, acceptance letter, payments, request verification, etc. Here's part of the e-mail..."While there are many unknowns in the referral process, and this email gives no dates or guarantees, America World anticipates that your family could receive a referral within the next one to three months. Referrals arrive sporadically throughout the month. For this reason, families with the same DTE date frequently do not receive referrals at the same time. America World issues referrals as soon as a child’s paperwork is completed."

According to our Yahoo group (which we know is NOT an official list), we are tied for #2 in the "waiting for an infant girl" line.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe by Halloween or Thanksgiving we will have a picture of our sweet, baby girl. Until then.....we wait as patiently as we can. Hang in there, sweet one.

Our adoption agency is awesome! They are a Christian agency and we used them for our China adoption. It was an easy choice for us to use them again for our Ethiopia adoption. They have an on-line chat group that allows families from our agency's Ethiopia program to get to know one another. Well, this group is awesome! There are tons of e-mails every day filled with prayer requests, travel info, referral info., etc. So, naturally, lists have been created of who is where in the process (our agency does not reveal this information). This is an unofficial list, but we believe that we are approximately #7 in line for a girl referral, so we think there is a strong possibility that we will hear something sooner than quoted.

Welcome to our blog! We are very excited and feel blessed to be adopting again! We are requesting a little girl, 0-6 months of age. The current wait time for an infant girl is 9-11 months from DTE, (Dossier to Ethiopia/paperwork done) to referral, but as we know from our China adoption, this is just an estimate and not a guarantee. On August 9th, we will have waited 7 months from DTE, so we are hoping to hear something between October and December. Once we receive and accept our referral (picture and history of our baby), we can expect to wait several more months before we travel. We will spend about a week in Ethiopia.